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Race Science and the Pioneer Fund

Note: Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as “The Fund­ing of the Sci­ence” in Search­light No 277 (Jul7 1998). This ver­sion is slight­ly revised and expand­ed.

This spe­cial issue of Search­light devot­ed to race sci­ence con­tains arti­cles on Amer­i­can Renais­sance mag­a­zine, Richard J. Her­rn­stein and Charles Mur­ray’s The Bell Curve, Right Now! mag­a­zine, and two back­ground arti­cles on the his­to­ry and mod­ern appli­ca­tions of race sci­ence. If one scratch­es the sur­face of any of these top­ics one finds that the Pio­neer Fund has played a sig­nif­i­cant role.

The Pio­neer Fund has been involved in the his­to­ry of race sci­ence since its estab­lish­ment in 1937. One of its founders, Har­ry Laugh­lin wrote a mod­el ster­il­iza­tion law wide­ly used in both the Unit­ed States and Europe. Many of the key aca­d­e­m­ic racists in both Right Now! and Amer­i­can Renais­sance have been fund­ed by the Pio­neer and the Pio­neer was direct­ly involved in fund­ing the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can Renais­sance, the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion. Indeed, most of the lead­ing Anglo-Amer­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic race-sci­en­tists of the last sev­er­al decades have been fund­ed by the Pio­neer, includ­ing William Shock­ley, Hans J. Eysenck, Arthur Jensen, Roger Pear­son, Richard Lynn, J. Philippe Rush­ton, R. Travis Osborne, Lin­da Got­tfred­son, Robert A. Gor­don, Daniel R. Vin­ing, Jr., Michael Levin, and Sey­mour Itzkoff — all cit­ed in The Bell Curve. (1)

The Pio­neer Fund’s orig­i­nal endow­ment came from Wick­liffe Drap­er, scion of old-stock Protes­tant gen­try. Drap­er grew up in Hope­dale, Mass­a­chu­setts — a com­pa­ny town built by his fam­i­ly. Liv­ing in what one his­to­ri­an has called a “a qua­si-feu­dal manor house.” The com­pa­ny main­tained almost total con­trol over the lives of com­pa­ny work­ers until 1912 when the IWW orga­nized the Drap­er Com­pa­ny at Hope­dale after a four month strike.(2)

Colonel Drap­er, as he was often called by his friends and admir­ers was a man search­ing for a way to restore an old­er order. Drap­er believed geneti­cists could sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly prove the infe­ri­or­i­ty of Negros. Accord­ing to Bruce Wal­lace, a geneti­cist who tutored Drap­er in the lat­er 1940s, Drap­er “was sure that we had all the answers and that we were just too fright­ened to say what they meant.”(3) Under his direc­tion, the Pio­neer Fund’s orig­i­nal char­ter out­lined a com­mit­ment to “improve the char­ac­ter of the Amer­i­can peo­ple” by encour­ag­ing the pro­cre­ation of descen­dants of the orig­i­nal white colo­nial stock.

Aban­doned by the polit­i­cal main­stream after World War II,(4) Drap­er turned more and more to aca­d­e­m­ic irre­den­tists still ded­i­cat­ed to white suprema­cy and eugen­ics. Most promi­nent among these ear­ly recruits was Hen­ry Gar­rett, Chair of Psy­chol­o­gy at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty from 1941–1955. A Vir­ginia born seg­re­ga­tion­ist, Gar­rett was a key wit­ness in defend­ing seg­re­ga­tion in Davis v. Coun­ty School Board (1952) one of the con­stituent cas­es in the land­mark Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion (1954).(5)

It is worth exam­in­ing the changes in Pio­neer grants over the past four decades. For those inter­est­ed we are pro­vid­ing a spread­sheet of all Pio­neer grants from 1971 to 1996. Dur­ing the 1950s and 1960s, Gar­rett helped to dis­trib­ute grants for Drap­er and was one of the founders of the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Eugen­ics and Eth­nol­o­gy (IAAEE) in 1959. The IAAEE brought togeth­er aca­d­e­m­ic defend­ers of seg­re­ga­tion in the U.S. and apartheid in South Africa. The Pio­neer Fund sup­port­ed the IAAEE and oth­er insti­tu­tions work­ing to legit­imis­ing race sci­ence, includ­ing the IAAEE’s jour­nal, Mankind Quar­ter­ly. (6)

In the 1970s the chief ben­e­fi­cia­ries were the Foun­da­tion for Human Under­stand, an orga­ni­za­tion direct­ed by R. Travis Osborne; Arther Jensen’s Insti­tute for the Study of Edu­ca­tion­al Dif­fer­ences, Shock­ley’s Foun­da­tion for Research and Edu­ca­tion in Eugen­ics and Dys­gen­ics; and the IAAEE.

