Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.

Replies to CSU-Long Beach Critics

This page contains four replies I made to my critics at CSU-Long Beach. The first is to a comment by Donald Schwartz, the second to Schwartz and several other faculty members. The third comment is mainly in response to comments made by Larry George, and the fourth is mainly a response to Warren Weinstein.

Second reply -- to Donald Schwartz and other faculty members
Third reply -- to Larry George
Fourth reply -- Warren Weinstein

First Reply -- To Donald Schwartz

Kevin MacDonald replying to Donald Schwartz: I welcome this opportunity to clarify and contextualize some of the ideas found in my books. In the following, Prof. Schwartz's comments have been italicized.

DS: MacDonald envisions a Darwinian scenario in which particular groups struggle for dominance. As such, he devotes the body of his scholarly work to competition between Jews and Gentiles, and depicts Judaism 'as a fundamentally self-interested group strategy.' Does such a definition also apply to other self-interested groups? I can only infer that MacDonald would agree, but he doesn't attach that label to any other group. He leaves the impression that Jews are particularly mendacious, calculating, and conspiratorial.

KM: I had hoped I had made it clear that other groups are self-interested. On p. 1 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone I state that 'The theory of Judaism presented here implies that Judaism must be understood as exhibiting universal human tendencies for self-interest, ethnocentrism, and competition for resources and reproductive success. But an evolutionary theory must also suppose that these tendencies are in no way exclusive to Judaism.' I focused on Judaism almost as an accident. In my 1988 book, Social and Personality Development: An Evolutionary Synthesis I wrote a chapter on wider cultural influences on child development, and used the ancient Spartans as an example in which there was a clearly articulated theory and practice of raising children by the state to conform to a certain cultural ideal. My application of the theory of group strategies started there, and since that time several other evolutionists have begun studying human groups from the same perspective, including David Sloan Wilson (Hutterites, Calvinists), Anthony Hilton (Hutterites), A. J. Figueredo (Mormons), Frank Miele (Puritans). I have begun work on a book entitled Diaspora Peoples in which I intend to compare a variety of groups, including, besides those mentioned here, the Quakers, the overseas Chinese, Romany, Assyrians, Parsis, Sikhs). This work links up with anthropological work by Christopher Boehm showing how hunter-gatherer groups regulate group boundaries and allocate resources within the group, often with egalitarian controls on individual behavior. In short, my work is part of a larger effort to understand groups within an evolutionary perspective, with no implication that any one group is particularly mendacious, calculating, or conspiratorial.

DS: MacDonald's work manages to convert even positive qualities associated with Jews into something insidious. He contends that low divorce rates among Jews and Jewish emphasis on education are 'group strategies' employed in the competitive struggle with the Gentile world.

KM: In Chapter 7 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone I described what evolutionists term the life history profile of Jews and noted that Ashkenazi Jews have a very high IQ as well as a pattern of high-investment parenting (intensive socialization patterns, low divorce rates, etc.), and an emphasis on education and achievement. (Obviously I am talking about mean differences from other groups; e.g., in the case of IQ, Ashkenazi Jews have a mean IQ that is at least 15 points above the European Caucasian average. However, there is considerable overlap between these IQ distributions, with many Jews having a lower IQ than the European Caucasian average.) This profile results in a tendency for high levels of achievement in any society where that particular profile of abilities is advantageous. The tendency for Jews to be upwardly mobile and to be over-represented in fields requiring intelligence and education is well-attested in many times and places, ranging from the late Roman Empire to 15th-century Spain and 20th-century Europe and the United States. If anyone reads my characterization of these Jewish tendencies as insidious, they've misread what I have written or I just didn't do a good enough job of explaining the idea of life history profiles. The point I wanted to make is that the perception of these patterns of Jewish achievement has often been a focus of anti-Semitism, although the extent of group differences in achievement and the role of Jewish achievement in creating anti-Semites' own problems has often been exaggerated by anti-Semites. (Similar patterns in which hostility has been directed against high-achieving groups have occurred in the case of the overseas Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia and the East Indians in Africa).

My second book, Separation and Its Discontents develops a theory of anti-Semitism and discusses the relevant data. For example, the 'rise of the Jews' and its importance for understanding anti-Semitism is the theme of Albert Lindemann's Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Consider also the following:

[Anti-Semitism was] a broad regional phenomenon rather than ... [a] set of nationally bounded histories. In this view, modern anti-Semitic ideology and politics in both Germany and Poland figure as pathologies of middle-class formation or, in an alternative formulation, as accompaniments of embourgeoisement in a setting, unlike western and southern Europe, where a relatively large (or very large) and economically very significant urban Jewish population appeared to constitute an impediment to Christian advancement. In both countries, anti-Semitism served to justify assaults on Jewish-owned or Jewish-occupied business enterprises and medical, legal, and other professional practices, as well as bureaucratic positions, which were widely seen to block the path of upward mobility to non-Jewish aspirants to bourgeois respectability and security. In both countries, more or less sporadic anti-Semitic violence fomented by political organizations of the radical right, particularly in the 1930s, elicited considerable popular support or acceptance, reflecting widespread though normally mostly latent hostility to the Jews.... Similar policies were also being implemented in Hungary and Romania, the other major homelands of the central European Jews. (Hagen, W. W. (1996). Before the 'final solution': Toward a comparative analysis of political anti-Semitism in interwar Germany and Poland. Journal of Modern History 68: 360, 361)

DS: His premise that attitudes and conduct of Jews are genetically determined implies a uniformity of behavior among those of the Jewish faith. This unsupported generalization belies another stereotype'that if you put three Jews in a room you'll get five different opinions. If Jews do follow a code of group strategies, how does Professor MacDonald account for the wide variance of thought among Jews. Some of those who have sought to demonize Jews have portrayed them as Bolsheviks intent on fomenting world revolution in the name of the working class; at the same time Jews were also characterized as heartless capitalists heading a cabal intent on world domination. There are Zionists and anti-Zionists among Jews, liberal and conservatives, agnostics and Hassidim. To reduce Jews as a group to a genetic stereotype is as inaccurate as it is insulting.

KM: In my books I never assume uniformity of behavior among Jews or any other group. The following is from Separation and Its Discontents (p. 177):

A [Diaspora] group strategy ... is like a widely dispersed fleet of ships attempting to navigate hostile waters: different ships in the fleet encounter different local problems and must develop their own solutions. Moreover, different members of a ship's crew may advocate different solutions to the same problem, and in the absence of a strong centralized authority, the crew members of one ship may fractionate and pursue their own solutions by in effect constructing their own ships (e.g., Reform, Conservative, Neo-Orthodox, secular, and Zionist solutions to the assimilatory pressures resulting from the Enlightenment). Different sub-groups of Jews may develop different and incompatible strategies for confronting anti-Semitism or attempting to change the wider society to conform to Jewish group interests.

Based on behavior genetic data, I believe that it is more likely than not that some behaviors are genetically influenced, but I do not think that Jews are genetically homogeneous. (In fact, the data show that they are far from being genetically homogeneous). Nor do I suppose that Jewish strategizing is genetically determined. In Separation and Its Discontents (p. 177) I note:

Jewish groups have responded to anti-Semitism by adopting a wide range of strategies. A fundamental theoretical feature of this project is the view that humans are 'flexible strategizers' in pursuit of evolutionary goals .... Within this framework, one expects that strategies for combating anti-Semitism will be highly flexible and able to respond adaptively to novel situations. General-purpose cognitive processes ... have been utilized to develop a wide array of survival strategies in response to specific situations that could not have been recurrent features of the human environment of evolutionary adaptedness.

These strategies may not succeed in their aims. Rather, unsuccessful strategies are likely to be replaced in a trial-and-error process, and there will be a continual search for new strategies to encounter new, perhaps unforeseen, difficulties.

I agree with Professor Schwartz that anti-Semites have often developed theories in which the negatively perceived qualities of individual Jews or sub-groups of Jews are uncritically generalized to all Jews. The following is from Separation and Its Discontents, p. 4:

Perceptions of Jewish group homogeneity are quite possibly behind the very prominent theme of much anti-Semitic writing that despite appearances to the contrary, Jews are working together in a vast interlocking conspiracy to dominate gentiles. Such 'conspiracy' theories, some of which are briefly described in Chapter 2, tend to overlook the extent to which different elements of the Jewish community have adopted different and even incompatible strategies vis-à-vis the gentile community (see Chapter 6). Such attributions are readily explicable within a social identity theory of anti-Semitism: outgroup members are conceptualized as having a set of stereotypically uniform negative qualities, and majority group members tend to overestimate the consensus within the minority group (Mullen 1991).

