John Philippe Rushton (born
December 3, 1943) is a psychology
professor at the University of Western Ontario
, Canada
, most widely
known for his work on intelligence and racial differences, particularly his
book Race, Evolution
and Behavior. His work in this area is highly
controversial, and has been criticized by other researchers and
civil rights organisations as being poorly researched and
racist in nature. He is a Fellow of the
American
Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American,
British, and
Canadian
Psychological Associations. In 1988, he was made a Fellow of
the
John Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has been head of the
Pioneer Fund since 2002.
Biography
Rushton
was born in Bournemouth
, England
.
During his childhood, he emigrated with his family to South Africa
where he lived from age 4 to 8 (1948-1952). His father was a
building contractor, and his mother, who was French, gave him his
middle name.
He spent most of his teen years in Canada.
Rushton
received a B.Sc. in psychology from Birkbeck
College
at the University
of London in 1970, and, in 1973, received his Ph.D. from the
London School of
Economics
for work on altruism in children.
He
continued his work at the University of Oxford
until 1974. Rushton taught at York University
in Canada from
1974-1976 and the University of Toronto
until 1977. He then moved to the University of
Western Ontario and was made full professor there in 1985.
He received a D.Sc. from the University of London in 1992.
He has published more than 250 articles and six books, including
two on altruism, one on scientific excellence, and co-authored an
introductory psychology textbook. Over ten of his papers have
appeared in
Intelligence, a journal for
which Rushton sits on the editorial board. He is a signatory to the
opinion piece "
Mainstream Science on
Intelligence".
Work
Genetic similarity theory
Early in his career, Rushton's research focussed on
altruism. He theorized a heritable component in
altruism and is the founder of
Genetic Similarity Theory,
which states that individuals tend to be more altruistic to
individuals who are genetically similar to themselves (
kin selection), and less altruistic, and
sometimes outwardly hostile to individuals who are less genetically
similar. Rushton describes "ethnic conflict and rivalry" as "one of
the great themes of historical and contemporary society" and
suggests that it may have its roots in the evolutionary impact on
individuals from groups "giving preferential treatment to
genetically similar others." He says "the makeup of a gene pool
[i.e., a human population's total reservoir of alternative genes]
causally affects the probability of any particular ideology being
adopted."
Application of r/K selection theory to race
Rushton's book
Race,
Evolution, and Behavior (1995) uses
r/K selection theory to explain how
East Asians consistently average high,
blacks low, and whites in the middle on characteristics indicative
of nurturing behavior on an evolutionary scale. He first published
this theory in 1984. Rushton purports to show that East Asians and
their descendants average a larger brain size, greater
intelligence, more sexual restraint, slower rates of maturation,
and greater law abidingness and social organization than do
Europeans and their descendants, who average higher scores on these
dimensions than Africans and their descendants.
VDARE's
Steve
Sailer refers to it as "Rushton's Rule of Three" saying that
Rushton's comparisons are more informative than many traditional
comparisons because they analyze characteristics across three races
instead of two.
Rolling Stone magazine (1994)
quotes Rushton: "It's a trade off, more brains or more penis. You
can't have everything."
Opinions on Rushton and his work
Given notability for topics as controversial as racial and
hereditary intelligence, naturally Rushton's work has been both
praised and contested strongly.
Support
Harvard biologist
E.O. Wilson (one of the two co-founders of the r/K
selection theory):
I think Phil is an honest and capable
researcher.
The basic reasoning by Rushton is solid
evolutionary reasoning; that is, it is logically
sound.
If he had seen some apparent geographic variation
for a non-human species - a species of woozle or boggart hawk, for
example - no one would have batted an eye.
Science journalist Peter Knudson:
Despite the occasional media stereotype of Rushton
as some sort of incompetent scientific adventurist, he has
throughout most of his career as a psychologist been seen as a
highly competent researcher.
He has published more than 100 papers, most of
them, particularly those dealing with altruism, in highly
respectable journals.
Psychologist
Hans Eysenck, Rushton's
former doctoral supervisor, of the
University of London:
Professor Rushton is widely known and respected for
the unusual combination of rigour and originality in his
work...
(and commenting on Rushton's book Race, Evolution
and Behavior) ...
Few concerned with understanding the problems
associated with race can afford to disregard this storehouse of
well-integrated information which gives rise to a remarkable
synthesis.
Criticism of motivation and funding
Since 2002, Rushton has been the president of the
Pioneer Fund. Tax records from 2000 show that
his Charles Darwin Research Institute received $473,835 — 73% of
that year's grants. The
Southern Poverty Law Center (a
civil rights activist organization) characterizes the Pioneer Fund
as a
hate group. They claim Rushton has
spoken on
eugenics several times at
conferences of the
American Renaissance
magazine, in which he has also published a number of general
articles.
Popular
science commentator David Suzuki spoke
out against Rushton's racial theories in a live televised debate
(1989) at the University of Western Ontario. "There will always be Rushtons in science,"
Suzuki said "and we must always be prepared to root them out!".