By the decade of the eight­ies, the largest Pio­neer grants went to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, Arthur Jensen’s Insti­tute for the Study of Edu­ca­tion­al Dif­fer­ences, the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Con­trol, Roger Pear­son­’s Insti­tute for the Study of Man, the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

Dur­ing the 1990s, the major recip­i­ents of Fund grants have been the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, the Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario, the Ulster Insti­tute for Social Research, the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR), the Insti­tute for the Study of Man, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware.

When Drap­er first found­ed the Fund in 1937, he was look­ing for “use­ful sci­ence.” He was con­vinced that sci­en­tists had the answers he was look­ing for, but were too timid to admit the truth of race dif­fer­ences, Negro infe­ri­or­i­ty and the val­ue of eugen­ics. From the 1960s to the 1990s the Fund has sin­gled out indi­vid­ual aca­d­e­mics whose work proved use­ful in the polit­i­cal strug­gles against inte­gra­tion, open immi­gra­tion and oth­er right wing caus­es. While orga­ni­za­tions such as FAIR have received sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing, pref­er­ence has always been giv­en to the more gen­er­al pur­pose (or mul­ti-pur­pose) schol­ar­ship sup­port­ing bio­log­i­cal deter­min­ism, genet­i­cal­ly based race dif­fer­ences, and eugen­ics. In the ear­ly years, Pio­neer funds were fun­neled through small orga­ni­za­tions such as the IAAEE and FHU which were set up by mar­gin­al­ized schol­ars to dis­sem­i­nate work for which there were few main­stream out­lets. By the 1990s, most of the funds were being dis­trib­uted direct­ly to uni­ver­si­ties for sup­port of Pio­neer affil­i­at­ed schol­ars.

Lead­ing Grant Recip­i­ents, 1994–1996

Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario (J. Philippe Rush­ton) $334,405

Ulster Insti­tute for Social Research (Richard Lynn) $289,000

Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta (Thomas Bouchard) $218,967

Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware (Lin­da Got­tfred­son) $177,541

Insti­tute for the Study of Man (Roger Pear­son) $159,500

Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform $100,500

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Com­pared to the largest Amer­i­can foun­da­tions, the Pio­neer Fund is very small. Its assets have nev­er exceed­ed $6.5 mil­lion (£4 mil­lion) and its total annu­al grants have nev­er exceed­ed $900,000. But the Pio­neer Fund’s impor­tance in the his­to­ry of post-war race sci­ence far exceeds its size or the size of its grants. With almost laser-like pre­ci­sion, the Pio­neer Fund has been at the cut­ting edge of almost every race con­flict in the Unit­ed States since its found­ing in 1937.

SHOCKLEY AND JENSEN

The Pio­neer Fund has changed lit­tle since its incep­tion. An arti­cle in the New York Times on Decem­ber 11, 1977 char­ac­ter­ized it as hav­ing “sup­port­ed high­ly con­tro­ver­sial research by a dozen sci­en­tists who believe that blacks are genet­i­cal­ly less intel­li­gent than whites.” In the 1960s Nobel Lau­re­ate William Shock­ley (1910–1989), a physi­cist at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty best known for his “vol­un­tary ster­il­iza­tion bonus plan” received an esti­mat­ed $188,710 from the Pio­neer Fund between 1971 and 1978. Arthur Jensen, an edu­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist, gar­nered more than a mil­lion dol­lars in Pio­neer grants over the past three decades. Three years after being recruit­ed by Shock­e­ly, Jensen pub­lished his now famous attack on Head Start in the pres­ti­gious Har­vard Edu­ca­tion Review. Jensen claimed the prob­lem with black chil­dren was that they had an aver­age IQ of only 85 and that no amount of social engi­neer­ing would improve their per­for­mance. Jensen urged “eugenic fore­sight” as the only solu­tion. (7)

ROGER PEARSON

Roger Pear­son, whose Insti­tute for the Study of
Man has been one of the top Pio­neer ben­e­fi­cia­ries over the past twen­ty years ($870,000 from 1981–1996) is the clear­est exam­ple of the extrem­ist ide­ol­o­gy of the Fund’s lead­er­ship. Pear­son came to the Unit­ed States in the mid-six­ties to join Willis Car­to and the group around Right mag­a­zine. In 1965 he became edi­tor of West­ern Des­tiny, a mag­a­zine estab­lished by Car­to and ded­i­cat­ed to spread­ing fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy. Using the pseu­do­nym of Stephan Lang­ton, Pear­son then became the edi­tor of The New Patri­ot, a short-lived mag­a­zine pub­lished in 1966–67 to con­duct “a respon­si­ble but pen­e­trat­ing inquiry into every aspect of the Jew­ish Ques­tion,” which includ­ed arti­cles such as “Zion­ists and the Plot Against South Africa,” “Ear­ly Jews and the Rise of Jew­ish Mon­ey Pow­er,” and “Swindlers of the Cre­ma­to­ria.” Tak­ing account of all groups linked to Pear­son, Pio­neer sup­port between 1975–1996 exceeds one mil­lion dol­lars — near­ly ten per­cent of the total Pio­neer grants for that peri­od.