DS: MacDonald: 'Judaism must be understood as exhibiting universal tendencies for self-interest.' Is Judaism unique in this? Do not Christians, Muslims, Hindus and others act in the self-interest of their particular group?

KM: When I said these tendencies were universal I meant them as applying to all humans, not as applying to all actions by Jews; see my first comment, above.

DS: MacDonald: 'Jewish historians engage in an ethnocentric interpretation of history.' What does MacDonald mean by 'Jewish historians?' Any historian born of Jewish parents? Has Professor MacDonald read the works of many or all 'Jewish historians' to be able to make such a sweeping claim? How can he support this generalization when he quotes generously from Peter Novick (a historian born of Jewish parents) who is an outspoken critic of teaching about the Holocaust. He quotes from Noam Chomsky (a Jewish-born scholar) who denounces the activity of the Anti-Defamation League. There are many more examples of Jewish-born academicians whose work refute MacDonald's dubious assertion.

KM: I assume that Prof. Schwartz obtained this quote from my webpage devoted to presenting my reasons for testifying for David Irving where I state that 'Lipstadt is thus part of a pattern discussed extensively in Separation And Its Discontents in which Jewish historians engage in ethnocentric interpretations of history.' I should have said 'some Jewish historians' there. (I have changed this passage.) In the relevant section from Separation And Its Discontents I wrote (p. 217) that these tendencies were not characteristic of all Jewish historians but that examples were quite common. I provide a fairly extensive set of examples based mainly on the comments of other historians, including Jacob Katz and Peter Novick (who are Jewish), Albert Lindemann, and others. For example, Lindemann (1997, ix'x) mentions the impassioned, moralistic rhetoric and simplistic analyses in Robert Wistrich's Anti-Semitism: The Longest Hatred and in the work of Holocaust historians Lucy Dawidowicz and Daniel J. Goldhagen.. I am quite aware that subtle and unconscious biases may color anyone's work and I do not exempt myself from this problem. Issues related to deception and self-deception and issues related to attributional biases in favor of self, relatives, and ingroup certainly do not surprise an evolutionist. (Indeed these tendencies are central to my view of group behavior; See Chaps. 1, 6-8 of Separation and Its Discontents.) As I state on p. 17 of Culture of Critique, 'The truly doubtful proposition for an evolutionist is whether real social science as a disinterested attempt to understand human behavior is at all possible.'

DS: MacDonald: 'Jewish eugenics was conscious in the sense that they believed that people should be very careful about the characteristics of one's mate because they would affect one's children' Are Jews unique in their concern over whom their children choose to marry? Is there such a thing as 'Jewish eugenics'?

KM: Jews are surely not unique in their concern over whom to marry and in fact intelligence seems to be valued as a characteristic of mates in most cultures. What I think is different in traditional Jewish society is the rather massive and clearly articulated cultural support for eugenic practices related to intelligence over long periods of historical time, including the enormous emphasis on mastery of the extremely complex and lengthy Jewish religious writings and the resulting prestige and ability to make good marriages that success in mastering the Jewish religious canon conferred on those who were successful in this endeavor. (This very brief summary cannot do justice to the material on this topic that I have in Chapter 7 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy, pp. 165-214).) Consider the difference with medieval Christian society where scholarship was not particularly valued even among the aristocracy (who were largely illiterate and tended to value military prowess) and where the vast majority of scholars were monks who did not reproduce. At the same time, the Jewish groups in their midst valued scholarship as the summum bonum and Jewish males who distinguished themselves as scholars would be able to make economically advantageous marriages to the daughters of wealthy merchants for whom it was a religious obligation to marry their daughters to scholars. These men would then be given opportunities in business and they would tend to have relatively large families. The argument is that: (1) there is a great deal of evidence that genetic variation influences IQ'here I could cite the entire membership of the Behavior Genetics Association; (2) eugenic marriages are clearly prescribed in canonical Jewish religious writings, particularly the practice of marrying wealth and scholarly ability; (3) Jewish groups, particularly the Ashkenazim, practiced such marriages (religiously, one might say); (4) the wealthy scholar/business class created by this practice had more children over long stretches of historical time; (5) therefore, it reasonable to suppose that eugenic processes are important in understanding contemporary Jewish IQ patterns and the extraordinary levels of Jewish achievement in contemporary societies. (Jewish IQ is at least one standard deviation above the Caucasian average.)

DS: MacDonald: 'Jewish groups have typically existed as recognizably distinct groups and have been unwilling to assimilate ... to the wider society.' Historical evidence renders this statement unsupportable. To be sure, some Jews do prefer to remain among their own within a particular society, but here again, Jews are hardly unique. The prevalence of ethnic neighborhoods (or people of particular racial and ethnic groups socializing on campus) is evidence of this. But there is ample evidence to prove that Jews have often been segregated from the general population not of their choice, but as the result of official government policy. The Pale of Settlement in czarist Russia, the creation of Jewish ghettoes in medieval Europe, forced expulsions in almost every European country, and the requirement of Jews to wear the Star of David in 13th century England stand as examples of imposed segregation.

KM: Nothing in my treatment requires that Jews are unique in the tendency not to assimilate, and in fact several of the groups mentioned above (Hutterites, Romany, Sikhs) have not assimilated overlong stretches of historical time. Nevertheless Jewish non-assimilation has been far stronger than suggested by Prof. Schwartz's comments (See A People That Shall Dwell Alone, pp. 57-110). Among the factors facilitating separation of Jews and gentiles over historical time have been religious practice and beliefs, language and mannerisms, clothing, customs (especially the dietary laws), occupations, and living in physically separated areas which were administered by Jews according to Jewish civil and criminal law. All of these practices can be found at very early stages of the Diaspora, Self-imposed residential segregation in Diaspora communities governed by religious law became a clear policy among the Jews by the middle of the first century B.C. (Hegermann 1989, 158). In traditional European societies, Ashkenazi Jews tended to live in the same neighborhoods, whether in a ghetto imposed by the authorities or in self-chosen segregated neighborhoods near the synagogue (Hundert 1992; Katz 1961). As was the case throughout the Diaspora from ancient times, Jews lived under their own laws derived from the Talmud and organized their own communities. Even when the ghetto was imposed by the gentile authorities, "many rabbis would have liked the walls of the ghetto higher" (Johnson 1987, 238). Any contact at all between Jew and Gentile was more or less deemed a departure from a theoretical ideal: "[H]ad it been practically feasible, complete segregation from the outside world would have been desirable.... The Jewish quarter lived a life of its own in which society-at-large had no part" (Katz 1961, 33). Patai (1971) notes that from the Middle Ages to at least the 19th century there has been a strong trend for linguistic separatism characterized typically by Jews clinging to archaic native languages to which they added Hebrew words (e.g., Ladino, Yiddish, Judeo-Persian, Hebrew-Aramaic-Arabic). The result was that in many areas, such as Poland on the eve of World War I (Lichten 1986), the great majority of Jews could not communicate in the language of the gentiles. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, the Sephardim continued to use a dialect of archaic Spanish (Ladino) in their communities in other parts of the world, so that in the 19th century most Sephardic Jews living in the Turkish Empire could understand neither Turkish or other local languages such as Greek and Romanian. In Morocco, the Sephardic Jews continued to speak a Castilian dialect which differed from Ladino until the 19th century (Patai 1977, 381-383). Again, much the same would apply to the Hutterites, Romany, Sikhs, and other Diaspora peoples.

DS: Professor MacDonald suggests that unwillingness to assimilate has provoke resentment among Gentiles and has invited attacks on Jewish communities which may have been justified. However, after Emancipation, German Jews of the late-19th and early 20th century were almost entirely assimilated into the general society. Most thought of themselves as Germans first and Jews second; they embraced a Reformed version of Judaism which would distance themselves from their more orthodox co-religionists in eastern Europe. A higher percentage of German Jews fought to defend Germany in World War I that the percentage of non-Jewish Germans. And what was the fate of German Jews? Did willingness to be accepted by the general society save them? Hardly.

