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Charles Alan Murray (born 1943) is an influential American policy writer and researcher. He is most widely known as the co-author (with Richard J. Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve in 1994, exploring the role of intelligence in American life, and for his influential work on welfare reform. He's written several other books on modern social issues and politics, and has sometimes written on libertarian perspectives.
Murray has been named a number of times on lists of influential Americans in national policy-making. He obtained a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and has been a fellow of the influential American Enterprise Institute since 1990. He has been a frequent contributor to The Public Interest, a journal of conservative politics and culture.
In addition to his books and articles in technical journals, Murray has published extensively in The New Republic, Commentary, The Public Interest, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post. He has been a frequent witness before congressional and senate committees and a consultant to senior government officials of the United States, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and the OECD. Murray was named by the National Journal as one of the 50 "People Who Make a Difference" in national policy-making. When U.S. News and World Report published its cover story on "The New American Establishment," Murray was chosen as one of thirty-two men and women who define the contemporary intellectual debate on social policy. A recent Newsweek cover article picked Murray as one of a hundred Americans who lead their fields.
Murray has received grants from the right-wing Bradley Foundation to support his scholarship, including the writing of The Bell Curve. As a result of that book's controversial claims, Murray reportedly received bomb threats, as have a number of other race and intelligence researchers (see Scientific misconduct in Race and intelligence).
Commenting on the furor over The Bell Curve, he wrote:
See also: the discussion of intelligence testing
Biography
Murray has been affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute since 1990. During 1981-1990, he was a fellow with the Manhattan Institute, where he wrote Losing Ground, which heavily influenced the welfare reform debate in 1996, and In Pursuit. During 1974-1981, Murray worked for the American Institutes for Research (AIR), one of the largest of the private social science research organizations, eventually becoming Chief Scientist. While at AIR, Murray supervised evaluations in the fields of urban education, welfare services, daycare, adolescent pregnancy, services for the elderly, and criminal justice.
Murray was raised in an Iowa "Norman Rockwell kind of family" that stressed moral responsibility, and had an intellectual youth perhaps marked by a rebellious and prankster sensibility.*DeParle, Jason (1994). "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'?: Charles Murray", New York Times, Oct. 9. (p. 3). As a teen he played pool at a hangout for juvenile delinquents, studied debating, and, to his parents' annoyance, espoused labor unionism.DeParle 1994, pp. 3-4. DeParle's biographical article finds in some of Murray's life and work a still-present theme of a high-school prankster who "only later what the fuss [is all about" (p.12). Some critics, however, have found significant one incident in particular written about by DeParle:
"While there is much to admire about the industry and inquisitiveness of Murray's teen-age years, there is at least one adventure that he understandably deletes from the story -- the night he helped his friends burn a cross. They had formed a kind of good guys' gang, "the Mallows," whose very name, from marshmallows, was a play on their own softness. In the fall of 1960, during their senior year, they nailed some scrap wood into a cross, adorned it with fireworks and set it ablaze on a hill beside the police station, with marshmallows scattered as a calling card.
Rutledge social worker and former juvenile delinquent who was still hanging around the pool hall considers some of Murray's other memories to be idealized recalls his astonishment the next day when the talk turned to racial persecution in a town with two black families. "There wouldn't have been a racist thought in our simple-minded minds," he says. "That's how unaware we were."
A long pause follows when Murray is reminded of the event. "Incredibly, incredibly dumb," he says. "But it never crossed our minds that this had any larger significance. And I look back on that and say, 'How on earth could we be so oblivious?' I guess it says something about that day and age that it didn't cross our minds" (p. 4).
Murray earned his B.A. from Harvard in 1965 and left for the Peace Corps in Thailand, staying abroad for a formative six years.DeParle, pp. 4-5 At the beginning of this period, the young Murray kindled a romance with his Thai Buddhist language instructor (in Hawaii), Suchart Dej-Udom, the daughter of a wealthy Thai businessman, who was "born with one hand and a mind sharp enough to outscore the rest of the country on the college entrance exam." Murray subsequently proposed by mail from Thailand, and their 14-year marriage began the following year. Murray's work for the Peace Corps and subsequent social research in Thailand for research firms associated with the U.S. government led to his statistical doctoral thesis in political science at M.I.T., in which he argued against government intervention in the lives of the Thai villagers.
Murray began research work at AIR upon his return to the U.S. By the 1980s, his marriage had been unhappy for years, but "his childhood lessons on the importance of responsibility brought him slowly to the idea that divorce was an honorable alternative, especially with young children involved."DeParle, p. 7 Murray would later re-marry to an English literature instructor at Rutgers, Catherine Bly Cox. Cox was initially dubious when she saw him reading conservative works, and spent long hours "trying to reconcile his shocking views with what she saw as his deep decency." Murray now has four children and remains close with both families.Two children from each marriage: DeParle, pp. 7-8. Murray and his wife co-authored in 1989 a book on the Apollo program, Apollo: Race to the Moon, which saw it's most recent reprint in 2004, and for which they're still invited to give speeches.Nasa Symposium on Forty Years of Human Spaceflight (2001). The book was well reviewed: "Rich, densely packed and beautifully told.... Filled with cliffhangers, suspense and spine-tingling adventure." -Charles Sheffield, Washington Post Book World, July 9 1989. "Heart-gripping.... So brilliantly told one can almost smell the perspiration in Houston Mission Control." -Charles Petit, San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1989: Murray and Cox have at least sometimes been involved in a Quaker meeting in Virginia, and they live in rural Maryland near Washington, D.C..Quaker meeting:*; current location: DeParle p. 8.
Works
- A Behavioral Study of Rural Modernization: Social and Economic Change in Thai Villages (Praeger Publishers, 1977)
- Beyond Probation: Juvenile Corrections and the Chronic Delinquent - co-authored with Louis A. Cox, Jr. (Sage Publications, 1979)
- Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, Basic Books (1984) ISBN 0465042317
- In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, Simon & Schuster (1989) ISBN 0671687433
- Apollo: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of One of Humankind’s Greatest Achievements - co-authored by Catherine Bly Cox, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
- The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, with Richard Herrnstein, (1994) ISBN 0029146739
- What it Means to be a Libertarian, Broadway Books (1997) ISBN 0553069284
- Income Inequality and IQ, AEI Press (1998) PDF copy
- The Underclass Revisited, AEI Press (1999) PDF copy
- Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, HarperCollins (2003) ISBN 006019247X
- In Our Hands: A Plan To Replace The Welfare State, AEI Press (March 2006)
Notes and references
External links
- NY Times biographical article: "Daring Research or 'Social Science Pornography'?: Charles Murray". DeParle, Jason (1994).
- C-SPAN Book TV In Depth (RealVideo), 3-hour interview.
- Cato Institute Book Forum (RealVideo) (RealAudio), 1 hour lecture that Murray gave discussing his book Human Accomplishment, and some of the response to it.
- Bibliography and guide to works
- Charles Murray's "Dreyfus Affair"
- Address to Commonwealth Club of California on 18-Apr-2006 regarding his welfare reform proposals (RealAudio)
"Charles Murray (author)"