Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
CSULB, Department of Psychology
 Debates |
Slate: Police Thyself!
Judith Shulevitz''s article, "Evolutionary Psychology''s Anti-Semite," is so outrageous a piece of yellow journalism that I am surprised that a prominent magazine like Slate would run it. It bears about as much resemblance to what I've written as a creationist tract attacking evolution bears to Darwin's Origin of Species. It is so outrageous one almost yearns for British laws on libel so that I could force her to provide evidence for her false claims that I am "evolutionary psychology's anti-Semite" and that my ideas about Jews "represent the broadest, ugliest, and most vicious anti-Semitism passing for scholarship in this country today." Some of her statements are simply overly general, others simply false, while others are incomplete or take my thoughts entirely out of context. In general Shulevitz fails to even once indicate that I have adduced a great deal of evidence for my claims and that I have developed a fairly elaborate theory based on evolutionary biology and evolutionary social psychology. In the following I will intersperse my responses (in italics) with her mischaracterizations.
Shulevitz: MacDonald''s central thesis is that Judaism is best understood not as a religion but as a blueprint for an experiment in eugenics'a "group evolutionary strategy," he calls it'designed to maximize a single trait: intelligence.
Based on a great deal of evidence, I argue that Judaism developed a conscious program of eugenics to improve scholarly ability (but not only scholarly ability), with the result that Ashkenazi Jewish IQ is at least one standard deviation above the white mean. This was not the only trait that was selected for.
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. They were especially keen on the importance of marrying men who were scholars. The following is from the Talmud: a man should sell all he possesses in order to marry the daughter of a scholar, or marry his daughter to a scholar or other man of character, because he may then rest assured that his children will be scholars; but marriage to an ignoramus will result in ignorant children. (b. Pesachim, 49a)
This is a paragraph from a people that shall dwell alone: Judaism as a group strategy: the authors of the Talmud, like the other ancients, believed that heredity made an important contribution to individual differences in a wide variety of traits, including physical traits (e.g., height), personality (but not moral character), and, as indicated by the above quotations from the Talmud, scholarly ability. "Every care was taken to prevent the birth of undesirables by a process of selective mating" (p. 32). Individuals contemplating marriage are enjoined to attend to the family history of the future spouse: "a girl with a good pedigree, even if she be poor and an orphan, is worthy to become wife of a king" (Midrash num. R.i, 5). A prospective wife should be scrutinized for the presence in her family of diseases believed to be inherited (e.g., epilepsy), and also the character of her brothers should be examined, suggesting an awareness of the importance of sex-linked factors.Physical appearance was not to be a critical resource for a woman: "for 'false is grace and beauty is vain.' Pay regard to good breeding, for the object of marriage is to have children" (Taanith 26b and 31a). There is every evidence that in fact the Jews followed these rules quite closely, particularly the practice of wealthy men finding scholars as husbands for their daughters.
Shulevitz: For thousands of years, he says [actually, since the beginning of the Diaspora'about 2000 years], Jews have separated themselves from their neighbors, choosing to confine themselves to a closed society with strict rules against marrying outside the group. They have lived by policies of extreme group loyalty and obedience to rabbinical authority, which served to maintain their racial purity; and they practiced low-birth-rate [oftentimes Jewish birth rate has been quite high), high-investment parenting, which is the royal road to a high group I.Q. They conferred social status (which brings along with it the most desirable women) on men according to their brilliance'indeed, says MacDonald, study of the Talmud was nothing more than a casuistic exercise meant to weed out the dim. [Nonsense; that was one effect, but the Talmud also served as a legal code and much more. The less intelligent were not literally weeded out, but the intelligent were able to enter into better marriages and have more children; over time, this raised the mean Jewish IQ.] Eventually, their highly developed genes for mental and verbal acuity, as well as their social aggression (also carefully bred-in) [I never make such a claim], gave the Jews powerful tools that enable them to dominate neighboring ethnic groups in the endless war of all against all for food and resources. [At certain times and places they have dominated, but surely not always; I never talk about food.]
In his second book, MacDonald explains why Jews have encountered so much anti-Semitism for so many years: It was justified. [Such a statement has moral connotations that are completely inappropriate to my analysis.] Gentiles reacted to Jews the way any group of animals on the veldt would when confronted with a group of superior animals likely to challenge them successfully for control of the available resources'they tried to destroy the Jews before the Jews destroyed them. [This is an extremely crude rendering. My thesis is based on the mainstream view that part of our evolved psychology involves mechanisms designed to deal with between-group competition. However, I take pains to emphasize that human intelligence and our ability to monitor the behavior of other group members make us quite unlike other animals in several important ways. See Chapter 1 of A People that Shall Dwell Alone.] Even the most extreme forms of anti-Semitism, such as Nazism, can be seen not as aberrations but as "a mirror image" of Judaism, with its emphasis on creating a master race [I describe several ways in which Nazism was a mirror image of Judaism, including a powerful concern with socializing group members into accepting group goals and with the importance of within-group cooperation in attaining these goals. However, I also describe some differences.]
