Kevin MacDonald (evolutionary psychologist)

Kevin B. MacDonald was born on January 24, 1944, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to a Roman Catholic family. By the late 1970s, he had left that career. ==Professional background==

MacDonald is the author of seven books on evolutionary theory and child development and is the author or editor of over 30 academic articles in refereed journals. He received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1966, and M.S. in biology from the University of Connecticut in 1976. In 1981, he earned a PhD in biobehavioral sciences from the University of Connecticut, where his adviser was Benson Ginsburg, a founder of modern behavioral genetics. His thesis was on the behavioral development of wolves MacDonald completed a post-doctoral fellowship with Ross Parke in the psychology department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. MacDonald and Parke's work there resulted in three publications. MacDonald joined the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach (CSU-LB) in 1985, and became a full professor in 1995. He announced his retirement at the end of 2014. MacDonald 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. He was editor of Population and Environment from 1999 to 2004, working with Virginia Abernethy, the previous editor, who he persuaded to join the editorial board, along with J. Philippe Rushton, both "intellectual allies" according to the SPLC. has made occasional contributions to VDARE, a website focused on opposition to immigration to the United States and classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. ==Work on ethnicity==

Judaism and Jewish culture MacDonald wrote a trilogy of books purporting to analyze Judaism and secular Jewish culture from the perspective of evolutionary psychology: A People That Shall Dwell Alone (1994), Separation and Its Discontents (1998), and The Culture of Critique (1998). He labels Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy", one that he claims enhances the ability of Jews to outcompete non-Jews for resources. Using the term "Jewish ethnocentrism", he argues that Judaism fosters in Jews a series of marked genetic traits, including above-average verbal intelligence and a strong tendency toward collectivist behavior, as manifested in a series of influential intellectual movements. MacDonald acknowledges that not all Jews in all circumstances display the traits he identifies. Separation and Its Discontents contains a chapter entitled "National Socialism as an Anti-Jewish Group Evolutionary Strategy". According to a summary of MacDonald's ideas by Heidi Beirich of the SPLC in 2007, MacDonald argues that Nazism emerged as a means of opposing, to use MacDonald's term, "Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy". He contends Jewish "group behavior" created understandable hatred for Jews. Thus in MacDonald's opinion, writes Beirich: ==Reception==

Irving v Lipstadt libel trial (2000) MacDonald testified in the unsuccessful libel suit brought by the Holocaust denier David Irving against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt; he was the only witness for Irving who spoke on his behalf willingly. Irving had told the judge that MacDonald would need to be on the witness stand for three days, but his testimony only lasted a few hours. Irving, who argued his case on his own behalf without a lawyer, asked MacDonald if he (Irving) was an antisemite, a question to which MacDonald avoided giving a direct answer, instead saying: "I have had quite a few discussions with you and you almost never mentioned Jews - never in the general negative way." Irving asked if MacDonald "perceived the Jewish community as working in a certain way in order to suppress a certain book" and MacDonald responded in the affirmative, asserting there were "several tactics the Jewish organizations have used." Deborah Lipstadt's lawyer Richard Rampton thought MacDonald's testimony on behalf of Irving was of so little help to Irving that he did not bother to cross examine him. MacDonald later commented in an article for the Journal of Historical Review, published by the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust-denying organisation, that Lipstadt and Jewish groups were attempting to restrict access to Irving's work because it was against Jewish interests and agenda. Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, wrote that MacDonald's work fails "basic tests of scientific credibility." Reviewing MacDonald's Separation and Its Discontents in 2000 Zev Garber, Chair of Jewish Studies at Los Angeles Valley College, writes that MacDonald works from the assumption that the "dual Torah", meaning both the written and oral traditions of Judaism, is the blueprint of eventual Jewish dominion over the world, and that he sees contemporary antisemitism, the Holocaust, and attacks against Israel as "provoked by Jews themselves." Garber concludes that MacDonald's "rambling who-is-who-isn't roundup of Jews responsible for the 'Jewish Problem' borders on the irrational and is conducive to misrepresentation." In 2001, David Lieberman, a Holocaust researcher at Brandeis University, wrote "Scholarship as an Exercise in Rhetorical Strategy: A Case Study of Kevin MacDonald's Research Techniques", a paper in which he notes that one of MacDonald's sources, Jaff Schatz, objected to how MacDonald used his writings to further his premise that Jewish self-identity validates antisemitic sentiments and actions. "At issue, however, is not the quality of Schatz's research, but MacDonald's use of it, a discussion that relies less on topical expertise than on a willingness to conduct close comparative readings", Lieberman wrote. Lieberman accused MacDonald of dishonestly using lines from the work of Holocaust denier David Irving. Citing Irving's Uprising, published in 1981 for the 25th anniversary of Hungary's failed anti-Communist revolution in 1956, MacDonald asserted in the Culture of Critique: Lieberman, who said that MacDonald is not a historian, debunked those assertions, concluding that "the passage offers not a shred of evidence that, as MacDonald would have it, 'Jewish males enjoyed disproportionate sexual access to gentile females.'" Most academics have rejected MacDonald's views about Judaism and race as being unworthy of legitimization or serious attention. Joan Braune, a hate studies scholar who has also written about the Frankfurt School, wrote an analysis of "Cultural Marxism", an antisemitic conspiracy theory, focusing on MacDonald and two others as among the "main proponents of the theory in the United States today". MacDonald writes about "Cultural Marxism" in the third volume of his trilogy, describing it as a Jewish group evolutionary strategy adopted initially by the Frankfurt School that, MacDonald claims, works by appearing to adopt universalist positions (such as social justice) as a ruse to defend Jewish interests by shaming white people into undermining their own race. Braune concludes that "The Culture of Critique is an exercise in circular reasoning and propaganda, not serious scholarship. Its attempts at 'science' are laughable at best", and notes that it unironically quotes Hitler's Mein Kampf as a source on Jewish behaviour. Criticism by the ADL and the SPLC Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claims of MacDonald that "he put the anti-Semitism under the guise of scholarly work... Kevin MacDonald's work is nothing but gussied-up anti-Semitism. At base it says that Jews are out to get us through their agenda... His work is bandied about by just about every neo-Nazi group in America." The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) includes MacDonald in its list of American extremists, "Extremism in America", and wrote a report on MacDonald's views and ties. According to the ADL, his views on Jews mimic those of anti-Semites from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Heidi Beirich wrote in an SPLC Intelligence Report in April 2007: MacDonald claims the SPLC has misrepresented and distorted his work. == CSULB comments ==

