Chris Brand
Encyclopedia
Christopher Richard Brand (born in Preston, England
, 1 June 1943) is an English
psychological
and psychometric
researcher who gained media attention for his controversial statements on race and intelligence
and pedophilia
. He went to Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet
, and is a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford
, and a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, 1968-70. He was a Lecturer at Edinburgh University from 1970 (teaching in personality, psychopathology and philosophical problems). He is a Fellow of the Galton Institute. He has three children and was into the tenth year of his third marriage in 2011.
Brand is a proponent of IQ testing and the general intelligence factor
and was "a major influence in the spread of influence of inspection time
as a theoretically interesting correlate of psychometric intelligence," according to Ian Deary
and Pauline Smith in the International Handbook of Intelligence, edited by Robert Sternberg
. Deary and Smith report the correlation of inspection time with psychometric intelligence is currently considered to be .4. The 25th anniversary of the original discovery of this relationship was observed in 2001 by a special issue of Intelligence
.
in average cognitive ability test scores has caused controversy, especially because of his support for the hereditarian hypothesis of such differences. Brand refers to himself as a race realist and has been called a "scientific racist."
His views are those of the classical 'London School' of psychology -- other prominent members of which would be professors Richard Lynn and Phil Rushton.
). "There are plenty of intelligent African men for black girls to be having sex with," he said, though adding that blacks probably needed to be allowed polygamy
.
Brand has also written that "women are inclined to deceitful promiscuity
" and that Sigmund Freud
was therefore right to ascribe weaker super-egos to women than to men. (Brand is a supporter both of psychometrician-psychologist Hans Eysenck
and of Freud.) His 1996 book The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications
led to accusations of scientific racism
and sexism
, and his university lectures were protested and closed by the Anti-Nazi League
of Edinburgh
. Brand's book was subsequently withdrawn by publisher John Wiley & Sons
. It was then published free on the web by Douance.
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
who had been charged with paedophilia. Brand argued that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as both are of above-average IQ.
The proceedings were initiated in 1996 after the dean of social sciences complained. (Edinburgh University's Chaplain, a supporter of the Anti-Nazi League, had taken Brand's e-mailed reflections on pederasty to the Scottish press. Edinburgh's Student newspaper's frontpage banner headline was FIRST IT WAS BLACKS, THEN IT WAS WOMEN, NOW IT'S KIDS.)
Brand was fired a year later after hearings from his 27-year tenured position at Edinburgh University in 1997. The University said this was for conduct that "brought the university into disrepute."
Brand appealed and sued the University for unfair dismissal, and received £12,000 (in those days the maximum obtainable from an Employment Tribunal) in an out-of-court settlement. His case became a cause célèbre
among advocates of academic freedom
. Marek Kohn
cited the Brand incident in a defence of intellectual freedom on the Internet. Others, however, including a former Brand student, considered academic freedom a privilege that carried with it an expectation of 'social responsibility.'
Eric Barendt (University College London), in the chapter on 'The Chris Brand Case' in his 2010 book Academic Freedom, said Brand should have tried harder to get on with his colleagues - who Brand replied were "Jew-leftie-commie[s]".
and The Occidental Quarterly, his (co-authored) chapter 'Why ignore the g factor?' and his weblog. His defence of Hans Eysenck (in a review of the biography Playing with Fire) was published in the journal Intelligence
and at http://bussorah.tripod.com/ulysses.html in 2011.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, 1 June 1943) is an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and psychometric
Psychometrics
Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, personality traits, and educational measurement...
researcher who gained media attention for his controversial statements on 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 pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
. He went to Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet
Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School for Boys
Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet is a boys' grammar school in Barnet, North London, which was founded in 1573 by Edward Underne, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester and others, in the name of Queen Elizabeth I..-Admissions:...
, and is a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, Oxford
The Queen's College, founded 1341, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Queen's is centrally situated on the High Street, and is renowned for its 18th-century architecture...
, and a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, 1968-70. He was a Lecturer at Edinburgh University from 1970 (teaching in personality, psychopathology and philosophical problems). He is a Fellow of the Galton Institute. He has three children and was into the tenth year of his third marriage in 2011.
Brand is a proponent of IQ testing and the general intelligence factor
General intelligence factor
The g factor, where g stands for general intelligence, is a statistic used in psychometrics to model the mental ability underlying results of various tests of cognitive ability...
and was "a major influence in the spread of influence of inspection time
Inspection time
Inspection time refers to the exposure duration required for a human subject to reliably identify a simple stimulus. Typically a stimulus made up of two parallel lines differing in length and joined at the tops by a cross bar is presented...
as a theoretically interesting correlate of psychometric intelligence," according to Ian Deary
Ian Deary
Ian J. Deary is a Scottish psychologist and Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Ian Deary is currently engaged in a 10-year study into the effects of ageing on mental ability using the 1932 Scottish Mental Survey funded by , entitled...
and Pauline Smith in the International Handbook of Intelligence, edited by Robert Sternberg
Robert Sternberg
Robert Jeffrey Sternberg , is an American psychologist and psychometrician and Provost at Oklahoma State University. He was formerly the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University and the President of the American Psychological...
. Deary and Smith report the correlation of inspection time with psychometric intelligence is currently considered to be .4. The 25th anniversary of the original discovery of this relationship was observed in 2001 by a special issue of Intelligence
Intelligence (journal)
Intelligence is a peer-reviewed academic journal of psychology that covers intelligence and psychometrics. It is published by Elsevier and the official journal of the International Society for Intelligence Research.The journal was established in 1977 and the editor in chief is Douglas K. Detterman...