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Rushton when asked if he himself believed in
racial superiority. He went on to explain that "from an
evolutionary point of view, superiority can only mean adaptive
value--if it even means this. And we've got to realize that each of
these populations is perfectly, beautifully adapted to their own
ancestral environments.".
He has written articles for
VDARE, a website
that advocates reduced immigration into the United States. Stefan
Kühl wrote in his book
The Nazi Connection: eugenics, American
racism, and German national socialism that Rushton was a part
of the revival of public interest in
scientific racism in the 1980s.
William H. Tucker, a critic of the hereditarian point
of view, states:
Rushton has not only contributed to American
Renaissance publications and graced their conferences with his
presence but also offered praise and support for the "scholarly"
work on racial differences of Henry
Garrett, who spent the last two decades of his life opposing
the extension of the Constitution to blacks on the basis that the
"normal" black resembled a European after frontal
lobotomy.
Informed of Garrett's assertion that blacks were not
entitled to equality because their "ancestors were ... savages in
an African jungle," Rushton dismissed the observation as quoted
"selectively from Garrett's writing", finding nothing opprobrious
in such sentiments because the leader of the scientific opposition
to civil rights had made other statements about black inferiority
that were, according to Rushton, "quite objective in tone and
backed by standard social science evidence."
Quite apart from the questionable logic in defending a
blatant call to deprive citizens of their rights by citing
Garrett's less offensive writing—as if it were evidence of Ted Bundy's innocence that there were some women
he had met and not killed—there was no sense on Rushton's part that
all of Garrett's assertions, whether or not "objective," were
utterly irrelevant to constitutional guarantees, which are not
predicated on scientific demonstrations of intellectual
equality.
Rushton wrote an opinion piece for the
Ottawa Citizen which blamed the
destruction of "Toronto the Good" on its black inhabitants. The
Southern Poverty Law
Center called the piece "yet another attack" by Rushton and it
criticized those who published his work and that of other "race
scientists".
Rushton spoke at the Preserving Western Civilization conference in
Baltimore in February 2009, organized by
Michael H. Hart to address the need to defend
"America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity" from
immigrants, Muslims, and African Americans. In his speech, Rushton
contended that Islam was not just a cultural, but also a genetic
problem. According to Rushton, the Muslim problem is not just a
condition of their particular belief system. Instead, he argued
that Muslims have an aggressive personality with relatively closed,
simple minds, and are less impervious to reason than one might
expect. The
Anti-Defamation
League describe the conference as being attended by "racist
academics, conservative pundits and anti-immigrant
activists".
Criticism of methodology
There has been criticism of Rushton's work in the scholarly
literature, to which Rushton has generally responded, often in the
same journal.
Steven Cronshaw and colleagues wrote in a paper for the
International Journal of Selection and Assessment in 2006
that psychologists need to critically examine the science employed
in Rushton's
race-realist research. Through a re-analysis
of the validity criteria for test bias using data reported in the
Rushton et al. paper, they assert that the testing methods
were in fact biased against Black Africans. They disagree with
other aspects of Rushton's methodology, such as the use of
non-equivalent groups in test samples. Rushton replied in the next
issue of the journal, explaining why his results were valid, and
why the criticisms were incorrect.
Lisa
Suzuki and Joshua Aronson of New York University
wrote in 2005 that Rushton has ignored evidence
that fails to support his position that IQ test score gaps
represent a genetic racial
hierarchy. He has not changed his position on this matter
for 30 years. Rushton replied in the same issue of the
journal.
After
Rushton had mailed a booklet to psychology, sociology, and
anthropology professors across North America, Hermann Helmuth, a
professor of anthropology at Trent University
, said: "It is in a way personal and political
propaganda. There is no basis to his scientific research."
Rushton responded, "It's not racist, it's a matter of science and
recognizing variation in all groups of people."
Zack Cernovsky, in the
Journal of Black Studies,
claims "some of Rushton's references to scientific literature with
respects to racial differences in sexual characteristics turned out
to be references to a nonscientific semipornographic book and to an
article in the
Penthouse magazine's Forum."
Criticism and reprimand
Articles in the Canadian press based on interviews with Rushton's
first-year psychology students reported that Rushton had surveyed
students in 1988 by asking "such questions as how large their
penises are, how many sex partners they have had, and how far they
can ejaculate." First-year psychology students at UWO are required
"to participate in approved surveys as a condition of their
studies. If they choose not to, they must write five research
papers. Also, many students feel subtle pressure to participate in
order not to offend professors who may later be grading their work.
However, if a study is not approved, these requirements do not
apply at all." For not telling them they had the option to not
participate without incurring additional work, Rushton was barred
by the university where he is tenured from using students as
research subjects for two years.
Also in
1988, Rushton conducted a survey at the Eaton Centre mall in
Toronto
where 50 whites, 50 blacks, and 50 Asians were paid
to answer questions about their sexual habits. For not
receiving permission of the university committee where he is
employed, the administration at the University of Western Ontario
reprimanded Rushton, calling his transgression "a serious breach of
scholarly procedure," said University President, George
Pederson.
See also
References
External links
Works by Rushton
Pro-Rushton
Anti-Rushton
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