Shulevitz: MacDonald does not deny that the Holocaust occurred, but he appears to think it was rooted in an immutable biological chain reaction that the Jews set off. [My theory emphasizes indeterminism and chance events that have major effects on history. I do not claim to have a theory of the Holocaust, only a theory of the general outlines of group competition with specific reference to anti-Semitism. A theory of the Holocaust would require a detailed understanding of the psychology of the major players (Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels) and their underlings who carried out their orders, their opportunities and constraints. I certainly do not have such a theory.] Faced with the hatred of gentiles, Jews have often resorted to a "strategy of crypsis"'that is, they have pretended not to be Jews. [Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Jewish history would have to agree that Jewish crypsis is well attested in several times and places. This practice is very understandable given the prevalence of anti-Semitism. I describe a great many examples of crypsis and other strategies by which Jews have attempted to combat anti-Semitism in Chapter 6 of Separation and Its Discontents.] Do the Jews themselves realize what they're up to? MacDonald goes back and forth on this point; one moment he'll chastise Jews for believing their own religious rationalizations, the next he'll explain that they can't help it'they're genetically "prone to self-deception." [The importance of self-deception is well established among evolutionists. However, distinguishing between deception and self-deception is extremely difficult. My discussion is based on a lot of examples, and I think some at least are plausibly examples of self-deception while some may indeed simply involve deception. I provide examples of deception and self-deception among both Jews and anti-Semitic gentiles.]
In his third book, MacDonald takes on what he calls the "Jewish" intellectual movements of the 20th century, from psychoanalysis to Marxism to "Boasian anthropology" and "the Frankfurt School of social research." His argument is that the ideas of secular Jewish intellectuals are merely a device to promote tolerance of the Jewish presence by gentiles'so that the Jews can more efficiently pursue their nefarious agenda of systematic breeding and control of resources [I would never use a word like 'nefarious' in this context. This is moralizing by Shulevitz]. A good example of this is cultural anthropology: Its Jewish founder, Franz Boas, shifted the focus of anthropology away from Darwinism and eugenicism and toward the study of culture in order to bring an end to the criticism of Jews as a race. [The Boasians were much more concerned to discredit the racialist ideas of Madison Grant and others which accorded the Nordic race a superior place in the evolutionary scheme. I argue that the Boasians were influenced by their ethnic identities as were Grant and his supporters. It is a commonplace that social science had WASPish overtones early in the century. Why should one be surprised that Jewish contributions reflected their ethic identity? In my view, individuals with strong group identities see the world through a prism colored by their perception of group interests.] Even if an intellectual movement (such as liberalism) was founded by non-Jews, the minute Jews join it, they'll take it over, because their ancestral history predisposes them to form "highly cohesive groups": "Intellectual activity is like any other human endeavor: Cohesive groups outcompete individualist strategies." [Again, one must deal with the evidence that I have put together that in fact several important 20th-century intellectual movements were developed by people with strong Jewish identities pursuing perceived Jewish interests.] Ideas that MacDonald identifies as Jewish, he invariably finds to be not only subtly self-interested but also repellent by any ordinary (which is to say gentile) moral or intellectual standard. [Not true. Many gentiles'including me'became involved in these movements; we obviously found the ideas attractive.] Freud "conceptualized himself as a leader in a war on gentile culture." [There is a great deal of evidence for this. Shulevitz writes as if I am just pulling this out of a hat.] When Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin expressed doubts about sociobiology back in the 1970s, their approach exemplified the kind of "skeptical thrust of Jewish intellectual activity" that results in Jewish "nihilistic anti-science."
Toward the end of the third book, MacDonald lays out his solution for restoring what he calls "parity" between the Jews and other ethnic groups: systematic discrimination against Jews in college admission and employment and heavy taxation of Jews "to counter the Jewish advantage in the possession of wealth." [This is complete nonsense. I never advocate discrimination of any kind. The context was my discussion of Horace Kallen's idea of cultural pluralism (where every group maintains its ethnic identity, but, in Rodney King's words, we somehow 'all just get along') versus the melting pot idea that most of us learned in high school (where each group sort of melted in, while still retaining some ties to the old ways in diet, religion, etc.). I argue that: (1) The data show groups differ in all sorts of performance (for whatever reason or mix of reasons); (2) like it or not, evolutionary theory says groups will attach particular significance to where they stand relative to other groups (hence the call for affirmative action programs, etc.). Then given (1) and (2), I predict (not advocate) that sooner or later the high levels of Jewish performance in certain areas will come to attention and there will be calls for the type of things Shulevitz insinuates I am advocating. I discuss the many Jewish notables (like Sydney Hook) who moved from the left to the libertarian right (i.e., neo-cons) because of their concern that affirmative action for minorities would eventually compromise Jewish interests. Jewish organizations have clearly seen that affirmative action is a slippery slope towards the old numerus clausus that kept qualified Jews out of the Ivy League, etc. That's why these organizations have opposed affirmative action.]