.
Race and IQ
Brand's discussion of the disparity between racesRace 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...
in average cognitive ability test scores has caused controversy, especially because of his support for the hereditarian hypothesis of such differences. Brand refers to himself as a race realist and has been called a "scientific racist."
His views are those of the classical 'London School' of psychology -- other prominent members of which would be professors Richard Lynn and Phil Rushton.
Race, IQ and women
Brand's most controversial views generated headlines in April 1996, when he was quoted in the Independent on Sunday recommending that "low-IQ girls" be "encouraged to have sex with higher-IQ boys" rather than with their more usual low-IQ companions (resulting in genetic deteriorationDysgenics
Dysgenics is the study of factors producing the accumulation and perpetuation of defective or disadvantageous genes and traits in offspring of a particular population or species. Dysgenic mutations have been studied in animals such as the mouse and the fruit fly...
). "There are plenty of intelligent African men for black girls to be having sex with," he said, though adding that blacks probably needed to be allowed polygamy
Polygamy
Polygamy is a marriage which includes more than two partners...
.
Brand has also written that "women are inclined to deceitful promiscuity
Promiscuity
In humans, promiscuity refers to less discriminating casual sex with many sexual partners. The term carries a moral or religious judgement and is viewed in the context of the mainstream social ideal for sexual activity to take place within exclusive committed relationships...
" and that Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
was therefore right to ascribe weaker super-egos to women than to men. (Brand is a supporter both of psychometrician-psychologist Hans Eysenck
Hans Eysenck
Hans Jürgen Eysenck was a German-British psychologist who spent most of his career in Britain, best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality, though he worked in a wide range of areas...
and of Freud.) His 1996 book The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications
The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications
The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications is a book by Christopher Brand, a psychologist and lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. It was published by John Wiley & Sons in the United Kingdom in March 1996...
led to accusations of 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...
and sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, and his university lectures were protested and closed by the Anti-Nazi League
Anti-Nazi League
The Anti-Nazi League was an organisation set up in 1977 on the initiative of the Socialist Workers Party with sponsorship from some trade unions and the endorsement of a list of prominent people to oppose the rise of far-right groups in the United Kingdom. It was wound down in 1981...
of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
. Brand's book was subsequently withdrawn by publisher John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...
. It was then published free on the web by Douance.
Paedophilia
Also, after months of public 'anti-racist' outrage, in October 1996 Brand came to the defense of Nobel laureateNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek
Daniel Carleton Gajdusek was an American physician and medical researcher who was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976 for work on kuru, the first human prion disease demonstrated to be infectious....
who had been charged with paedophilia. Brand argued that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as both are of above-average IQ.
The proceedings were initiated in 1996 after the dean of social sciences complained. (Edinburgh University's Chaplain, a supporter of the Anti-Nazi League, had taken Brand's e-mailed reflections on pederasty to the Scottish press. Edinburgh's Student newspaper's frontpage banner headline was FIRST IT WAS BLACKS, THEN IT WAS WOMEN, NOW IT'S KIDS.)
Brand was fired a year later after hearings from his 27-year tenured position at Edinburgh University in 1997. The University said this was for conduct that "brought the university into disrepute."
Brand appealed and sued the University for unfair dismissal, and received £12,000 (in those days the maximum obtainable from an Employment Tribunal) in an out-of-court settlement. His case became a cause célèbre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
among advocates of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
. Marek Kohn
Marek Kohn
Marek Kohn is a British science writer on evolution, biology and society. His first two books were on drugs, their cultural history, and their politics. He is the author of seven books and hundreds of articles. He holds an undergraduate degree in neurobiology from the University of Sussex, and a...
cited the Brand incident in a defence of intellectual freedom on the Internet. Others, however, including a former Brand student, considered academic freedom a privilege that carried with it an expectation of 'social responsibility.'
Eric Barendt (University College London), in the chapter on 'The Chris Brand Case' in his 2010 book Academic Freedom, said Brand should have tried harder to get on with his colleagues - who Brand replied were "Jew-leftie-commie[s]".
Work outside of academia
From 2000 to 2004, Brand was a research consultant to the Woodhill Foundation and its CRACK program based in Baltimore, Maryland, which pays drug-addicted mothers $200 to be sterilized. His recent thinking can be sampled via his reviews at Amazon Books,http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AGDMFV3NSIUCZ his articles in American RenaissanceAmerican Renaissance (magazine)
-Cancellation of 2010, 2011 conferences:In February 2010, following protests to hotel management of several hotels, which Jared Taylor claimed included some death threats, American Renaissance's biennial conference was canceled...
and The Occidental Quarterly, his (co-authored) chapter 'Why ignore the g factor?' and his weblog. His defence of Hans Eysenck (in a review of the biography Playing with Fire) was published in the journal Intelligence
Intelligence (journal)
Intelligence is a peer-reviewed academic journal of psychology that covers intelligence and psychometrics. It is published by Elsevier and the official journal of the International Society for Intelligence Research.The journal was established in 1977 and the editor in chief is Douglas K. Detterman...
and at http://bussorah.tripod.com/ulysses.html in 2011.
External links
- IQ & PC -- By Chris Brand: Personal website
- Download of The g Factor - General Intelligence and its Implications via douance.org