Charles Murray | |
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![]() Murray in 2013 | |
Born | Charles Alan Murray January 8, 1943 Newton, Iowa, U.S. |
Spouses | Suchart Dej-Udom
(m. 1966; div. 1980)Catherine Bly Cox (m. 1983) |
Children | 4 |
Awards | Irving Kristol Award (2009) Kistler Prize (2011) |
Scholarly background | |
Education | Harvard University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA, PhD) |
Thesis | Investment and Tithing in Thai Villages: A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization (1974) |
Doctoral advisor | Lucian Pye |
Scholarly work | |
Discipline | Political science |
School or tradition | Right-libertarianism |
Institutions | American Institutes for Research Manhattan Institute for Policy Research American Enterprise Institute |
Main interests | Race and intelligence Social welfare policy |
Notable works | Losing Ground (1984) The Bell Curve (1994) Coming Apart (2012) |
Charles Alan Murray (/ˈmɜːri/; born January 8, 1943) is an American political scientist. He is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.[1]
Murray's work is highly controversial.[2][3][4][5][6] His book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (1984) discussed the American welfare system. In the book The Bell Curve (1994), he and co-author Richard Herrnstein argue that in 20th-century American society, intelligence became a better predictor than parental socioeconomic status or education level of many individual outcomes, including income, job performance, pregnancy out of wedlock, and crime, and that social welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely counterproductive. The Bell Curve also claims that average intelligence quotient (IQ) differences between racial and ethnic groups are at least partly genetic in origin, a view that is now considered discredited by mainstream science.[7][8][9][10]
:2
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).VoxConsensus
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Historical measurements of skull volume and brain weight were done to advance claims of the racial superiority of white people. More recently, the (genuine but closing) gap between the average IQ scores of groups of black and white people in the United States has been falsely attributed to genetic differences between the races.
Recent articles claim that the folk categories of race are genetically meaningful divisions, and that evolved genetic differences among races and nations are important for explaining immutable differences in cognitive ability, educational attainment, crime, sexual behavior, and wealth; all claims that are opposed by a strong scientific consensus to the contrary. ... Despite the veneer of modern science, RHR [racial hereditarian research] psychologists' recent efforts merely repeat discredited racist ideas of a century ago. The issue is truly one of scientific standards; if psychology embraced the scientific practices of evolutionary biology and genetics, current forms of RHR would not be publishable in reputable scholarly journals.