In response to MacDonald's research, the Psychology Department of his university in 2006 issued three statements: a "Statement on Academic Freedom and Responsibility in Research," a "Statement on Diversity," The university administration continued to support him, and a California State University (CSULB) spokeswoman stated, "The university will support MacDonald's academic freedom and freedom of speech." Jonathan Knight, who handles academic freedom issues for the American Association of University Professors said if there are no indications that MacDonald shares his views in class, "I don't see a basis for an investigation" into what goes on in his courses. In April 2007, a colleague of MacDonald's, Martin Fiebert, criticized MacDonald for "bigotry and cultural insensitivity", and called it "troubling" that MacDonald's work was being cited by white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations. In an e-mail sent to the college's Daily Forty-Niner newspaper, MacDonald said that he had already pledged not to teach about race differences in intelligence as a requirement for teaching his psychology class, and expressed that he was "not happy" about the disassociation. The newspaper reported that in the email, MacDonald confirmed that his books contained what the paper described as "his claims that the Jewish race was having a negative effect on Western civilization." The Department of Psychology voted to release an April 23, 2008 statement saying, "We respect and defend his right to express his views, but we affirm that they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the Department." The department expressed particular concern that "Dr. MacDonald's research on Jewish culture does not adhere to the Department's explicitly stated values." On May 5, the school's academic senate issued a joint statement disassociating the school from MacDonald's antisemitic views, including specific statements from the Psychology department, the History department, the Anthropology department, the Jewish Studies program, and the Linguistics department. The statement concludes: "While the Academic Senate defends Dr. Kevin MacDonald's academic freedom and freedom of speech, as it does for all faculty, it firmly and unequivocally disassociates itself from the anti-Semitic and white ethnocentric views he has expressed." The senate considered but rejected the use of the word "condemns" in the statement. ==Non-academic affiliations==

The Occidental Quarterly and the National Policy Institute MacDonald is the editor of the magazine The Occidental Quarterly and has contributed to it on many occasions. The magazine is a publication of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank led by Richard B. Spencer. The Occidental Quarterly published MacDonald's monograph, Understanding Jewish Influence: A Study in Ethnic Activism, in 2004. In October 2004, MacDonald accepted the "Jack London Literary Prize" of $10,000 from The Occidental Quarterly. In his acceptance speech, he supported the concept of a white "ethnostate" that would exclude non-European immigrants. In November 2016, MacDonald was a keynote speaker at an event hosted in Washington, D.C. by the National Policy Institute. The event concluded with Spencer leading the chant, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory." MacDonald has appeared on Duke's radio program on multiple occasions, saying he agrees with the "vast majority" of Duke's statements. When MacDonald won his award from The Occidental Quarterly, the ceremony was attended by David Duke; Don Black, the founder of white supremacist site Stormfront; Jamie Kelso, a senior moderator at Stormfront; and the head of the neo-Nazi National Vanguard, Kevin Alfred Strom. In 2005, Kelso told The Occidental Report that he was meeting up with MacDonald to conduct business. MacDonald is featured in Stormfront member Brian Jost's anti-immigration film, The Line in the Sand, where he "blam[ed] Jews for destroying America by supporting immigration from developing countries." A statement on the website reads, "If current demographic trends persist, European-Americans will become a minority in America in only a few decades time. The American Third Position will not allow this to happen. To safeguard our identity and culture, and to secure an American future for our people, we will immediately put an indefinite moratorium on all immigration." Anders Breivik Kevin MacDonald was impressed by mass shooter Anders Breivik's writings on "Cultural Marxism". Breivik was, MacDonald wrote after his attack, "a serious political thinker with a great many insights and some good practical ideas on strategy." ==Bibliography==