Thanks.
Just googled on: "The Bell Curve" Weyher.
Racism Resurgent: How Media Let The Bell Curve's Pseudo-Science Define the Agenda on Race
(It's about the book 'The Bell Curve', the racism and fascism behind it, the Pioneer Fund, Weyher, Roger Pearson)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When the <b>New Republic</b> devoted almost an entire issue (10/31/94) to a debate with the authors of The Bell Curve, editor Andrew Sullivan justified the decision by writing, "The notion that there might be resilient ethnic differences in intelligence is not, we believe, an inherently racist belief."
In fact, the idea that some races are inherently inferior to others is the definition of racism. What the New Republic was saying--along with other media outlets that prominently and respectfully considered <b>the thesis of Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein's book</b>--is that racism is a respectable intellectual position, and has a legitimate place in the national debate on race.
The Bell Curve was accorded attention totally disproportionate to the merits of the book or the novelty of its thesis. The book and its dubious claims set the agenda for discussions on such public affairs programs as Nightline (10/21/94), the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (10/28/94), the McLaughlin Group (10/21/94), Charlie Rose (11/3/94, 11/4/94), Think Tank (10/14/94), PrimeTime Live (10/27/94) and All Things Considered (10/28/94).
In addition to the above-mentioned New Republic issue, the "controversy" made the covers of Newsweek (10/24/94) and the New York Times Magazine (10/9/94), took up nearly a full op-ed page in the Wall Street Journal (10/10/94), and garnered a near-rave review from the New York Times Book Review (10/16/94; Extra! Update, 12/94).
While many of these discussions included sharp criticisms of the book, media accounts showed a disturbing tendency to accept Murray and Herrnstein's premises and evidence even while debating their conclusions. "While Murray and Herrnstein base their findings on various surveys and extensive research, many of the conclusions they draw are fiercely disputed," declared Robert MacNeil (10/28/94). "You've written a long book," Ted Koppel told Murray (10/21/94). "I assume a great deal of work and research went into it. But the problem is your book has become a political football."
While Murray and Herrnstein were generally characterized as sober social scientists, their critics were sometimes identified with censorious political correctness: "Both Murray and Herrnstein have been called racists," wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (10/18/94). "Their findings, though, have been accepted by most others in their field, and it would be wrong--both intellectually and politically--to suppress them." Proclaimed Newsweek's Geoffrey Cowley (10/24/94): "As the shouting begins, it's worth noting that the science behind The Bell Curve is overwhelmingly mainstream."
Murray himself doesn't think that the research they relied on was so mainstream. "Some of the things we read to do this work, we literally hide when we're on planes and trains," Murray told the New York Times Magazine (10/9/94). <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The fund's current president, Harry <b>Weyher</b>, denounces the Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools, saying, "All Brown did was wreck the school system" (GQ, 11/94). The fund's treasurer, John Trevor, formerly served as treasurer for the crypto-fascist Coalition of Patriotic Societies, when it called in 1962 for the release of Nazi war criminals and praised South Africa's "well-reasoned racial policies" (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94).
One of the Pioneer Fund's largest current grantees is Roger <b>Pearson</b>, an activist and publisher who has been associated with international fascist currents. Pearson has written: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialized or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide" (Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->These are the people that financed nearly all The Bell Curve's "data" on the connection between race and intelligence. (Murray and Herrnstein themselves have not been funded, although Weyher says of Herrnstein, "We'd have funded him at the drop of a hat, but he never asked"--GQ, 11/94.)Â [...]
Murray and Herrnstein's claims about the higher IQs of Asians--widely cited in the media as fact--are almost entirely cited to Richard Lynn, a professor of psychology at the University of Ulster.
In the book's acknowledgements, Murray and Herrnstein declare they "benefitted especially from the advice" of Lynn and five other people.
Lynn has received at least $325,000 from the Pioneer Fund (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94). He frequently publishes in eugenicist journals like Mankind Quarterly--published by Roger Pearson and co-edited by Lynn himself--and Personality and Individual Differences, edited by Pioneer grantee Hans Eysenck. Among Lynn's writings cited in The Bell Curve are "The Intelligence of the Mongoloids" and "Positive Correlations Between Head Size and IQ."
Murray and Herrnstein describe Lynn as "a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences." Here's a sample of Lynn's thinking on such differences: "What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples.... Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality." (cited in Newsday, 11/9/94)<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->So all that IQ stuff I read about is based on this drivel? Glad to expell it from my memory - no space to waste on racist rubbish. Just sorry I lent it any credibility before.
As an aside:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2008
Weyher writes to 'correct' the New York Review of Books' review of The Bell Curve. And a reply is given by the reviewer.