Charles Murray (author)
Encyclopedia
Charles Alan Murray is an American
libertarian
political scientist, author
, columnist
, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
, a conservative think tank
in Washington, DC. He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve
, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein
in 1994, which argues that intelligence plays a central role in American society.
He first became well known for his Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 in 1984, which discussed the American welfare system. Murray has also written In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (1988), What It Means to be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (1996), Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (2003), and In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (2006). He published Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality in 2008.
Murray's articles have appeared in Commentary Magazine, The New Criterion
, The Weekly Standard
, The Washington Post
, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times
.
in a Republican
, non-collegiate "Norman Rockwell
kind of family" that stressed moral responsibility; he had an intellectual youth marked by a rebellious and prankster sensibility. As a teen he played pool at a hangout for juvenile delinquents, studied debating, and, to his parents' annoyance, espoused labor unionism.
Murray credits the SAT
with helping him get out of Newton and into Harvard. "Back in 1961, the test helped get me into Harvard from a small Iowa town by giving me a way to show that I could compete with applicants from Exeter
and Andover
," said Murray. "Ever since, I have seen the SAT as the friend of the little guy, just as James Bryant Conant
, president of Harvard, said it would be when he urged the SAT upon the nation in the 1940s."
Murray obtained a B.A.
in history
from Harvard in 1965 and a Ph.D.
in political science
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1974.
in Thailand
in 1965, staying abroad for a formative six years. At the beginning of this period, the young Murray kindled a romance with his Thai Buddhist language instructor (in Hawaii
), Suchart Dej-Udom, the daughter of a wealthy Thai businessman, who was "born with one hand and a mind sharp enough to outscore the rest of the country on the college entrance exam." Murray subsequently proposed by mail from Thailand, and their marriage began the following year, a move that Murray now considers youthful rebellion. "I'm getting married to a one-handed Thai Buddhist," he said. "This was not the daughter-in-law that would have normally presented itself to an Iowa couple."
Murray credits his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand with his lifelong interest in Asia. "There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand," says Murray. "Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains."
Murray's work in the Peace Corps
and subsequent social research in Thailand for research firms associated with the U.S. government led to the subject of his statistical doctoral thesis in political science
at M.I.T.
, in which he argued against bureaucratic intervention in the lives of the Thai villagers.
Murray divorced Dej-Udom after fourteen years of marriage and three years later married Catherine Bly Cox (born 1949, Newton, Iowa
), an English literature instructor at Rutgers University
. Cox was initially dubious when she saw his conservative reading choices, and she spent long hours "trying to reconcile his shocking views with what she saw as his deep decency." In 1989, Murray and Cox co-authored a book on the Apollo program
, Apollo: Race to the Moon. Murray attends and Cox is a member of a Quaker meeting in Virginia
, and they live in Frederick County, Maryland
near Washington, D.C.
Murray has four children, two by each wife, and remains close with both families.
From 1981-1990, he was a fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute
where he wrote Losing Ground, which heavily influenced the welfare reform debate in 1996, and In Pursuit.
He has been a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute
since 1990 and is a frequent contributor to The Public Interest
, a journal of conservative politics and culture. In March 2009, he received AEI's highest honor, the Irving Kristol Award
. He has also received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín
.
Murray has received grants from the conservative Bradley Foundation
to support his scholarship, including the writing of The Bell Curve.
(1994) (ISBN 0-02-914673-9) is a controversial, best-selling 1994 book that Charles Murray wrote with the late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein
. Its central point is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents' socio-economic status
or education level. Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend.
Much of the controversy erupted from Chapters 13 and 14, where the authors write about the enduring differences in race and intelligence
and discuss implications of that difference. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic. The authors write in the introduction to Chapter 13 that "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved," while also saying that "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences."
The book's title comes from the bell shaped normal distribution of IQ scores. The normal distribution is the limiting distribution of a random quantity which is the sum of smaller, independent random phenomena. The message in the title is that IQ scores are normally distributed because a person's intelligence is the sum of many small random variations in genetic and environmental factors.
