Institute for the Study of Academic Racism

Last updated

The Institute for the Study of Academic Racism (ISAR) is an organization that monitors "changing intellectual trends in academic racism, biological determinism, and eugenics." ISAR states that in this capacity it "acts as a resource service for students, academics, journalists, legislators and civil rights activists." ISAR was founded by Barry Mehler in 1993. [1]

Contents

Related Research Articles

Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "races", and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racial discrimination, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citizens' Councils</span> American segregationist organizations

The Citizens' Councils were an associated network of white supremacist, segregationist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South and created as part of a white backlash against the US Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. The name was changed to the Citizens' Councils of America in 1956. With about 60,000 members across the Southern United States, the groups were founded primarily to oppose racial integration of public schools: the logical conclusion of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

The Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been described as racist and white supremacist in nature. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Pioneer Fund as a hate group. One of its first projects was to fund the distribution in US churches and schools of Erbkrank, a Nazi propaganda film about eugenics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Lynn</span> British psychologist noted for his views on race and intelligence (1930–2023)

Richard Lynn was a controversial English psychologist and self-described "scientific racist" who advocated for a genetic relationship between race and intelligence. He was the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, a white supremacist journal. He was a professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, but had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018. Lynn was lecturer in psychology at the University of Exeter and professor of psychology at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and at the University of Ulster at Coleraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Cattell</span> British-American psychologist (1905–1998)

Raymond Bernard Cattell was a British-American psychologist, known for his psychometric research into intrapersonal psychological structure. His work also explored the basic dimensions of personality and temperament, the range of cognitive abilities, the dynamic dimensions of motivation and emotion, the clinical dimensions of abnormal personality, patterns of group syntality and social behavior, applications of personality research to psychotherapy and learning theory, predictors of creativity and achievement, and many multivariate research methods including the refinement of factor analytic methods for exploring and measuring these domains. Cattell authored, co-authored, or edited almost 60 scholarly books, more than 500 research articles, and over 30 standardized psychometric tests, questionnaires, and rating scales. According to a widely cited ranking, Cattell was the 16th most eminent, 7th most cited in the scientific journal literature, and among the most productive psychologists of the 20th century. He was a controversial figure due in part to his friendships with, and intellectual respect for, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wickliffe Draper</span> American political activist (1891–1972)

Wickliffe Preston Draper was an American political activist. He was an ardent eugenicist and lifelong advocate of strict racial segregation. In 1937, he founded the Pioneer Fund for eugenics and heredity research; he later became its principal benefactor.

<i>Mankind Quarterly</i> Pseudo-scientific White Supremacist journal

Mankind Quarterly is a journal that has been described as a "cornerstone of the scientific racism establishment", a "white supremacist journal", and "a pseudo-scholarly outlet for promoting racial inequality". It covers physical and cultural anthropology, including human evolution, intelligence, ethnography, linguistics, mythology, archaeology, and biology. It is published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research, which was presided over by Richard Lynn until his death in 2023.

Audrey Mary Shuey (1900–1977) was an American psychologist and writer. She served as the Chair of the Department of Psychology at Randolph-Macon Women's College.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linda Gottfredson</span> American psychologist & scholar

Linda Susanne Gottfredson is an American psychologist and writer. She is professor emerita of educational psychology at the University of Delaware and co-director of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society. She is best known for writing the 1994 letter "Mainstream Science on Intelligence", which was published in the Wall Street Journal in defense of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial book The Bell Curve (1994).

Glayde D. Whitney was an American behavioral geneticist and psychologist. He was professor at Florida State University. Beyond his work into the genetics of sensory system function in mice, in his later life he supported David Duke as well as research into race and intelligence and eugenics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Pearson (anthropologist)</span> British anthropologist and far-right activist (born 1927)

Roger Pearson is a British anthropologist, eugenicist, white supremacist, political organiser for the extreme right, and publisher of political and academic journals.

William H. Tucker (1940–2022), also known as Bill Tucker, was an American psychologist. He was an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and the author of several books critical of race science. He retired from Rutgers in 2009. Tucker died in 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David T. Lykken</span> American behavioral geneticist (1928–2006)

David Thoreson Lykken was a behavioral geneticist and Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota. He is best known for his work on twin studies and lie detection.

The International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE) was an organisation that promoted eugenics and segregation, and the first publisher of Mankind Quarterly.

<i>The Passing of the Great Race</i> 1916 book on race by Madison Grant

The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis.

Barry Alan Mehler is an American social researcher. He was a professor of humanities at Ferris State University, who founded the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism (ISAR). He earned his B.A. from Yeshiva University in 1970, his M.A. from City College of New York in 1972, and his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1988. His dissertation was entitled, "A history of the American Eugenics Society, 1921-1940."

The New Century Foundation is a white nationalist organization founded in 1994 by Jared Taylor known primarily for publishing a magazine, American Renaissance, which promotes white supremacy. From 1994 to 1999, its activities received considerable funding by the Pioneer Fund. The organization also has a DBA name of American Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carleton Putnam</span> American segregationist (1901–1998)

Carleton Putnam was an American businessman, writer and advocate for racial segregation. He graduated from Princeton University in 1924 and received a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from Columbia Law School in 1932. He founded Chicago & Southern Airlines in 1933 which, in 1953, merged with Delta Air Lines. Putnam later served as chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines and held a seat on its board of directors until his death.

The history of the race and intelligence controversy concerns the historical development of a debate about possible explanations of group differences encountered in the study of race and intelligence. Since the beginning of IQ testing around the time of World War I, there have been observed differences between the average scores of different population groups, and there have been debates over whether this is mainly due to environmental and cultural factors, or mainly due to some as yet undiscovered genetic factor, or whether such a dichotomy between environmental and genetic factors is the appropriate framing of the debate. Today, the scientific consensus is that genetics does not explain differences in IQ test performance between racial groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenics in the United States</span> "Race improvement" as historically sought in the US

Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.

References

  1. "Our Genes / Our Choices . Genes On Trial . Meet The Participants - PBS". www.pbs.org.

Further reading