KM: I have never said that lack of assimilation would lead to 'justified' attacks. As an evolutionary psychologist I am very aware of the naturalistic fallacy. I am not trying to justify or promote anything. My goal is to understand the evolutionary basis of group behavior, including some of its most horrific episodes. Perhaps by understanding their evolutionary roots, we can deal with them intelligently as a society.

I am trying to understand anti-Semitism, and the body of theory that I believe is most relevant to conceptualizing anti-Semitism derives from psychological research on social identity discussed in Chapter 1 of Separation and Its Discontents. Interestingly, social identity theory was pioneered by Henri Tajfel, a Jewish survivor of Nazi concentration camps who regards the group conflict that shaped his own life as having a strong influence on his research interests (see Tajfel 1981, 1-3). Social identity theory proposes that individuals place themselves and others in groups and that the stereotypic behavior and attitudes of the ingroup are positively valued, while outgroup behavior and attitudes are negatively valued. The result of these categorization processes is group behavior that involves discrimination against the outgroup and in favor of the ingroup; beliefs in the superiority of the ingroup and inferiority of the outgroup; and preference for the ingroup and negative attitudes directed toward the outgroup.

Regarding the assimilation of German Jews (see Separation and Its Discontents [Ch. 5]), my interpretation is based on the writings of historians like Jacob Katz:

The predicament of emancipated Jewry, and ultimately the cause of its tragic end, was rooted not in one or another ideology but in the fact that Jewish Emancipation had been tacitly tied to an illusory expectation'the disappearance of the Jewish community of its own volition. When this failed to happen, and the Jews, despite Emancipation and acculturation, continued to be conspicuously evident, a certain uneasiness, not to say a sense of outright scandal, was experienced by Gentiles. ... If gaining civil rights meant an enormous improvement in Jewish prospects, at the same time it carried with it a precariously ill-defined status which was bound to elicit antagonism from the Gentile world. (J. Katz, Misreadings of anti-Semitism. Commentary 76(1), p. 43, 1983).

In addition to a very visible group of Orthodox immigrants from Eastern Europe, Reform Jews generally opposed intermarriage, and secular Jews developed a wide range of institutions that effectively cut them off from socializing with gentiles. 'What secular Jews remained attached to was not easy to define, but neither, for the Jews involved, was it easy to let go of: there were family ties, economic interests, and perhaps above all sentiments and habits of mind which could not be measured and could not be eradicated' (Katz 1996, 33). Moreover, a substantial minority of German Jews, especially in rural areas and in certain geographical regions (especially Bavaria) remained Orthodox well into the 20th century (Lowenstein 1992, 18). Vestiges of traditional separatist practices, such as Yiddish words, continued throughout this period.

This lack of assimilation had not changed by the time the Nazis had come to power, or at least that was their perception. On the basis of social identity theory I suppose that these negative ingroup/outgroup relations created a volatile situation in which exclusionary policies on the part of the Germans would be one likely outcome. I don't suppose that the theory would predict exactly what would happen. Bookman's (1997) recent book on ethnic competition shows that a wide range of strategies have been adopted by ethnic groups in competition, from discrimination to expulsion and genocide. So I am not surprised that exclusion and anti-assimilationist sentiments on the part of Germans occurred, but I don't pretend to be able to predict the exact response. Whatever the realities of the situation were, there were continuing perceptions that Jewish and non-Jewish Germans were different groups with different attitudes and interests (e.g., with respect to German nationalism) and were competing with each other over social status (e.g., access to the professions) and the construction of culture. This situation was undoubtedly exacerbated by the economic and political difficulties of the times.

DS: MacDonald, in reference to attacks on Jews in 4th century Rome, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust: 'Powerful group strategies tend to beget opposing group strategies that in many ways provide a mirror image of the group which they combat.'

Thus MacDonald would have us believe that there is some equivalence between Jewish group strategies (i.e. cohesion, education, group cooperation, limited exogamy) and the vicious, bloody massacres that have been perpetuated against Jews. Indeed, MacDonald takes issue with British historian Richard Evans who wrote that 'Nazi anti-Semitism ...was born out of a political fantasy, in which the Jews, without a shred of justification, were held responsible for all that the Nazis believed was wrong with the modern world.' He labels Evans assertion -- a dogmatic statement that takes the behavior of Jews completely outside of their own history.' Thus MacDonald would have us believe that the behavior of Jews somehow warranted the murder of six million, among them infants, children, women, the elderly. Such a blatant attempt to blame the victim is as transparent as it is malevolent.

KM: I am not at all saying there is any moral equivalence in the strategies adopted, only that collectivist group strategies have certain things in common, including the traits mentioned by Prof. Schwartz. Collectivist cultures (and Triandis [1990, 57] explicitly includes Judaism in this category) place a much greater emphasis on the goals and needs of the ingroup rather than on individual rights and interests. Collectivist cultures develop an 'unquestioned attachment' to the ingroup, including 'the perception that ingroup norms are universally valid (a form of ethnocentrism), automatic obedience to ingroup authorities, and willingness to fight and die for the ingroup. These characteristics are usually associated with distrust of and unwillingness to cooperate with outgroups' (p. 55). I fully expect that groups and individuals will behave selfishly, but that doesn't mean that all selfish actions are morally equivalent. As David Sloan Wilson noted in his reply to Judith Shulevitz in the discussion in the internet journal Slate on my work (see: wilson_comment2.htm ), 'Consider the following two statements: 1) Individual A is justified in destroying individual B because individual B behaved selfishly toward individual A. 2) Group A is justified in destroying group B because group B behaved selfishly toward group A. The first statement is not morally acceptable at the level of individual interactions and the second statement is no more acceptable at the level of group interactions.'

Prof. Schwartz provides a caricature of my comment on Richard Evans. My only point is that Evans' view of anti-Semitism as complete 'fantasy' removes all sense of context and fails to include any role at all for actual Jewish behavior. When Prof. Schwartz leaves out important parts of this passage, it makes it seem as if I believe that 'the behavior of Jews somehow warranted the murder of six million, among them infants, children, women, the elderly. Such a blatant attempt to blame the victim is as transparent as it is malevolent.' My complete statement on Evans was: 'This is not the sort of nuanced treatment of anti-Semitism that one would expect from a prominent historian but rather a dogmatic statement that takes the behavior of Jews completely outside of their own history. There is no attempt to determine the factual basis'the truths, the half-truths and the pure fantasies'that have always been characteristic of anti-Semitism over the ages.' In other words, I am saying that Jewish behavior should be part of the equation in any adequate theory of anti-Semitism but I am also saying that half-truths and fantasies are probably part of the picture as well. I think it would be odd to suppose that in general our beliefs about any individual or group are complete 'fantasies' entirely unrelated to their actual behavior. Would anyone say the same thing about other groups? Are our beliefs about the Ku Klux Klan, or the Sicilian Mafia, or the student protestors of the 1960's nothing but fantasies?

An example of the interplay between legitimate and illegitimate ideas on Jews comes from the opinion of Judge Gray in the recently concluded Irving-Lipstadt trial. Having read the relevant section of his opinion, I agree with Judge Gray that Irving's 'words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turns hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to semitic people, their characteristics and appearances.' It is noteworthy that Judge Gray also stated in his opinion that I have more sympathy for Irving's argument that Jews are not immune from his criticism. He said that he was simply expressing legitimate criticisms of them. Irving gave as an example what he claimed was his justified criticism of the Jews for suppressing his freedom of expression. [KM: The potential chilling effect on academic freedom of suppression of Irving's freedom of expression was why I testified for Irving; see the discussion on my website tooby.html.] Another legitimate ground of criticism might be the manner in which Jews in certain parts of the world appear to exploit the Holocaust. I agree that Jews are as open to criticism as anyone else. But it appears to me that Irving has repeatedly crossed the divide between legitimate criticism and prejudiced vilification of the Jewish race and people. I can well understand too that, because of his perceived views, Irving and his family have from time to time been subjected to extreme pressure, for example when his flat house was besieged by rioters in 1994.... In the heat of the moment ill-considered remarks are often made. But it is in just such circumstances that racial prejudice manifests itself. In my view that is what occurred in 1994.

In other words, Irving's attitude toward Jews was a mixture of legitimate grievances and illegitimate generalizations about Jews as a group. (I was not aware of the latter when I made my statement.) Perhaps he is a textbook case of the social identity theory of anti-Semitism presented in Separation and Its Discontents: a complex interplay between fantasy and reality in which real aspects of actual conflict become exaggerated and over-generalized as a result of psychological mechanisms.