Shortly after publication, large numbers of people rallied both to criticize and defend the book. Some critics denounced the book and its authors as supporting scientific racism
. A number of books were written in response, to criticize The Bell Curve. Those books included a revised edition of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould
's The Mismeasure of Man
, The Bell Curve Wars
, a collection of essays reacting to Murray and Herrnstein's divisive commentary, as well as The Bell Curve Debate
, which contains essays that respond to the controversial issues raised in The Bell Curve. Arthur S. Goldberger and Charles F. Manski critique the empirical methods used to justify the book's hypotheses. They criticize the authors and the publisher for circumventing the peer review process that serious scientific books must undergo to demonstrate the scientific merit of the research.
Challenging "educational romanticism", he wrote Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. His "four simple truths" are"
The New York Times
interviewer Deborah Solomon
gave an example (of what Murray calls "educational romanticism") when she said "I believe that given the opportunity, most people could do most anything." Murray responded "You’re out of touch with reality in that regard."
, Commentary, The Public Interest
, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review
, and the Washington Post. He has been a witness before United States
congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior Republican
government officials in the United States, and conservative officials in the United Kingdom
, Eastern Europe, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In the April, 2007 issue of Commentary Magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that Jews "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested." His article concludes with the assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."
In the July/August, 2007 issue of The American, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute
, Murray says he has changed his mind about SAT tests and says it's time to scrap the test. "The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be ended. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained."
On March 23, 2011, while speaking at Earlham College
, Murray's speech, titled "Taking Happiness Seriously" was disrupted by someone pulling the fire alarm, resulting in the evacuation of the building and relocation to another building for the remainder of the talk. Afterwards, during a reception for Murray, a fire alarm was again pulled disrupting the reception.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
political scientist, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, columnist
Columnist
A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....
, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
, a conservative think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
in Washington, DC. He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...
, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein
Richard Herrnstein
Richard J. Herrnstein was an American researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. He was one of the founders of quantitative analysis of behavior....
in 1994, which argues that intelligence plays a central role in American society.
He first became well known for his Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 in 1984, which discussed the American welfare system. Murray has also written In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government (1988), What It Means to be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation (1996), Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (2003), and In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State (2006). He published Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality in 2008.
Murray's articles have appeared in Commentary Magazine, The New Criterion
The New Criterion
The New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
, The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard is an American neoconservative opinion magazine published 48 times per year. Its founding publisher, News Corporation, debuted the title September 18, 1995. Currently edited by founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes, the Standard has been described as a "redoubt of...
, The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
.
Early life and education
Murray was raised in Newton, IowaNewton, Iowa
Newton is a city in and the county seat of Jasper County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 15,254. It is the home of Maytag Dairy Farms and was formerly home to the Maytag Corporation's corporate headquarters until the Whirlpool Corporation acquired it in 2006...
in a Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
, non-collegiate "Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...
kind of family" that stressed moral responsibility; he had an intellectual youth marked by a rebellious and prankster sensibility. As a teen he played pool at a hangout for juvenile delinquents, studied debating, and, to his parents' annoyance, espoused labor unionism.
Murray credits the SAT
SAT
The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...
with helping him get out of Newton and into Harvard. "Back in 1961, the test helped get me into Harvard from a small Iowa town by giving me a way to show that I could compete with applicants from Exeter
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
and Andover
Phillips Academy
Phillips Academy is a selective, co-educational independent boarding high school for boarding and day students in grades 9–12, along with a post-graduate year...
," said Murray. "Ever since, I have seen the SAT as the friend of the little guy, just as James Bryant Conant
James Bryant Conant
James Bryant Conant was a chemist, educational administrator, and government official. As thePresident of Harvard University he reformed it as a research institution.-Biography :...
, president of Harvard, said it would be when he urged the SAT upon the nation in the 1940s."
Murray obtained a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
from Harvard in 1965 and a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
in 1974.
Peace Corps service in Thailand
Murray left for the Peace CorpsPeace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
in Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
in 1965, staying abroad for a formative six years. At the beginning of this period, the young Murray kindled a romance with his Thai Buddhist language instructor (in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
), Suchart Dej-Udom, the daughter of a wealthy Thai businessman, who was "born with one hand and a mind sharp enough to outscore the rest of the country on the college entrance exam." Murray subsequently proposed by mail from Thailand, and their marriage began the following year, a move that Murray now considers youthful rebellion. "I'm getting married to a one-handed Thai Buddhist," he said. "This was not the daughter-in-law that would have normally presented itself to an Iowa couple."