It is not a coincidence that MacDonald spends much of his time in his third book attacking the enemies of Darwinism and sociobiology'or evolutionary psychology, as it is usually called today. MacDonald identifies himself as an evolutionary psychologist, and indeed, most prominent figures in the field would at least know his name. But, remarkably, to Culturebox's knowledge, no American evolutionary psychologist has publicly objected to his work. This is not to say that it has been celebrated. A man in his 50s, MacDonald is still an associate professor of psychology at a third-rate school, California State University in Long Beach. [Actually I have been a full professor for about five years now. (I got a late start because of my involvement in 60's radicalism.) I like to think of Cal. State Long Beach as a second rate institution. It's not quite UC-Berkeley, but it's pretty good. Whatever Shulevitz may think, there are many fine professors and students here. Many of the latter, including some of my master's degree students, have gone on to excellent Ph. D. Programs.] But much more important to an academic than his title is his standing among his peers, and there MacDonald is on firmer ground: He's the secretary, archivist, newsletter editor, and executive board member of the professional organization the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), to which the majority of America's leading evolutionary psychologists belong. He edits a small journal called Population and Environment. And the three books summarized above appeared in a series edited by Seymour Iztkoff, a well-known if extremely conservative scholar of the genetics of intelligence at Smith College.
Are MacDonald's peers aware of what he's writing in the name of a field long accused of fostering'unfairly, many of them would say; by Jews, MacDonald would say'sexist and racist stereotypes? Do other evolutionary psychologists have an opinion on MacDonald? Culturebox called several well-known members of HBES, specifying in her voice messages that she was writing an article about MacDonald. Few returned her phone calls, but those who did said they'd never read his Jewish trilogy. Two leading scholars said they had read papers of his on other subjects and found them "muddled"; one academic said she had been forced to reject a paper by MacDonald on child development for an anthology she was editing. [The only thing muddled is Shulevitz's knowledge of the data and theory of evolutionary psychology and behavior genetics. Unlike many evolutionary psychologists, I believe not only in the importance of domain-specific mechanisms that evolved to solve specific adaptive problems. I am far from being alone in arguing that we have to go beyond an exclusive concern with domain-specificity to study the evolutionary importance of domain-general mechanisms like IQ. My colleagues with a background in both behavior genetics and evolutionary psychology (e.g., David Geary, David Rowe, Nancy Segal) agree with me on this. (I took my Ph. D. Under Benson Ginsburg, a prominent behavior geneticist, and did my Ph. D. dissertation on personality differences among wolves.) IQ is a central component of my analysis of Judaism, though many evolutionary psychologists avoid the topic. Nonetheless, I have published my views in highly reputable refereed journals in psychology.] When Culturebox described the contents of MacDonald's books to them, they expressed extreme shock and said he contradicted the basic principles of contemporary evolutionary psychology. "The notion that Jews are a genetically distinct group doesn't make it on the basis of modern population genetics," said John Tooby, the president of HBES and a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. [Tooby perhaps has not read the relevant sections of my books. I summarize a great many population genetic studies showing that in fact there are genetic frequency differences between Jews and gentiles and that these differences have been maintained by Jewish marriage practices. I argue that Judaism represents a group strategy which is fairly (but not completely) closed to penetration from gentile gene pools. The data indicate that Jews have remained genetically distinct from the groups they have lived among despite having lived among them for centuries. In addition, Jewish populations in very diverse areas have significantly more genetic commonality than is the case between Jews and the gentile populations they have lived among for centuries. One of the most amazing recent studies shows that the Kohanim have preserved among themselves essentially the same Y-chromosome. I also show that Jews have placed a high premium on marrying within the group and have placed formidable barriers to prevent significant penetration of gentiles into their gene pool. I can't imagine why an evolutionist would be surprised by this.] Also, he said, "group-selection theory"'the idea that natural selection can occur at the level of a group (such as a bunch of Jews) as opposed to individuals'was debunked in the 1960s, and though some scholars are working to bring group-selection theory back, it remains a minority view. [Again, I doubt that Tooby has read my books. I clearly emphasize *cultural* group selection which has none of the theoretical difficulties associated with the form of group selection that was "debunked in the 1960s." My work is highly compatible with the work of theorists like David Sloan Wilson, Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson. This perspective emphasizes the ability of human groups to monitor group members, prevent cheating, and enforce group goals'in short to create a group evolutionary strategy.]
Shulevitz concludes her review by stating that "it is the job of a scholarly association not just to foster discussion but also to police the boundaries of its discipline. When this evolutionary psychologist and HBES officer testifies in the Irving trial, he is bound to get his counterparts in a lot of trouble. In many ways, they deserve it."
Whatever Shulevitz may think of my work, I hope all HBES members and academics in general will agree that we are better sticking with peer review than being *policed* by Shulevitz or anyone else. My conscience is clear that I am in no way an anti-Semite and that in the long run my analysis of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy will be proved right in its essentials. Slate, police thyself!