The implication that I believe that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves is completely inaccurate. I claim only to have developed an evolutionarily based theory of group behavior, which I applied to Jewish history as a test case. I do not have a theory of the Nazi Holocaust. (And in passing let me say that I am not a Holocaust revisionist or denier.) In my book, Separation and Its Discontents I argue that perceptions of real conflicts of interest engendered and exacerbated widespread popular anti-Jewish feelings in Germany prior to and during the Nazi era, as they have in many other times and places. These perceptions of conflicts of interest are related complexly to real conflicts of interest. For example, exaggeration and even fantasies may color the situation once the battle lines have been drawn between groups. In any case I am hardly alone in supposing that Jewish behavior'very often Jewish success'must be taken into account in any adequate theory of anti-Semitism. Such beliefs were common among Zionists beginning in the late nineteenth century, and they are also apparent in the work of historians such as Jacob Katz and Albert Lindemann (see Lindemann's Esau's Tears for a particularly compelling account.) My position is that we should not simply assume that every instance of anti-Semitism is completely irrational. (Let me again emphasize that by 'rational' I mean 'predictable' or 'explicable', not 'justified'.) Rather, we should suppose that in general there are indeed real conflicts of interest between groups and that outbreaks of hostility are a complex interplay of fantasy and reality. Anti-Semitism, like hatred directed at other ethnic groups, has taken many different forms from simple dislike to economic boycotts, enforced social ostracism, pogroms, expulsion and genocide. The result is that even after one has the outlines of a theory of anti-Semitism, there remains the task of attempting to understand in detail how it develops in particular areas. For example, Poland and other Eastern European nations did not initiate a Holocaust despite a great deal of anti-Semitism. Like others, I think that to understand specific horrors of the Holocaust one must understand the psychology of the top Nazi leadership, but that is not the subject of my book or my area of expertise.

DS: I am a historian; I have no expertise in evolutionary psychology, but I feel I have a right to comment on MacDonald's work just as he feels he can pass judgments related to history. Some, such as Professor Scott Herschberger, apparently feel that academicians who have not worked in behavioral genetics should not be taken seriously when writing about the works of Kevin MacDonald. Nevertheless, it appears to me that human behavior is extremely complex, and to emphasize genetics as the key to human behavior seems questionable. It is even more doubtful that a study of genetics can explain or predict the behavior of an entire group, much less an individual. If there is something to MacDonald's approach, why does he focus only on Jews as a self-interested group? In his book Separation and Its Discontents, MacDonald defines anti-Semitism as 'negative attitudes or behavior directed at Jews because of their group membership.' If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, ...

KM: I agree with Prof. Schwartz that human behavior is extremely complex.

My view is that genetics is only one aspect of human behavior. As I noted in my reply to Richard Lerner's comments in the Newtimes article (ortega.htm), 'I regard Judaism as mainly a cultural invention that functions as an evolutionary strategy, although I also propose that Judaism is influenced by evolved systems such as ethnocentrism. There is in fact no major distinction between my earlier writings in psychology and my recent writings on Judaism .... I have always emphasized cultural processes and developmental plasticity, as well as the importance of evolved systems and genetic variation.' As discussed extensively in A People That Shall Dwell Alone and elsewhere in my books, cultural processes are absolutely critical in understanding Judaism (e.g., the role of Jewish religious ideology and group control of individual behavior in traditional Jewish society) as well as anti-Semitism (e.g., the role of anti-Semitic ideology and group control of individual behavior in anti-Semitic groups). Again, I have not confined my study of groups to Jews, and my study of Jews is part of a growing literature on groups from an evolutionary perspective.

Finally, I do not have negative attitudes toward Jews because of their group membership. It is massively ironic that Prof. Schwartz chooses to close with the old canard, 'if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, ...'. This quote was used by Senator Joseph McCarthy in his witch hunt against many decent Americans alleged to have been Communists in the 1950's, often with little or no evidence. The context was as follows: 'When McCarthy exclaimed that a thing that 'walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and acts like a duck' it is pretty safe to identify as a duck, Senator Herbert Lehman, New York's elderly Liberal Democrat [who was Jewish at a time when the Jew = Communist stereotype was accepted wisdom in anti-Semitic circles], took exception and demanded whether that meant that McCarthy could tell a Communist by his gait, or that all Communists walked like ducks. Joe replied that his questioner was not stupid, and 'I am afraid that if it is not clear to the senator now, I shall never be able to make it clear to him, no matter how much further explanation I make.' The old man, whose walk indulgent friends likened to a duck's waddle, padded back to his seat, and in this way the time of the Senate was consumed' (Thomas 1973, 110). If it seems to some that I am walking like a duck and talking like a duck, I ask you to at least suspend judgment about whether I am a duck. Indeed, I would suppose that what species I belong to is irrelevant to evaluating my ideas. I may not be a duck at all but just a scholar doing his job by trying as best he can to figure out how to explain the extraordinary phenomena of group behavior, Judaism and anti-Semitism, and other Diaspora peoples.

References:

Bookman, M. Z. (1997). The Demographic Struggle for Power: The Political Economy of Demographic Engineering in the Modern World. London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass.

Hegermann, H. (1989). The Diaspora in the Hellenistic age. In The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 2, ed. W. D. Davies & L. Finkelstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hundert, G. D. (1992). The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatow in the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Johnson, P. (1987). A History of the Jews. New York: Harper & Row.

Katz, J. (1961). Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe.

Katz, J. (1996). Leaving the ghetto. Commentary 101(2):29-34.

Lichten, J. (1986). Notes on the assimilation and acculturation of Jews in Poland, 1863-1943. In The Jews in Poland, ed. C. Abramsky, M. Jachimczyk, & A. Polonsky. London: Basil Blackwell.

Lowenstein, S. M. (1992). The Mechanics of Change: Essays in the Social History of German Jewry. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Mullen, B. (1991). Group composition, salience, and cognitive representations: The phenomenology of being in a group. Journal of Experimental Psychology 27:297-323.

Patai, R. (1971). Tents of Jacob: The Diaspora Yesterday and Today. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Patai, R. (1977). The Jewish Mind. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Tajfel, H. (1981). Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thomas, L. (1973). When Even Angels Wept: The Senator Joe McCarthy Affair'A Story Without a Hero. New York: William Morrow.

Triandis, H. C. (1990). Cross-cultural studies of individualism and collectivism. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 1989: Cross Cultural Perspectives. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Second Reply

Kevin MacDonald replying to several of my critics: I think this exchange is becoming less and less useful and is probably becoming something of a bore to most faculty. I find that I am becoming repetitious, and that is always a bad sign.

Donald Schwartz asks: Do you believe that Jews, or "Jewish behavior" was IN ANY WAY responsible for the Holocaust? [Larry George and Warren Weinstein ask this as well.]

KM: As I have said several times, I do not claim to have a theory of the Holocaust. My general theory is about how groups interact in history, and I think that Jewish behavior is a contributing factor in the general phenomenon of anti-Semitism. But my theory doesn't go any further. It doesn't predict any specific anti-Semitic actions (there have been a wide range of anti-Jewish actions in different times and places), and it certainly doesn't morally justify any act of anti-Semitism. Given that I think Jewish behavior is part of the causal nexus of anti-Semitism and given that the Holocaust is an example of anti-Semitism, there is a sort of logical inference that can be made that I think Jewish behavior contributed to the Holocaust. (I am using the word 'nexus' to mean a network of various separate but interconnected elements or variables.) However, I never meant to say, 'The Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves.' This would seem to imply that actual Jewish behavior was the only relevant factor and invites the further inference that I think that the Holocaust was in some sense morally justified. Again, the best example I can come up with is that child characteristics (e.g., irritability or developmental disability) have been found to be part of the causal nexus of child abuse. This is not the same as saying that abused children brought their abuse on themselves, nor does it morally exculpate parents who abuse. It is saying that child characteristics are part of the causal nexus of child abuse; other variables include parent characteristics (e.g., personality traits like impulsivity or sociopathy, lack of information) and the ecological situation of the family (e.g., high economic stress, lack of social support). In psychology we almost never have really powerful single variables, and it is undoubtedly even more complicated in history.

DS: In your book The Culture of Critique, do you maintain that Jews are in some way responsible for the death of millions in the 20th century because of their Marxist tendencies, and because of their failure to assimilate into European societies?