Murray credits his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand with his lifelong interest in Asia. "There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand," says Murray. "Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains."
Murray's work in the Peace Corps
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an American volunteer program run by the United States Government, as well as a government agency of the same name. The mission of the Peace Corps includes three goals: providing technical assistance, helping people outside the United States to understand US culture, and helping...
and subsequent social research in Thailand for research firms associated with the U.S. government led to the subject of his statistical doctoral thesis in political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
at M.I.T.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, in which he argued against bureaucratic intervention in the lives of the Thai villagers.
Divorce and remarriage
By the 1980s, his marriage to Suchart Dej-Udom had been unhappy for years, but "his childhood lessons on the importance of responsibility brought him slowly to the idea that divorce was an honorable alternative, especially with young children involved."Murray divorced Dej-Udom after fourteen years of marriage and three years later married Catherine Bly Cox (born 1949, Newton, Iowa
Newton, Iowa
Newton is a city in and the county seat of Jasper County, Iowa, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 15,254. It is the home of Maytag Dairy Farms and was formerly home to the Maytag Corporation's corporate headquarters until the Whirlpool Corporation acquired it in 2006...
), an English literature instructor at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
. Cox was initially dubious when she saw his conservative reading choices, and she spent long hours "trying to reconcile his shocking views with what she saw as his deep decency." In 1989, Murray and Cox co-authored a book on the Apollo program
Project Apollo
The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...
, Apollo: Race to the Moon. Murray attends and Cox is a member of a Quaker meeting in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, and they live in Frederick County, Maryland
Frederick County, Maryland
Frederick County is a county located in the western part of the U.S. state of Maryland, bordering the southern border of Pennsylvania and the northeastern border of Virginia. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 233,385....
near Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Murray has four children, two by each wife, and remains close with both families.
Research
Murray began research work at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), one of the largest of the private social science research organizations, upon his return to the U.S. From 1974-1981, Murray worked for the AIR eventually becoming chief political scientist. While at AIR, Murray supervised evaluations in the fields of urban education, welfare services, daycare, adolescent pregnancy, services for the elderly, and criminal justice.From 1981-1990, he was a fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
where he wrote Losing Ground, which heavily influenced the welfare reform debate in 1996, and In Pursuit.
He has been a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
since 1990 and is a frequent contributor to The Public Interest
The Public Interest
The Public Interest was a quarterly public policy journal founded by established New York intellectuals Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol in 1965. It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars, and policy makers...
, a journal of conservative politics and culture. In March 2009, he received AEI's highest honor, the Irving Kristol Award
Irving Kristol Award
The Irving Kristol Award is the highest honor conferred by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.The award is given for "notable intellectual or practical contributions to improved public policy and social welfare" and named in honor of Irving Kristol. It replaced the Francis...
. He has also received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín
Universidad Francisco Marroquín is a private, secular, university in Guatemala City, Guatemala. According to the school's website, "the mission of Universidad Francisco Marroquín is to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal and economic principles of a sociey of free and responsible persons."...
.
Murray has received grants from the conservative Bradley Foundation
Bradley Foundation
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a conservative foundation with about half a billion US dollars in assets. According to the Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report, it gives away more than $30 million per year...
to support his scholarship, including the writing of The Bell Curve.
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American LifeThe Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...
(1994) (ISBN 0-02-914673-9) is a controversial, best-selling 1994 book that Charles Murray wrote with the late Harvard professor Richard J. Herrnstein
Richard Herrnstein
Richard J. Herrnstein was an American researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. He was one of the founders of quantitative analysis of behavior....
. Its central point is that intelligence is a better predictor of many factors including financial income, job performance, unwed pregnancy, and crime than one's parents' socio-economic status
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomic status is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person's work experience and of an individual's or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation...
or education level. Also, the book argued that those with high intelligence (the "cognitive elite") are becoming separated from the general population of those with average and below-average intelligence, and that this was a dangerous social trend.
Much of the controversy erupted from Chapters 13 and 14, where the authors write about the enduring differences in race and intelligence
Race and intelligence
The connection between race and intelligence has been a subject of debate in both popular science and academic research since the inception of intelligence testing in the early 20th century...
and discuss implications of that difference. The authors were reported throughout the popular press as arguing that these IQ differences are genetic. The authors write in the introduction to Chapter 13 that "The debate about whether and how much genes and environment have to do with ethnic differences remains unresolved," while also saying that "It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences."
