Charles Murray (political scientist)
Charles Alan Murray (/ˈmɜːri/; born January 8, 1943) is an American political scientist. He is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Charles Murray | |
|---|---|
Murray in 2013 | |
| Born | Charles Alan Murray January 8, 1943 Newton, Iowa, U.S. |
| Spouses | Suchart Dej-Udom
(m. 1966; div. 1980)Catherine Bly Cox (m. 1983) |
| Children | 4 |
| Awards | Irving Kristol Award (2009) Kistler Prize (2011) |
| Scholarly background | |
| Education | Harvard University (BA) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MA, PhD) |
| Thesis | Investment and Tithing in Thai Villages: A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization (1974) |
| Doctoral advisor | Lucian Pye |
| Scholarly work | |
| Discipline | Political science |
| School or tradition | Right-libertarianism |
| Institutions | American Institutes for Research Manhattan Institute for Policy Research American Enterprise Institute |
| Main interests | Race and intelligence Social welfare policy |
| Notable works | Losing Ground (1984) The Bell Curve (1994) Coming Apart (2012) |
Murray's work is highly controversial. His book Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (1984) discussed the American welfare system. In the book The Bell Curve (1994), he and co-author Richard Herrnstein argue that in 20th-century American society, intelligence became a better predictor than parental socioeconomic status or education level of many individual outcomes, including income, job performance, pregnancy out of wedlock, and crime, and that social welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely counterproductive. The Bell Curve also claims that average intelligence quotient (IQ) differences between racial and ethnic groups are at least partly genetic in origin, a view that is now considered discredited by mainstream science.