KM: A plain reading of the statement from The Culture of Critique (p. 318) does not suggest that 'Jews are in some way responsible for the death of millions in the 20th century because of their Marxist tendencies.' Regarding Jewish assimilation, as in my previous answer, I think the behavior of some Jews plays into the exaggerations and fantasies of anti-Semites and is part of a complex causal nexus of the anti-Semitism that pervaded Eastern and Central Europe and is linked with the rise of Nazism. I do not think that Jewish non-assimilation during this period is solely attributable to Jewish behavior; I suppose that Jewish non-assimilation is also facilitated by negative attitudes held by non-Jews, so another part of the causal nexus of anti-Semitism is lingering anti-Jewish attitudes that originated long before the period in question.

The comment that is provoking these questions appears in a fairly speculative section at the end of the book in which I briefly describe the tension between what I view as Western tendencies toward individualism being threatened when a society becomes organized around conflicting and competing ingroups and outgroups. I offer the hypothesis that individualism cannot survive high levels of ingroup/outgroup competition as an empirical proposition based on my reading of some historical examples and my understanding of some psychological mechanisms. I did not intend to baldly say that the failure of Jewish assimilation resulted in millions of deaths, and I will revise the passage in future printings. (And I repeat that Jewish behavior was not the only reason for the failure of Jewish assimilation.) I agree that the passage as it stands it is unacceptable and I thank my critics for bringing it to my attention. Try as one might, one can omit important qualifications and complications in a work of this length and complexity especially when there are time constraints, but if you look at the entire corpus of my work there is no basis for supposing that I would hold such a simplistic view, and I have no hesitations in making the appropriate qualifications. My theory couldn't provide such a deterministic result. As in the specific case of the Holocaust, once one posits that actual Jewish behavior is part the causal nexus of anti-Semitism, then one must also affirm that it is part, but only part, of the causal nexus that gives rise to anti-Semitic movements like Nazism and the Holocaust itself as an extreme form of anti-Semitism.

I think that some of my critics essentially want me to assert that Jewish behavior is utterly irrelevant to anti-Semitism, and I cannot accept that point of view. As I said before in a previous reply to Donald Schwartz: I am hardly alone in supposing that Jewish behavior'very often Jewish success'must be taken into account in any adequate theory of anti-Semitism. Such beliefs were common among Zionists beginning in the late nineteenth century, and they are also apparent in the work of historians such as Jacob Katz and Albert Lindemann (see Lindemann's Esau's Tears for a particularly compelling account.) My position is that we should not simply assume that every instance of anti-Semitism is irrational. (Let me again emphasize that by 'rational' I mean 'based on real conflicts of interest' not 'morally justified'.) Rather, we should suppose that in general there are indeed real conflicts of interest between groups and that outbreaks of hostility are a complex interplay of fantasy and reality. Anti-Semitism, like hatred directed at other ethnic groups, has taken many different forms from simple dislike to economic boycotts, enforced social ostracism, pogroms, expulsion and genocide. The result is that even after one has the outlines of a theory of anti-Semitism, there remains the task of attempting to understand in detail how it develops in particular areas. For example, Poland and other Eastern European nations did not initiate a Holocaust despite a great deal of anti-Semitism. Like others, I think that to understand specific horrors of the Holocaust one must understand the psychology of the top Nazi leadership, but that is not the subject of my book or my area of expertise.

Charles Noble:

CN: 'How, I have wondered, could a serious academic join Irving's side if he/she believed that the Holocaust had actually occurred and that Hitler had planned it. For if someone believes that, then Irving's argument against Lipstadt collapses: rather an effort to suppress the truth, Lipstadt's book is an effort to expose the lies of the Holocaust deniers (Irving included). What is more, sociobiology becomes irrelevant: you do not need a sociobological theory of Jewish intellectualism or a conspiratorial account of Jewish efforts to suppress the truth to explain the attempt by Lipstadt to remind the world that the Holocaust actually did occur. All you would need to believe is that she cared about the truth, even if it is a truth that interests her as a Jew. Indeed, we would hope that all people would be concerned with the truth, but, at a minimum, we would not need a complex, Darwinian account of history to explain why Jews might find efforts to deny the Holocaust troubling and even threatening. Conversely, MacDonald's testimony on behalf of Irving only makes sense to me if, like Irving, you think Lipstadt's efforts are not motivated by the effort to expose the truth of the Holocaust against Irving's denial. Only then does her "calumny" of Irving require explanation. Then you might find MacDonald's account of Jewish efforts to suppress criticism interesting and useful. But that would imply that you agreed with Irving about the Holocaust, or at least suspected that he might be right.

KM: As I have said before, the truth of the Holocaust was not the critical issue for me. I have never doubted it. The issue was how St. Martin's Press came to rescind publication of Goebbels. The suppression of Irving's book was a case of a publisher caving into pressure from an activist group. Again, one can agree with the goals of a group without agreeing with the tactics, and in this case I think the tactics of the ADL and Lipstadt's endorsement of those tactics raise serious questions. Remember, until Richard Evans and his team of researchers produced an 800-page document that probed deeply into Irving's writings, checked his documentary sources, etc., there was no reason to suppose that Irving had falsified anything. Certainly Lipstadt did not provide proof in her book Denying the Holocaust, and that is probably why Irving thought he could win. Remember also that several prominent historians who are not Holocaust deniers (e.g., John Keegan) have endorsed some aspects of Irving's work and continue to defend him since the trial while at the same time distancing themselves from several of his views (most notably with respect to Hitler's culpability for the Holocaust). The same can be said for Judge Gray who acknowledges Irving's competence as a historian while at the same time being extremely critical of Irving's writing on issues related to Hitler's culpability. (I append the relevant section from Judge Gray's opinion.) I take some solace in knowing that the issues that motivated me to testify (at least at a conscious intellectual level--there may be some self-deception here), were ratified by the judge's opinion. Judge Gray acknowledged that there was a campaign by certain Jewish activist organizations to suppress Irving's freedom of expression--a campaign that Lipstadt endorsed, and he implicitly acknowledged that Lipstadt had gone too far in saying that no historian takes Irving seriously and that he is no historian at all.

Larry George:

LG: I must say that I simply find it astonishing that someone who has obviously spent most of his scholarly life over at least the past decade on developing the sort of theory about antisemitism that Prof. MacDonald has, and who has apparently reviewed virtually all of the history of the Jewish diaspora, encompassing a period of over 2000 years, has somehow managed to avoid learning enough about the 12 years of the Holocaust that he can remain "agnostic" about it. This is particularly inexplicable since Prof. MacDonald seems to have mastered a wide body of scholarship about Holocaust scholarship, but somehow without actually learning much at all about the Holocaust itself!

KM: Again, the details of particular anti-Semitic actions (e.g., how many died, how they died, exactly how it happened) were not relevant to any theoretical issue that I was concerned with. Similarly, I didn't read much on the conduct of the Inquisition--what tortures were applied, how many Jews and Conversos died, etc. I was far more interested in the events that led up to the rise of a Nazi government in Germany and the Inquisition in Spain than I was in later events. However, the means by which the Holocaust has become central to such issues as maintaining Jewish identity in assimilative Western societies, supporting Israel, and combating anti-Semitism, etc. are very relevant to issues raised in Separation and Its Discontents where I talk about sources of Jewish identity and tactics to combat anti-Semitism. As it happens, Peter Novick's book came out too late to include in my work, but there were already several (Jewish) sources that discussed these issues available to me for use in my work. The value of Novick's work is not really its originality but his extensive documentation.

LG: But the most disturbing evasion in his reply is his refusal even to address my point #8, having to do with whether Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were ultimately responsible for the Holocaust (and by implication whether the Jews bear any responsibility for it).

KM: Point #8 was 'That the deaths of these Jews is SOLELY [my emphasis] the responsibility of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi government.' I thought I did respond by reiterating Barry Dank's problem with it: I said that if I had written such a statement people would say 'that I did not apportion enough blame to the Vatican or Eastern European collaborators or the Roosevelt Administration....' In other words, I agree with the statement as amended in Larry George's reply to Barry Dank.