The book's title comes from the bell shaped normal distribution of IQ scores. The normal distribution is the limiting distribution of a random quantity which is the sum of smaller, independent random phenomena. The message in the title is that IQ scores are normally distributed because a person's intelligence is the sum of many small random variations in genetic and environmental factors.
Shortly after publication, large numbers of people rallied both to criticize and defend the book. Some critics denounced the book and its authors as supporting scientific racism
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
. A number of books were written in response, to criticize The Bell Curve. Those books included a revised edition of evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation....
's The Mismeasure of Man
The Mismeasure of Man
The Mismeasure of Man , by Stephen Jay Gould, is a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that “the social and economic differences between human groups — primarily races, classes, and sexes — arise from inherited,...
, The Bell Curve Wars
The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America
The Bell Curve Wars: Race, Intelligence, and the Future of America is a reaction to The Bell Curve:Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray...
, a collection of essays reacting to Murray and Herrnstein's divisive commentary, as well as The Bell Curve Debate
The Bell Curve Debate
The Bell Curve Debate is a response to The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. It includes 81 articles by 81 authors including K. Anthony Appiah, Gregg Easterbrook, Howard Gardner, Eugene D. Genovese, Nathan Glazer, Stephen Jay Gould, Bob Herbert, Christopher Hitchens, Irving...
, which contains essays that respond to the controversial issues raised in The Bell Curve. Arthur S. Goldberger and Charles F. Manski critique the empirical methods used to justify the book's hypotheses. They criticize the authors and the publisher for circumventing the peer review process that serious scientific books must undergo to demonstrate the scientific merit of the research.
Views on education
Murray has been critical of the No Child Left Behind law, arguing that it "set a goal that was devoid of any contact with reality. ... The United States Congress, acting with large bipartisan majorities, at the urging of the President, enacted as the law of the land that all children are to be above average." He sees the law an example of "Educational romanticism [which] asks too much from students at the bottom of the intellectual pile, asks the wrong things from those in the middle, and asks too little from those at the top."Challenging "educational romanticism", he wrote Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality. His "four simple truths" are"
- "Ability varies."
- "Half of the children are below average."
- "Too many people are going to college."
- "America's future depends on how we educate the academically gifted."
The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
interviewer Deborah Solomon
Deborah Solomon
Deborah Solomon is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She is best-known for her weekly column, "Questions For," which ran in The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2011.-Early life and education:...
gave an example (of what Murray calls "educational romanticism") when she said "I believe that given the opportunity, most people could do most anything." Murray responded "You’re out of touch with reality in that regard."
Other books
- A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization: Social and Economic Change in Thai Villages (Praeger Publishers, 1977)
- Beyond Probation: Juvenile Corrections and the Chronic Delinquent - co-authored with Louis A. Cox, Jr. (Sage Publications, 1979)
- Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, Basic Books (1984) ISBN 0-465-04231-7; on welfare reformWelfare reformWelfare reform refers to the process of reforming the framework of social security and welfare provisions, but what is considered reform is a matter of opinion. The term was used in the United States to support the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act...
- In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, Simon & Schuster (1989) ISBN 0-671-68743-3
- Apollo: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of One of Humankind’s Greatest Achievements, with Catherine Bly Cox, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
- What it Means to be a Libertarian, Broadway Books (1997) ISBN 0-553-06928-4
- "IQ and economic success." Public Interest, 128, 21–35. (1997)
- Income Inequality and IQ, AEI Press (1998) PDF copy
- The Underclass Revisited, AEI Press (1999) PDF copy
- Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950Human AccomplishmentHuman Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 BC to 1950 is a book published in 2003 by Charles Murray, most widely known as the co-author of The Bell Curve, surveying outstanding contributions to the arts and sciences from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century...
, HarperCollins (2003) ISBN 0-06-019247-X; a quantification and ranking of well-known scientists and artists - In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State, AEI Press (March 2006) ISBN 0-8447-4223-6
- Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing American Schools Back to Reality, Crown Forum (August 2008) ISBN 978-0-307-40538-8
- Coming Apart at the Seams
Op-ed writings
Murray has published opinion pieces in The New RepublicThe New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Commentary, The Public Interest
The Public Interest
The Public Interest was a quarterly public policy journal founded by established New York intellectuals Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol in 1965. It was a leading neoconservative journal on political economy and culture, aimed at a readership of journalists, scholars, and policy makers...
, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, and the Washington Post. He has been a witness before United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
government officials in the United States, and conservative officials in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Eastern Europe, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In the April, 2007 issue of Commentary Magazine, Murray wrote on the disproportionate representation of Jews in the ranks of outstanding achievers and says that one of the reasons is that Jews "have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested." His article concludes with the assertion: "At this point, I take sanctuary in my remaining hypothesis, uniquely parsimonious and happily irrefutable. The Jews are God's chosen people."
In the July/August, 2007 issue of The American, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute
American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
, Murray says he has changed his mind about SAT tests and says it's time to scrap the test. "The evidence has become overwhelming that the SAT no longer serves a democratizing purpose. Worse, events have conspired to make the SAT a negative force in American life. And so I find myself arguing that the SAT should be ended. Not just deemphasized, but no longer administered. Nothing important would be lost by so doing. Much would be gained."
Speaking engagements
Murray has generated controversy in numerous speaking engagements around the country. In 2010, Murray was invited to speak at the Oshkosh Partners in Education Council in Oshkosh, Wisconsin at the urging of then Republican Senate Candidate Rob Johnson, creating a great deal of controversy.On March 23, 2011, while speaking at Earlham College
Earlham College
Earlham College is a liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana. It was founded in 1847 by Quakers and has approximately 1,200 students.The president is John David Dawson...
, Murray's speech, titled "Taking Happiness Seriously" was disrupted by someone pulling the fire alarm, resulting in the evacuation of the building and relocation to another building for the remainder of the talk. Afterwards, during a reception for Murray, a fire alarm was again pulled disrupting the reception.
External links
- Biography at American Enterprise Institute
- The age of educational romanticism: On requiring every child to be above average. The New CriterionThe New CriterionThe New Criterion is a New York-based monthly literary magazine and journal of artistic and cultural criticism, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball. It has sections for criticism of poetry, theater, art, music, the media, and books...
, vol 26, May 2008. - C-SPAN Book TV In Depth (RealVideoRealVideoRealVideo is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and is at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile...
), 3-hour interview. - What's Wrong with Being The Best? (RealAudioRealAudioRealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...
), 20 minute talk on elitismElitismElitism is the belief or attitude that some individuals, who form an elite — a select group of people with intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most...
held in SydneySydneySydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
on 13 August 2007. - An interview with Charles Murray on The Marketplace of Ideas
- Europe Syndrome, The Trouble With Taking The Trouble Out Of Everything Article published March 24, 2009 in The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
based on a March 2009 lecture given by Charles Murray before members and guests of the American Enterprise InstituteAmerican Enterprise InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research is a conservative think tank founded in 1943. Its stated mission is "to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and...
, Washington, D.C. - Charles Murray, doctor honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquin
- Real Education: Four Simple Truths to Bring America's Schools back to Reality
- What is Real Education? Brief interview with Luis Figueroa
- Interview with Charles Murray by Carlisyle Johnson
- Welfare state and the meaning of life A 24 minute talk held in SlovakiaSlovakiaThe Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
on 17 May 2010
Pro
- Cato Institute Book Forum (RealVideoRealVideoRealVideo is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and is at version 10. RealVideo is supported on many platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and several mobile...
) (RealAudioRealAudioRealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...
), 1 hour lecture that Murray gave discussing his book Human Accomplishment, and some of the response to it. - Address to Commonwealth Club of California on 18-Apr-2006 regarding his welfare reform proposals (RealAudioRealAudioRealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is...
) - "10 questions for Charles Murray." McIntosh, Matt (2006), Gene Expression.
- "The Idea of Progress: Once Again, with Feeling" in the HooverHoover InstitutionThe Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
digest.
Con
- NY Times biographical article: Jason DeParle (1994), "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'?: Charles Murray".
- "The Bell Curve Flattened" by Nicholas Lemann, at Slate Magazine
- "Debunking The Bell Curve" Articles on The Bell Curve.
- Charles Murray's "Dreyfus Affair"