Pioneer Fund

Not to be confused with The Pioneer Fund, a Denver-based charity founded by Helen M. McLoraine.

The Pioneer Fund is an American non-profit foundation established in 1937 "to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences". The organization has been criticized by some other scholars as racist and "white supremacist" in nature,[1][2][3] or as a "hate group".[4]

From 2002 until his death in October 2012, the fund was headed by psychology professor J. Philippe Rushton. The fund states that it focuses on projects it perceives will not be easily funded due to controversial subject matter. As of October 2013, Richard Lynn is the primary contact for the Pioneer Fund.[5]

Two of the most notable studies funded by the Pioneer Fund are the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart[6] and the Texas Adoption Project, which studied the similarities and differences of identical twins and other children adopted into non-biological families. The Pioneer Fund has also been an important source of funding for research on the partly genetic hypothesis of IQ variation among races.

The fund's grantees and publications have generated controversy including the 1994 publication of The Bell Curve, which drew heavily from Pioneer-funded research. The fund has also been criticized for its ties to eugenics.[7]

Early history

The Pioneer Fund was incorporated on March 11, 1937. The first five directors were:

The 1937 incorporation documents of the Pioneer Fund list two purposes. The first, modeled on the Nazi Lebensborn breeding program,[14] was aimed at encouraging the propagation of those "descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States and/or from related stocks, or to classes of children, the majority of whom are deemed to be so descended". Its second purpose was to support academic research and the "dissemination of information, into the 'problem of heredity and eugenics'" and "the problems of race betterment".[13] The Pioneer Fund argues the "race betterment" has always referred to the "human race" referred to earlier in the sentence, and critics argue it referred to racial groups. The document was amended in 1985 and the phrase changed to "human race betterment."

The Pioneer Fund supported the distribution of a eugenics film titled Erbkrank ("Hereditary Defective" or "Hereditary Illness") which was published by the pre-war 1930s Nazi Party. William Draper obtained the film from the predecessor to the Nazi Office of Racial Policy (Rassenpolitisches Amt) prior to the founding of the Pioneer Fund.[2] According to the Pioneer Fund site, all founders capable of doing so participated in the war against the Nazis.[15]

Draper secretly met Dr. C. Nash Herndon of Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University in 1949. Little is known about their meetings, but Herndon was playing a major role in the expansion of the compulsory sterilization program in North Carolina.[16]

In the 1950s and 1960s Draper supported two government committees that gave grants for both anti-immigration and genetics research. The committee members included Representative Francis E. Walter (chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee and head of the Draper Immigration Committee), Henry E. Garrett (an educator known for his belief in the genetic inferiority of blacks), and Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi, head of the Draper Genetics Committee.[17]

Later directors include Marion A. Parrott, 1973-2000.[18]

Recipients of funding

Pioneer Fund's figures are from 1971 to 1996 and are adjusted to 1997 USD.[19]

Scientific research

Many of the researchers whose findings support the hereditarian hypothesis of racial IQ disparity have received grants of varying sizes from the Pioneer Fund.[20] Large grantees, in order of amount received, are:

Other notable recipients of funding include:

Political and legal funding

The Fund gave the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) a total of $1.3 million between 1985 and 1994.[23] Among the grants was $150,000 for 'studies in connection with immigration policies'.[24] Funding was dropped after negative publicity during the campaign for California's Proposition 187 linked the Pioneer Fund to ads purchased by FAIR.[25][26] Other immigration reduction groups that have received donations from the Pioneer Fund include ProjectUSA,[27] and American Immigration Control Foundation.[28]

One of the grantees is the paleoconservative and white nationalist journalist Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renaissance and a member the advisory board of the white nationalist publication the Occidental Quarterly. Another is Roger Pearson's Institute for the Study of Man.[29] Many of the key academic white nationalists in both Right Now! and American Renaissance have been funded by the Pioneer Fund, which was also directly involved in funding the parent organization of American Renaissance, the New Century Foundation.[20]

