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Kevin B. MacDonald, (born January 24, 1944) is a professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, best known for using evolutionary psychology to inform the study of Judaism. Is best known for his research arguing that Jewish ethnocentricism enhances the ability of Jews to out-compete non-Jews for resources. His research has generated furious debate among scholars in his field, some accepting, while others rejecting MacDonald's work.
Early years
MacDonald was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. His father was a policeman, his mother a secretary. He went to Roman Catholic schools and played basketball in high school. He entered the University of Wisconsin and became a radical activist in the anti-war movement from about 1965 to 1975. During this period, he perceived the East Coast Jewish origins of the majority of the movement there (C of C, p 104), which served to spark an interest in Jewish intellectual movements in his later years as a professor of psychology.
Graduating as a philosophy major, he lost his religion and became very sympathetic to psychoanalysis. He embarked on a career as a Jazz pianist, but by the late 1970s had abandoned it in favour of academia. He has two adult children from his first marriage.
Professional background
MacDonald is the author of seven books on evolutionary psychology and child development and is the author or editor of over thirty academic articles in refereed journals. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1966, and M.S. in biology from the University of Connecticut in 1976. He earned a Ph.D. in 1981 (Biobehavioral Sciences) from the University of Connecticut where he studied under Professor Benson E. Ginsburg, one of the founders and leaders of modern behavior genetics, as his advisor. His thesis was on the behavioral development of wolves and resulted in two publications: MacDonald, K. B., and Ginsburg, B. E. (1981). Induction of normal behavior in wolves with restricted rearing. Behavioral and Neural Biology, 33, 133-162; MacDonald, K. B. (1983). Development and stability of personality characteristics in prepubertal wolves. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 97, 99-106, 1983.
He completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Ross Parke at the psychology department of the University of Illinois in 1983. His work there concerned rough and tumble play in children (he had two small boys at home at the time as well) and resulted in three publications: MacDonald, K. B., & Parke, R. D. (1984). Bridging the gap: Parent-child play interactions and peer interactive competence. Child Development, 55, 1265-1277; MacDonald, K. B., & Parke, R. D. (1986). Parent-child physical play: The effects of sex and age of children and parents. Sex Roles, 15, 367-378, 1986; MacDonald, K. B. (1987). Parent-child physical play with rejected, neglected and popular boys. Developmental Psychology, 23, 705-711.
He served as Secretary-Archivist of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society and was elected as a member of the executive board from 1995 to 2001, much to the dismay of those in the organization seeking to avoid controversy. He was an editor of Population and Environment and is an associate editor of the journal Sexuality & Culture. He serves on the Advisory Board of The Occidental Quarterly and makes occasional contributions to VDARE.com, an immigration reductionist weblog often accused of racism.
He has been with the Department of Psychology at California State University--Long Beach since 1985 and as a full professor since 1995.
Academic works addressing Judaism as a Collective Evolutionary Strategy
- For the main article, see The Culture of Critique series.
MacDonald is best known for his trilogy of books analyzing Judaism and Jewish culture from the perspective of Evolutionary Psychology, comprising A People That Shall Dwell Alone (1994), Separation and Its Discontents (1998), and The Culture of Critique (1998). In these books he proposes that Judaism is a group evolutionary strategy to enhance the ability of Jews to out-compete non-Jews for resources. In using the term Ethnocentrism, he argues that Judaism has fostered in Jews a series of marked genetic traits, including above-average verbal intelligence, intensity of emotion and a strong tendency toward collectivist behavior.
Jewish role in facilitating mass immigration
Many in the West have long argued that there has been a significant or central Jewish role in facilitating mass immigration into the United States and other European nations. Recently MacDonald has echoed their claims. MacDonald argues that various segments of the Jewish community have been among the most important and powerful voice arguing over the past century in favor of unrestricted immigration to the United States, and that these segments of the community have been acting in their own perceived collective interests, regardless of whether these are in conflict with their interests as perceived by others in their group, or as in conflict with the interests of other Americans.
MacDonald's main thesis centers around the period preceding the all-important 1965 Immigration Act when strict, country-of-origin based quotas existed, mostly favoring immigration from Europe. According to MacDonald, while most of the ethnic communities in that period were somewhat active in trying to affect the increase of immigration quotas from their own countries of origin (i.e. the Irish for immigration from Ireland, Greeks for immigration from Greece etc.), only the Jewish community activists were requesting (and ultimately obtained in 1965) the dismantling of country-of-origin quotas and an increase in immigration across the board. This policy shift benefitted primarily non-European immigration and had a profound impact on the US demographic landscape in the following decades. He also contrasts U.S. immigration policy with the more restrictive immigration policies of Israel.