Donald Schwartz:

DS: In his last correspondence with George, MacDonald cites Peter Novick, a historian who sees cynical motives in teaching about the Holocaust. But Novick presents an OPINION about why the Holocaust has attracted interest in recent years. And his OPINION has been challenged by many others. I have been teaching a course on the Holocaust at CSULB since 1996, and each time the course has been fully enrolled. Most of the students in the classes are not Jewish. Those interested in this topic are not taking my class to support the interests of Israel. Rather, they are interested in the Holocaust because they see the episode as a human catastrophe, and they want to explore the reasons why such a vast evil could happen in the modern world.

KM: The point I was making was that a great deal of Holocaust scholarship has become politicized. I see nothing here to suppose that I am wrong about this. (See below.) The validity of Novick's ideas is independent of why students take your course.

Warren Weinstein:

WW (quoting me): The Holocaust was originally promoted by Jewish organizations to rally support for Israel following the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars. As the threat to Israel subsided, the Holocaust was promoted as the main source of Jewish identity and in the effort to combat assimilation and intermarriage among Jews. During this period, the Holocaust was also promoted among gentiles as an antidote to anti-Semitism, and that effort has expanded greatly in recent years.

What is not clear from MacDonald's message is if this is Novick speaking or MacDonald speaking. And if it is Novick, are we not correct to assume that MacDonald is in agreement?

KM: The ideas are from Peter Novick. I cited Novick and presented his views because I think it is important to realize that the Holocaust and Holocaust scholarship have become highly politicized. (The politicization of the Holocaust discussed by Novick results from internal Jewish politics and is completely independent of the revisionist/denial movement which in my view is simply an anti-Semitic movement). The themes Novick discusses have taken on a life of their own; the truth of what he says is quite independent of the reality and details of the Holocaust. (Again, please do not interpret this as implying that I doubt the standard version of the Holocaust. Novick does not discuss claims about the truth of the Holocaust. Like me, he simply assumes it's true.) Having read Novick's book and being somewhat familiar with many of his sources because, as indicated above, I had already discussed several of the topics discussed in Novick's book in Separation and Its Discontents, and realizing that Novick has a good reputation as a historian, I feel comfortable citing him. It seems to me obvious that the truth of the Holocaust itself can't explain the historical changes in how the Holocaust is perceived and historical changes in its importance as a social phenomenon. An adequate understanding has to explain why the movement for Holocaust education and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are a product of the 1980's and 1990's, not the 1950's or 1960's.

WW: But who would not defend his interests? You claim that Eastern European Jews have an elevated intelligence and that education is a strong value in Jewish communities. IS THERE ANY ONE OF YOUR SUPPOSED CONCLUSIONS WHICH CANNOT EQUALLY WELL BE DEDUCED FROM A CONSCIOUS APPLICATION OF INTELLIGENCE AND A COMMITMENT TO EDUCATION? (Perhaps the genetic effects, if there are any, are an unplanned outcome of a dedication to intelligence and education, rather than intelligence being the outcome of a surreptitious commitment to a breeding program?)

KM: I never say that intelligence is 'the outcome of a surreptitious commitment to a breeding program.' Again, the argument is: The argument is that (1) there is genetic variation for IQ; (2) eugenic marriages are clearly prescribed in canonical Jewish religious writings, particularly the practice of marrying wealth and scholarly ability; (3) Jewish groups, particularly the Ashkenazim, practiced such marriages (religiously, one might say); (4) the wealthy scholar/business class created by this practice had more children over long stretches of historical time; (5) therefore, it reasonable to suppose that eugenic processes are important in understanding contemporary Jewish IQ patterns and the extraordinary levels of Jewish achievement in contemporary societies. High intelligence and achievement motivation, whatever their sources, are effective resources for promoting interests, including very justified ones. Behavior geneticists do not propose a rigid nature/nurture dichotomy but rather show that people's genetic endowment influences what environments they seek out and what environments parents provide for their children, and it influences what environments children elicit from parents--the field of genotype-environment correlation.

WW: If I, as a Jew, challenge your opinions and science, am I necessarily acting from unconscious motives determined by my genetic makeup?

KM: I think we all have to question our motives, including me (see below). If the question is whether it is possible for Jews to write about Jews in an unbiased way, I think it is possible and, indeed, the vast majority of my references are to Jewish historians and intellectuals who have done just that. But I do think that ethnic biases are commonplace and unsurprising, as are socioeconomic class interests. If you want to prove me wrong, you have to read Chapter 7 of Separation and Its Discontents or read about the intellectual movements I discuss in The Culture of Critique and challenge individual cases.

WW: Is it only Jews who have unconscious motives? What about scientists? How are we to be sure that it is not you who have used "scientific analysis" to justify and promote your own possibly unconscious prejudices about Jews?

KM: As I have said before, I am quite aware that subtle and unconscious biases may color anyone's work and I do not exempt myself from this problem. Issues related to deception and self-deception and issues related to attributional biases in favor of self, relatives, and ingroup certainly do not surprise an evolutionist. I think that all we can do is try to be honest and hope that in the long run truth and rationality will triumph. Peer review and outside criticism are the best ways to keep us all as honest as possible.

APPENDIX: EXCERPT FROM JUDGE GRAY'S OPINION ON IRVING AS A HISTORIAN:

"As a military historian, Irving has much to commend him. For his works of military history Irving has undertaken thorough and painstaking research into the archives. He has discovered and disclosed to historians and others many documents which, but for his efforts, might have remained unnoticed for years. It was plain from the way in which he conducted his case and dealt with a sustained and penetrating cross-examination that his knowledge of World War 2 is unparalleled. His mastery of the detail of the historical documents is remarkable. He is beyond question able and intelligent. He was invariably quick to spot the significance of documents which he had not previously seen. Moreover he writes his military history in a clear and vivid style. I accept the favourable assessment by Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan of the calibre of Irving's military history ... and reject as too sweeping the negative assessment of Evans .... [Evans had stated that Irving has had "a generally low reputation amongst professional historians since the end of the 1980s and at all times amongst those who have direct experience of researching in the areas with which he concerns himself"; although not noted by the judge, Evans also reiterated Lipstadt's charge that Irving was no historian at all.] But the questions to which this action has given rise do not relate to the quality of Irving's military history but rather to the manner in which he has written about the attitude adopted by Hitler towards the Jews and in particular his responsibility for the fate which befell them under the Nazi regime.'

Third Reply

Kevin MacDonald responding to Al Spangler, Pamela Roberts, and Larry George's post of May 11.

Before getting into the intellectual issues, however, I sometimes think that this debate is not really about what I think at a theoretical or scientific level. It is really about moral issues, and I think I have not been very good at addressing that. I just want to say categorically that I am not an anti-Semite nor am I a Holocaust revisionist or denier. As I said in my last post, I take some solace from the outcome of the case because the judge upheld both the issues that motivated me to testify (freedom of expression and Irving's general ability as a historian). However, I should also say that the other findings by the judge make it uncomfortable to say the least to be identified with Irving in any way, and if I had known about all of this, my decision to testify would have been even more difficult. I refer specifically to the findings of anti-Semitism, the findings of falsification and general malfeasance intended to exculpate Hitler, and Irving's associations with extremist organizations. I knew going in that, despite Irving's personal assurances to the contrary, he did in fact associate with the political far right and has pandered to the many right-wing groups that he addressed. In other words, I had questions about his character, so I probably should have figured that the other charges would be true. Also, when I read the Evans document, I felt that it was very unlikely Irving could win if for no other reason than that the charges of falsification were so numerous and so detailed. But Irving assured me he could deal with them, and he provided some arguments to back himself up. So I went ahead with it. I still think it's a tough decision. As academics we should bend over backwards to ensure freedom of expression, and standing up for freedom of expression does not mean I endorse ANY of Irving's views.

Al Spangler: Was it Jewish success that (partially) caused anti-Semitism or the reaction to Jewish success. In order to block any bad inferences from explanation to justification, and from "being a partial cause" to "being partly responsible for," I believe we should say it is the reaction to success and not to the success itself.

KM: I agree that it is perceptions of Jewish behavior that are critical. On p. 9 of Separation and Its Discontents I say the following in a discussion of the role of resource competition in anti-Semitism: 'anti-Semitism arises when there are perceived conflicts of interest between the Jewish community (or segments of it) and the gentile community (or segments of it).' And I agree that explanation is not the same as justification. As I said with respect to my child abuse analogy in my previous post, to say that child characteristics is part of a causal nexus 'is not the same as saying that abused children brought their abuse on themselves, nor does it morally exculpate parents who abuse.'