Controversy

Criticism

The Pioneer Fund was described by the Sunday Telegraph (March 12, 1989) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics."[30] It has also been criticized by some scientists and journalists, and in various peer-reviewed academic articles. Critics of the fund include the Southern Poverty Law Center, professor of psychology William H. Tucker, and historian Barry Mehler and his Institute for the Study of Academic Racism.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Pioneer Fund as a hate group, citing the fund's history, its funding of race and intelligence research, and its connections with racist individuals.[29][31]

The Center for New Community, a human rights advocacy organization, mentioned the Pioneer Fund in an article on their website. They characterize the Pioneer Fund as "a white supremacist foundation that specializes in funding 'science' dedicated to demonstrating white intellectual and moral superiority." They draw particular attention to Rushton's theories about differences between races as evidence of the racial slant which they claim accompanies much of the research which is backed by the Fund.[32]

In accord with the tax regulations governing nonprofit corporations, Pioneer does not fund individuals; under the law only other nonprofit organizations are appropriate grantees. As a consequence, many of the fund's awards go not to the researchers themselves but to the universities that employ them, a standard procedure for supporting work by academically based scientists. In addition to these awards to the universities where its grantees are based, Pioneer has made a number of grants to other nonprofit organizations, corporations Tucker feel have been created to channel resources to a particular academic recipient while circumventing the institution where the researcher is employed.[2][33]

In 2002, William H. Tucker criticized the Pioneer's grant-funding techniques:

Pioneer's administrative procedures are as unusual as its charter. Although the fund typically gives away more than half a million dollars per year, there is no application form or set of guidelines. Instead, according to Weyher, an applicant merely submits "a letter containing a brief description of the nature of the research and the amount of the grant requested." There is no requirement for peer review of any kind; Pioneer's board of directors—two attorneys, two engineers, and an investment broker—decides, sometimes within a day, whether a particular research proposal merits funding. Once the grant has been made, there is no requirement for an interim or final report or even for an acknowledgment by a grantee that Pioneer has been the source of support, all atypical practices in comparison to other organizations that support scientific research.[2]

Rushton, who headed Pioneer until 2012, spoke at conferences of the American Renaissance (AR) magazine, in which he has also published articles.[34] Anti-racist Searchlight Magazine described one such AR conference as a "veritable 'who's who' of American white supremacy."[35]

Steven J. Rosenthal has described the fund as a: "A Nazi endowment specializing in production of justifications for eugenics since 1937, the Pioneer Fund is embedded in a network of right-wing foundations, think tanks, religious fundamentalists, and global anti-Communist coalitions".[36]

Responses to criticisms

Behavioral geneticist David T. Lykken has defended his acceptance of money from the fund, writing "If you can find me some rich villains that want to contribute to my research—Qaddafi, the Mafia, whoever—the worse they are, the better I'll like it. I'm doing a social good by taking their money... Any money of theirs that I spend in a legitimate and honorable way, they can't spend in a dishonorable way".[37]

Science writer Morton Hunt received Pioneer funding for his book and wrote: "One could spend hundreds of pages on the pros and cons of the case of the Pioneer Fund, but what matters to me—and should matter to my readers—is that I have been totally free to research and write as I chose. I alerted Pioneer to my political views when making the grant proposal for this book but its directors never blinked."[38]

In a review of Richard Lynn's book on the Pioneer Fund, psychologist Ulrich Neisser, a prominent critic of race-based research, writes: "All things considered, I doubt that the Pioneer Fund's political activities have made much difference one way or the other. The world would have been much the same without them. On the other hand, Lynn reminds us that Pioneer has sometimes sponsored useful research – research that otherwise might not have been done at all. By that reckoning, I would give it a weak plus."[39]

Charles Murray defended the use of studies supported by the fund in his book The Bell Curve by saying: "Never mind that the relationship between the founder of the Pioneer Fund and today's Pioneer Fund is roughly analogous to the relationship between Henry Ford's antisemitism and today's Ford Foundation. The charges have been made, they have wide currency, and some people will always believe that The Bell Curve rests on data concocted by neo-Nazi eugenicists."[40]

Researchers who have been criticized for accepting grants from the fund have argued that the public debates have been disconnected from the expert debates. Robert A. Gordon, for example, replied to media criticisms of grant-recipients: "Politically correct disinformation about science appears to spread like wildfire among literary intellectuals and other nonspecialists, who have few disciplinary constraints on what they say about science and about particular scientists and on what they allow themselves to believe."[41]