He cites Leonard S. Glickman of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who stated to an on-line Jewish journal that "The more diverse American society is the safer are." MacDonald expresses his opinions on immigration on the VDARE website:
Why members of the Jewish community, which over so many centuries demonstrated such determination to preserve its distinctiveness, should have been so demonstrably active in preventing the preservation of the nation in which they find themselves, is an interesting question... Much of the effort was done more or less surreptitiously so as not to fan the flames of anti-Jewish sentiment.
MacDonald also points out that even the Jewish activist Stephen Steinlight, who argues against mass immigration, does so on explicitly ethnocentric grounds: "Our present privilege, success, and power do not inure us from the effect of historical processes, and history has not come to an end, even in America."
Race, culture, and intelligence
Like his fellow contributors to Vdare, MacDonald has offered mountains of empirical evidence demonstrating that racial differences are important and disproving the notion that racial and cultural assimilation will be an easy process. He has consistently refuted the arguments of scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, and Jared Diamond who have been leading proponents of the minority view asserting that there are no essential differences between races, and which attributes alleged racial differences in intelligence and psychology to such factors as environment rather than heredity.
- See also: Race and intelligence.
MacDonald on Neoconservatism
MacDonald published an article in The Occidental Quarterly, a journal of opinion, on the alleged similarities between neoconservatism and several other possibly Jewish-dominated influential intellectual and political movements. He argues that "aken as a whole, neoconservatism is an excellent illustration of the key traits behind the success of Jewish activism: ethnocentrism, intelligence and wealth, psychological intensity, and aggressiveness." His general conclusions are that neoconservatism fits into a general pattern of twentieth-century Jewish intellectual and political activism. Since Leo Strauss, a philosophy professor, taught several of the putative founders of the neoconservatism, MacDonald concludes he is a central figure in the neo-conservative movement and sees him as "the quintessential rabbinical guru with devoted disciples".
MacDonald contends that, like Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxism, neoconservatism uses arguments that appeal to non-Jews, rather than appealing explicitly to Jewish interests. MacDonald argues that non-Jewish neo-conservatives like Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Donald Rumsfeld are examples of an ability to recruit prominent non-Jews while nevertheless preserving a Jewish core and an intense commitment to Jewish interests: "it makes excellent psychological sense to have the spokespeople for any movement resemble the people they are trying to convince." He considers it significant that neoconservatism's commitment to mass immigration is uncharacteristic of past conservative thought and is identical to liberal Jewish opinion.
Books and monographs
Main article: The Culture of Critique series
- MacDonald, K. B. Understanding Jewish Influence: A Study in Ethnic Activism, with an Introduction by Samuel Francis, (The Occidental Quarterly November, 2004) ISBN 1-59368-017-1Online version
- Burgess, R. L. & MacDonald, K. B. (Eds.) Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Development, 2nd ed., (Sage 2004) ISBN 0761927905
- MacDonald, K. B. The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, (Praeger 1998) ISBN 0275961133 (Preface online)
- MacDonald, K. B. Separation and Its Discontents Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism, (Praeger 1998) ISBN 0275948706
- MacDonald, K. B. A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism As a Group Evolutionary Strategy, With Diaspora Peoples, (Praeger 1994) ISBN 0595228380
- MacDonald, K. B. (Ed.), Parent-child Play: Descriptions and Implications,. (State University of New York Press 1993)
- MacDonald, K. B. (Ed.) Sociobiological Perspectives on Human Development, (Springer-Verlag 1988)
- MacDonald, K. B. Social and Personality Development: An Evolutionary Synthesis (Plenum 1988)
External links
MacDonald's website
- Official website
- Summaries and Reviews of MacDonald's books as collected by Kevin MacDonald
- MacDonald's reasons for testifying for David Irving as given by Kevin MacDonald
- MacDonald replies to Lieberman, December 13, 2003 on Evolutionary Psychology email list and to Jaff Schatz, h-antisemitism, Dec. 10, 1999
- Newspaper article on MacDonald and Irving, and MacDonald and Evolutionary Psychology
- Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965: A Historical Review
Criticisms of MacDonald's work
- Slate:"Evolutionary Psychology's Anti-Semite"
- Open letter by Judith Shulevitz to John Tooby about MacDonald
- Scholarship as an Exercise in Rhetorical Strategy: A Case Study of Kevin MacDonald's Research Techniques