J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON

For the past few years, Uni­ver­si­ty of West­ern Ontario psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor J. Philippe Rush­ton has replaced Jensen as the top indi­vid­ual ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Pio­neer largess. Since 1981 he has ben­e­fit­ed from more than a mil­lion dol­lars in Pio­neer grants. Rush­ton argues that behav­ioral dif­fer­ences among blacks, whites, and Asians are the result of evo­lu­tion­ary vari­a­tions in their repro­duc­tive strate­gies. Blacks are at one extreme, Rush­ton claims, because they pro­duce large num­bers of off­spring but offer them lit­tle care; at the oth­er extreme are Asians, who have few­er chil­dren but indulge them; whites lie some­where in between. Despite Rushton’s con­tro­ver­sial race the­o­ries, he has been embraced by the sci­en­tif­ic main­stream, hav­ing been elect­ed a fel­low of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence, and the Amer­i­can, British, and Cana­di­an Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tions.

The Pio­neer Fund seved as a small part of “a mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar polit­i­cal empire of cor­po­ra­tions, foun­da­tions, polit­i­cal action com­mit­tees and ad hoc groups” active in 1980s (Wash­ing­ton Post, March 31, 1985, p. 1; A16) devel­oped by Tom Ellis, Har­ry Wey­her, Mar­i­on Par­rott, R.E. Carter-Wrenn and Jesse Helms. The Fund has served as a nexus between aca­d­e­m­ic the­o­ry and prac­ti­cal polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy. It’s lead­er­ship, espe­cial­ly, Har­ry Wey­her, Thomas F. Ellis and Mar­i­on A. Par­rott are part of an inter­lock­ing set of direc­torates and asso­ciates link­ing the Pio­neer Fund to Jesse Helms’ high-tech polit­i­cal machine. Ellis, for exam­ple, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly served as Chair­man of the Nation­al Con­gres­sion­al Club and the Coali­tion for Free­dom, co-founder of Fair­ness in Media, a board mem­ber of the Edu­ca­tion­al Sup­port Foun­da­tion and Direc­tor of the Pio­neer Fund. Har­ry Wey­her, pres­i­dent of the Pio­neer Fund served as lead coun­sel for Fair­ness in Media.

AFTER THE PIONEER FUND?

The Pio­neer Fund has defined, in impor­tant ways, a dis­tinct era in the his­to­ry of con­tem­po­rary think­ing about race. This era began after World War II, when anti-egal­i­tar­i­an race sci­en­tists were sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized and defeat­ed, and it con­tin­ued long enough to wit­ness their sub­se­quent vic­to­ry, with the Pio­neer Fund’s sup­port, in an aggres­sive cam­paign to reha­bil­i­tate the notion of incor­ri­gi­ble racial dif­fer­ences as a car­di­nal sci­en­tif­ic and civic fact. This era may now be com­ing to an end. Har­ry Wey­her and the oth­ers who have guid­ed the Fund’s activ­i­ties for sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions will prob­a­bly soon pass from the scene, and many of the grant recip­i­ents with whom it has been most close­ly iden­ti­fied also are approach­ing the end of their pro­duc­tive lives.

The envi­ron­ment with­in which the Fund oper­ates has also changed. Over the past decade the Fund has respond­ed to these cir­cum­stances, and to the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty afford­ed it in recent years for advanc­ing its agen­da, by accel­er­at­ing its grant-mak­ing to a rate sus­tain­able only by spend­ing its cap­i­tal. Wey­her was quot­ed in GQ mag­a­zine after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Bell Curve as say­ing, “It seemed to make more sense to spend the mon­ey than to save it, so we spent it. Once it’s gone, we’ll just quit.”(8) As a result of this pol­i­cy, by the end of 1996 the Fund’s assets had declined in real terms to less than 40 per­cent of their 1986 lev­el. If this trend con­tin­ues, the Fund will not long out­last its cur­rent offi­cers. At the same time, the devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive sources of fund­ing is mak­ing work­ers in the fields that the Fund tra­di­tion­al­ly has sup­port­ed less depen­dent on it. These changes in fund­ing arrange­ments will change the char­ac­ter of dis­course on immi­gra­tion and indi­vid­ual and group dif­fer­ences in ways that can­not now be fore­seen.