Larry George

LG: (I)f you were going to set out to improve the average smartness of your community, you wouldn't do it by 'breeding' smart boys with rich girls. You'd breed 'smart' boys with 'smart' girls. Breeding smart boys with rich girls only gets you an f-2 generation of half-rich halfwits. Selective breeding to reinforce -- not dilute -- desirable traits is, after all, how you get Holstein cows and Chandler strawberries, for better or worse.

KM: On the contrary, I think it's a great strategy. All of the studies on IQ in contemporary populations link IQ with socioeconomic status. This is a major theme of The Bell Curve, but there are hundreds of other studies showing the same thing. In other words the rich girls, on average, are above the population mean in intelligence. In the vast majority of traditional societies the opportunity for women to participate in high-status occupations was limited at best, so a father's socioeconomic status would, on average, be the best proxy for female IQ and other desirable traits. All of these genetic tendencies would be reinforced by the Jewish cultural environment which prized education and economic achievement. Moreover, these girls would come from families that would not only provide genes for IQ but also provide a rich dowry, business opportunities, and a good chance for above-average wealth which in all traditional societies is linked with reproductive success. In Ch. 7 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone I summarize data showing that wealthy Jews out-reproduced poorer Jews into modern times (see also below). Plus, from a genetic point of view, there may be other traits besides intelligence that are linked with the accumulation of wealth--God knows that we faculty aren't exactly getting rich doing what we're doing although we are well above the population average in IQ. So if you only breed smart with smart, you miss out on both the genetic (possibly genes predisposing people to the accumulation of wealth) and phenotypic (a nice dowry and economic opportunities made possible by family connections) associations with wealth.

LG: Then there's the other obvious deficiency with male-focussed sexual selection theory that's been pointed out recently by some feminist sociobiologists. Turns out that even where the boys (including male tribal elders) think they're controlling the 'breeding' process, the girls turn out to be much cleverer than they're given credit for....

KM: Arranged marriages were the rule in Jewish communities far longer than among non-Jews in Western societies--at least until after World War I--because economic reasons were viewed as outweighing the importance of romance (Hyman 1989). Nevertheless, despite the lack of romance as the basis of marriage, the high level of family life and commitment to children became a rallying point for those attempting to defend Judaism from the criticisms of Enlightenment intellectuals: 'In an age that held up so many aspects of Jewish experience to criticism or ridicule, they could point to traditional Jewish family life as a model of noble domestic behavior and thereby rehabilitate both Judaism and the Jews. Often they trumpeted the superiority of the Jewish family to that of the surrounding population' (Hyman 1989, 186). (P.E. Hyman. (1989). The modern Jewish family: Image and reality. In THE JEWISH FAMILY, ed. D. Kraemer. New York: Oxford University Press.) Part of the image of Jewish family life was that there were low levels of adultery and divorce; at least the last was undoubtedly true and I suspect the former as well. However, the recent population genetic data that I posted awhile ago indicates that about 1 in 200 matings within the Jewish community per generation was with a non-Jew. Since there is really no evidence of conversions and intermarriage during any era except perhaps during the ancient Roman Empire (and this is deeply doubtful), I suppose that these matings were mostly illicit--either involving affairs engaged in by Jewish women or rape of Jewish women. Both of these circumstances would involve female strategizing, as expected by an evolutionist--i.e., the woman would have an interest in raising the child within the Jewish community. I discuss these topics in Chapter 2 of A People That Shall Dwell Alone:

LG: Such suspicion should be reinforced when we consider that even if the tribal elders were in fact actively conducting such a peculiar, and misconceived, eugenic experiment, that the results of the sorts of breeding practices that MacDonald hypothesizes would in any case affect only a very small, and most importantly, over time shrinking percentage of the Jewish population....

KM: Because wealth is positively correlated with reproductive success, the expectation is that the trait would increase in the population. The dysgenic correlation between wealth and IQ appears in the 19th century, but prior to that wealth was correlated with reproductive success. For example, Vogel and Motulsky (1986, 609) note that in mid-18th-century Poland prominent Jews had 4-9 surviving children, while poorer Jewish families had 1.2-2.4 surviving children (Vogel, F., & A. G. Motulsky (1986). HUMAN GENETICS: PROBLEMS AND APPROACHES. 2nd ed. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.) There are similar data for non-Jewish populations. Contemporary Jewish populations may be losing IQ points on average because these patterns have been reversed, but there are countervailing forces. I discuss findings indicating that defections from Judaism have always tended to come from the less successful and this continues to be the case; also, the Flynn effect in which IQ scores are rising for everyone (for unknown reasons) would militate against a lowering average Jewish IQ in contemporary societies.

LG: (I)t's important to point out that while antisemitism was widespread throughout the diaspora, its degree and intensity were everywhere much more a function of the political condition and status of Jews in a particular region than anything else. (Yes, I will confess to being largely a political determinist -- its an occupational hazard where I come from). Jews were persecuted as much in areas where their supposedly greater intelligence conferred no evident social, economic, or other advantages, as in regions where brains counted for more -- indeed more so in the former than in the latter.

KM: I don't know exactly what you mean by saying that the 'degree and intensity [of anti-Semitism] were everywhere much more a function of the political condition and status of Jews in a particular region than anything else.' Please explicate this. I agree that issues related to economic and political competition are only part of the story. Another common theme of anti-Semitism beginning in ancient times has simply been Jewish separateness.

LG: I also gotta say that I just don't buy the idea that the presence of an apparently smarter, more successful population somehow 'biologically' results in intensified intergroup hostility. Indeed the arena in which probably everyone reading this posting spends their professional time ' the American academy -- provides a familiar counterexample to disconfirm the MacDonald hypothesis....

KM: I can't say that I have ever heard any anti-Jewish comments by faculty at this university or any other, but I have run into several non-Jewish philosemites--people who really admire Jews and everything about Jewishness here and elsewhere. Academic anti-Semitism was noted in U.S. universities until after World War II, as was anti-Semitism in other social strata, but anti-Semitism has never reached the levels here that it has elsewhere. A theory that proposes that certain evolved psychological mechanisms are important need not deny the importance of context because in fact evolved psychological mechanisms tend to be highly sensitive to context. For example, perceived resource competition tends to exacerbate negative attitudes directed against outgroups. Lindemann (THE JEW ACCUSED: THREE ANTI-SEMITIC AFFAIRS (DREYFUS, BEILIS, FRANK) 1894-1915. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. P. 273) notes the following features of the United States that have militated against anti-Semitism: the low number of Jews; the fact that the great majority of American Jews were not members of the Orthodox or Hasidic sects, which emphasize external signs of separatism; the fact that America already had successful, educated middle classes, professionals, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs who were not personally threatened by the rise of the Jews, so that between-group resource competition was of lessened importance; and a tradition of political and religious tolerance deriving from the European Enlightenment, and particularly Britain. As I discuss in A People That Shall Dwell Alone, all of these features would tend to ameliorate anti-Semitism given my proposals on the psychological mechanisms involved. I don't think these traits of U.S. Jews and the U.S. environment are sufficient to explain the steep decline in American anti-Semitism after World War II; at least some of that decline is probably the result of the efforts of Jewish organizations described in Svonkin's JEWS AGAINST PREJUDICE: AMERICAN JEWS AND THE FIGHT FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). In any case, the point is that evolved mechanisms are sensitive to context.

LG: (I)if we accept, provisionally at least, his major premise -- that Jews as a whole are on average smarter than average -- then we'd be just as justified in concluding that as with the 'Jewish' General and Special Theories of Relativity, Jews involved in these intellectual and political movements were, arguably, actually on the right track, even if some of their conclusions have turned out to be wrong.

KM: I don't think high IQ always leads to better scientific theories, especially not when people approach the scientific enterprise with an ethnic or moral agenda. Whether a particular scientist has an ethnic agenda is a purely empirical matter which can be discovered by looking at his/her statements, letters, the statements of colleagues, etc. In the case of Einstein, there is no evidence of ethnic involvement-- ethnic identification and pursuit of ethnic interests were not important to the content of the theories or to the conduct of the intellectual movement. This conclusion remains true even though Einstein was a strongly motivated Zionist (Fölsing, A. (1997/1993). ALBERT EINSTEIN. Penguin, New York, pp. 494-505), opposed assimilation as a contemptible form of 'mimicry' (p. 490) and preferred to mix with other Jews whom he referred to as his 'tribal companions' (p. 489). Reviewing his life at age 73, Einstein declared his ethnic affiliation in no uncertain terms: '[M]y relationship with Jewry had become my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious position among the nations' (in Fölsing 1997; p. 488). In other words, the issue of the ethnic identification and even ethnic activism on the part of people like Einstein is entirely separate from the issue of whether such people viewed the content of the theories themselves as furthering ethnic interests, and there is no evidence that he did so. Ethnic bias and activism were, however, a strong motivation among those self-identified German scientists like Philipp von Lenard (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1905) who argued against relativistic physics as 'un-German'.

