Charles Murray (author)

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Charles Alan Murray (born 1943) is an influential right-wing American policy writer and researcher. He is best 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.

Image:Charles Murray.gif 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 Race and intelligence (Public controversy)#Scientific misconduct).

Commenting on the furor over The Bell Curve, he wrote:

Many academics who are familiar with the state of knowledge are afraid to go on the record. Talking publicly can dry up research funding for senior professors and can cost assistant professors their jobs. [1]

See also: the discussion of intelligence testing


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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.

As a late-teenage youth, Murray and several friends staged a cross-burning ceremony outside a police station in his home town. Murray claimed he was unaware at the time of the Ku Klux Klan associations of this activity. [2]

Before joining AIR, Murray spent six years in Thailand, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer attached-to the Village Health Program, then as a researcher in rural Thailand. Murray was born and raised in Newton, Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in history from Harvard and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He lives with his wife and children near Washington, D.C.

Murray and his wife attend a Quaker meeting in Virginia known as Goose Creek Meeting.[3]

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Works

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External links

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