For now, how­ev­er, it is a use­ful mea­sure of the Pio­neer Fund’s suc­cess that anti-egal­i­tar­i­an race sci­en­tists are more con­fi­dent and bet­ter orga­nized in the Unit­ed States than at any time since the 1920s, and pub­lic pol­i­cy inter­na­tion­al­ly has begun ineluctably to reflect their assump­tions and pref­er­ences.
Bar­ry Mehler, Direc­tor
Kei­th Hurt, Research Asso­ciate
•Insti­tute for the Study of Aca­d­e­m­ic Racism, 1998

FOOTNOTES:
1. Pio­neer Grants were made to the New Cen­tu­ry Foun­da­tion (NCF) in 1994, 1995, and 1996. 1997 and 1998 data is not yet avail­able (see our spread­sheet). The first Pio­neer grant to NCF was $12,000 approved as of Sept 21, 1994 “for pub­lish­ing & dis­sem­i­nat­ing writ­ings which enable the pub­lic to under­stand sci­en­tif­ic find­ings about the human race and which oth­er­wise might not be pub­lished.” A $500 grant was approved as of Dec 8, 1995 “for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of sci­en­tif­ic man­u­scripts.” And final­ly, a $4,990 grant was paid to NCF dur­ing 1996. It is prob­a­ble that the mate­r­i­al dis­trib­uted includ­ed work by such major Pio­neer grantees as J.P. Rush­ton and Michael Levin. They were among the speak­ers at the 1994 and 1996 AR con­fer­ences, and the mon­ey might have gone to sup­port­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion of the pro­ceed­ings of the con­fer­ences.

2. Mar­garet Craw­ford, Build­ing the Working­i­nan’s Par­adise: The Design of Amer­i­can Com­pa­ny Towns. Hay­mar­ket Series. Lon­don and New York: Ver­so, 1995.

3. Taped inter­view with Bruce Wal­lace 24 Jan­u­ary 1990. Between March and May 1960, Ronald W. May wrote a series of arti­cles on Drap­er’s rela­tion­ship to the House Un-amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee. In prepa­ra­tion for these arti­cles he inter­viewed a num­ber of well-known geneti­cists, includ­ing Bruce Wal­lace. Wal­lace was quot­ed by May in “Genet­ics and Sub­ver­sion,” The Nation (May 14, 1960). Defend­ers of the Pio­neer Fund have raised ques­tions about the authen­tic­i­ty of these quotes, so in 1990, I called Dr. Wal­lace. Dr. Wal­lace did not remem­ber the inter­view with May, but after hear­ing the quotes attrib­uted to him said: “I can say this and that is that the tenor of quo­ta­tions you have cit­ed to me are prob­a­bly cor­rect.”

4. Fred­er­ick Osborn, for exam­ple, a founder of the Pio­neer Fund along with Har­ry Laugh­lin, dis­tanced him­self from the Pio­neer Fund. In a dra­mat­ic part­ing of ways in 1954, Drap­er offered Osborn full sup­port for the finan­cial­ly ail­ing Amer­i­can Eugen­ics Soci­ety if Osborn would sup­port “mea­sures for estab­lish­ing racial homoge­ni­ety in the Unit­ed States.” Osborn turned down Drap­er’s offer and resigned from the Pio­neer board.

5. New­by, I. (1969). Chal­lenge to the court: Social Sci­en­tists and the defense of seg­re­ga­tion, 1954–1996. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty Press; Kluger, R. Sim­ple Jus­tice: The his­to­ry of Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion and Black America’s strug­gle for equal­i­ty. (New York: Knopf, 1976).

6. Win­ston, A. S. (1998). “Sci­ence in the ser­vice of the far right: Hen­ry E. Gar­rett, the IAAEE, and the Lib­er­ty Lob­by.” Jour­nal of Social Issues, 54, no. 1, 179–209.

7. Hirsch, J. “To Unfrock the Char­la­tans,” Sage Race Rela­tions Abstracts 6 #2 (May 1981) pp. 1–68 and “Jensenism: The Bank­rup­cy of “Sci­ence” With­out Schol­ar­ship Edu­ca­tion­al The­o­ry 25 No 1 (Win­ter, 1975) pp. 3–27.

8. Sed­wick, John. “The Mena­tal­i­ty Bunker,” Gen­tle­men’s Quar­ter­ly (Novem­ber 1994).