Pamela Roberts

PR: For those of us who vehemently disagree with Kevin's theories there also is another task--to create more interesting and compelling stories than the ones he has set forth.

KM: This has a very political ring to it, as does the rest of her message. The suggestion seems to be that when one approaches science one starts with a gut feeling. I suppose that typically this gut feeling is either a strongly held moral attitude, but quite often it is just plain old ethnocentrism. One then develops 'interesting and compelling theories' to justify the gut feeling to one's colleagues. In the real world, this usually occurs with the aid of similar-minded others who collectively attempt to control the academic journals and prestigious institutions. One then impugns the qualifications of persons with whom one disagrees, as Roberts does in her post (saying, 'Kevin has no degree in psychology') without providing any detailed criticisms of my ideas that I can respond to.

I think there has been all too much of this sort thing in the social sciences. (By the way, I don't write on polygyny; my writing in the area of marriage is on psychological mechanisms predisposing people toward monogamy [published in the journal, CHILD DEVELOPMENT--a mainstream psychology journal if ever there was one] and the historical development of monogamy in Western European societies.) Roberts confirms my statement in The Culture of Critique that 'The truly doubtful proposition for an evolutionist is whether real social science as a disinterested attempt to understand human behavior is at all possible.' In any case, I think it is a great idea to develop a more interesting and compelling theory of the things I write about, like anti-Semitism. Hold it up for public scrutiny and see what happens. That's what it's all about.

I do agree with Roberts that there is no point in having a forum on these issues, at least not in the near future. In fact I hope that we can all just stop talking about it for awhile and finish up the semester. Maybe in the Fall we can do all of this a little more civilly and intelligently.

Fourth Reply: Response to Warren Weinstein and others, May 29, 2000

Re the posts of Larry George and Lisa Garcia Bedolla: I do not want to get into a debate on IQ on this list because I rather doubt that I could persuade anyone on this topic which remains contentious in social science generally, but not among psychometricians or behavior geneticists. My own views have been much shaped by people like Arthur Jensen, whose recent The g Factor (Praeger, 1998) is a compendium of the research on intelligence from the psychometric perspective. It discusses the issue of whether IQ tests are culturally biased, the heritability of IQ, teasing apart IQ and social class, and much else.

Re Warren Weinstein

WW writes 'I believe the book reflects a framework of belief which is not falsifiable, in other words, a faith', and then he tries to falsify what I wrote. Because I do think what I have written is an attempt at a scientific theory of Judaism, I completely accept this attempt at falsification as entirely appropriate. The most important complaint that Weinstein makes is whether my analysis loses sight of the religion of the Israelites when I discuss their preoccupation with marrying within the group. I think that it is difficult for people in the humanities to get into an evolutionary framework--that religious ideology can, whether consciously or not, act as a program for pursuing evolutionary goals. I don't think that this is always the case, but I think that in this case it is very difficult to read the Tanakh without noticing all the rhetoric against exogamy and considering its long term effects. WW leaves out many of the other passages that I use to bolster my case. The following passage from Deuteronomy on the treatment to be given the conquered peoples does indeed mix concerns with intermarriage with concerns about religion, but I must confess that the concerns seem less than spiritual, and in any case the proposal that people should be killed to prevent intermarriage because in the long run the effect might be to lead people to worship other gods seems a bit much. Why not convert them to worship your God?

And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For he will turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and He will destroy thee quickly. But thus shall ye deal with them: ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art a holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be His own treasure, out of all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. (Deut. 7:2-6)

I also stressed the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah as indicating an abhorrence of exogamy, and these passages are even clearer in their intent. These books recount events and attitudes in the early post-exilic period. The officials are said to complain that "the people of Israel, and the priests and the Levites, have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, doing according to their abominations.... For they have taken of their daughters for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the peoples of the lands" (Ezra 9:2). This sounds much more like concern about mixing one's seed, not a concern about religious purity. As I note at the end of the section on Ezra and Nehemiah, 'After all, if doubts about religious practice had been the sole issue, it would have been easy to accept any individuals from any tribe (certainly including the non-exiled Israelites) into the cult if only they agreed to participate appropriately in the cult. One wonders why Ezra was so intent on forcing Israelites to abandon their alien wives and racially impure children if the only blemish on these individuals was cultic. Participation in cultic rituals without ethnic commonality is the basis for the ideology that conversion to Judaism would be possible at any stage in history.'

WW's comments thus fail to give a flavor of my entire argument. It should be stressed that an evolutionary perspective is not restricted to privileging the subjective interpretations of the people being analyzed. If a part of religious belief is to 'be fruitful and multiply' or if it raises polygyny to a religious virtue (e.g., Mormonism), I see no reason why an evolutionist shouldn't note that the religious ideology rationalizes adaptive behavior for men. Similarly, if a people fears that exogamy will offend God because it will cause people to worship other gods, I see no reason why I shouldn't see it as a religious ideology that favors the evolutionary goal of endogamy. Moreover, it is not necessary for believers in any religious creed to understand that their religiously sanctioned actions have genetic consequences.

John Hartung is a Harvard Ph.D. in anthropology who decided to edit a journal in the field of anesthesiology while nevertheless continuing his writings in anthroppology. He has written an important article on the ingroup/outgroup morality that he finds in Jewish religious writings. WW chooses to make ad hominen and guilt-by-association attacks rather than deal with his research. Where I would prefer the word 'colleague', WW uses 'fellow traveler'.

Regarding my interpretation of Numbers 5, the passage makes it clear that the woman is to drink a fluid that brings on menstruation. As indicated in A People That Shall Dwell Alone, for quotations from the Tanakh I used The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America (1955), an authoritative Jewish translation. I don't have that with me now, but I do have a Christian translation of the King James Bible, the Revised Standard Version which was revised in 1946-1952, which has been the basic test for Anglo-American Christianity for both the Old and the New Testaments. This version gives a very different translation than the one given by Weinstein. After saying the suspected woman must drink the menstruation inducing substance it says that if she is guilty her leg and thigh will fall away, 'But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children' (Num. 5:28). The obvious interpretation here is that if innocent she will be induced to menstruate, thus terminating any current conceptions, but will be allowed to have children in the future. The translation used by Weinstein implies that she would be allowed to continue the current pregnancy: 'But if the woman has not let herself become defiled and is pure, then her innocence is established and she will bear her child.' All I am trying to say here is that my interpretation was based on a good-faith reading of the passage. Obviously the translation I used is much more compatible with my interpretation, but I was unaware of the translation used by Weinstein. (I only used The New English Bible for the Apocrypha and didn't recheck all of the quotations to see if they were in agreement with the Jewish translation.) Perhaps people in the Religious Studies Department could settle the question. In fact as I reread the passage, it is quite clear that the substance drunk by the woman is intended to bring on menstruation in any case.

Regarding my statement that "For the Israelites, there was really only one purpose for God -- to represent the idea of kinship, ingroup membership, and separateness from others": By failing to provide the context WW implies that I have no warrant for this statement. In fact the statement appears at the end of a section supporting these points.

I stand by my characterization of Raphael Patai as an apologist; I discuss this aspect of his work, particularly his book, The Myth of the Jewish Race, in Separation and Its Discontents. This doesn't meant that I don't trust a lot of what he says in his other books, and even that book had some interesting tidbits. Nor does it mean all Jewish social scientists have ethnic agendas. See The Culture of Critique.

Re Orthodox Jews and the timing of sexual intercourse, I am simply reporting what Harlap finds. If you think it absurd that people could time intercourse in such a way as to promote male babies, I suggest you take it up with him. However they do it, it seems to work.

Finally, I can't continue to respond to messages at least until late in the summer. I apologize for this, but I have to prepare several presentations for academic conferences and simply don't have the time right now. Perhaps we can all benefit from a cooling off period anyway.