See also

Notes

  1. Avner Falk. Anti-semitism: a history and psychoanalysis of contemporary hatred. Abc-Clio, 2008, pg. 18
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Tucker, William H. (2007). The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07463-9. Lay summary (26 July 2013).
  3. Andrew Wroe. The Republican party and immigration politics: from Proposition 187 to George W. Bush. University of Illinois Press, 2008, pg. 81
  4. Southern Poverty Law Center White Nationalist Retrieved July 16, 2006.
  5. Beirich, Heidi. "Pioneer Fund Assets Divided; New Leadership Appointed". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 9 February 2014.
  6. Segal, Nancy L. (2012). Born Together—Reared Apart. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05546-9. Lay summary (16 May 2013).
  7. Lombardo, Paul A. (2002). ""The American Breed": Nazi eugenics and the origins of the Pioneer Fund". Albany Law Rev 65 (3): 743–830. PMID 11998853.
    Rushton, J. Philippe (2002). "The Pioneer Fund and the Scientific Study of Human Differences" (PDF). Albany Law Rev 66: 209.
    Lombardo, Paul A. (2002). "Pioneer's Big Lie". Albany Law Rev 66: 1125.
    Tucker, William H. (2002). "A Closer Look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton". Albany Law Rev 66: 1145.
  8. Lombardo Paul A. ""The American Breed": Nazi Eugenics and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund". Albany Law Review 65 (3): 743–830.
  9. May, R.W. (May 14, 1960). "Genetics and Subversion". The Nation 190: 421.
  10. J.P., Jackson, (2005). Science for segregation: race, law, and the case against Brown v. Board of Education. City: New York University Press. p. 34. ISBN 0-8147-4271-8.
  11. T., Hashaw, (2007). Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle of Mixed America. City: Mercer University Press. p. 158. ISBN 0-88146-074-5.
  12. Osborn, Frederick (24 February 1937). 'Summary of the proceedings' of the Conference on Eugenics in Relation to Nursing. American Eugenics Society Archives.
  13. 1 2 Mehler, Barry (1989). "Foundation for Fascism: the New Eugenics Movement in the United States". Patterns of Prejudice 23 (4).
  14. Crawford, James (1993). Hold Your Tongue: Bilingualism and the Politics of "English Only". Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-201-62479-3.
  15. Pioneer Fund. Founders and Former Directors. Retrieved July 16, 2006.
  16. Begos, Kevin (December 11, 2002). Benefactor With a Racist Bent: Wealthy recluse apparently liked the looks and potential of Bowman Gray's new medical-genetics department. Winston-Salem Journal
  17. Lichtenstein, Grace (December 11, 1977). Fund Backs Controversial Study of "Racial Betterment." New York Times
  18. Pioneer Fund Founders and Former Directors
  19. Mehler, Barry. Pioneer Fund Grant Totals, 1971-1996. Retrieved July 16, 2006.
  20. 1 2 3 4 Mehler, Barry (July 7, 1998). Race Science and the Pioneer Fund Originally published as "The Funding of the Science" in Searchlight, No. 277.
  21. Tucker, William H. Conclusion: Pioneer or Pamphleteer The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund.
  22. The Journal of Indo-European Studies via A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture.
  23. "The Anti-Immigration Movement: From Shovels to Suits" Solana Larsen. NACLA Report on the Americas. New York: May/Jun 2007. Vol. 40, Iss. 3; p. 14, 5 pgs
  24. Lombardo, P. "THE AMERICAN BREED: NAZI EUGENICS AND THE ORIGINS OF THE PIONEER FUND" Retrieved May 21, 2008. Albany Law Review
  25. "Pro-Prop. 187 group admits it bought ads POLITICS: FAIR says it only attempted to clear its name." MARILYN KALFUS: The Orange County Register. Orange County Register. Santa Ana, Calif.: Oct 26, 1994. p. A.12
  26. "White Supremacist Link Trips Prop. 187" Pamela Burdman, Chronicle Staff Writer. San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco, Calif.: Oct 13, 1994. p. A.4
  27. "Cannon critics sidestep FEC lists" Deborah Bulkeley Deseret Morning News. Deseret News. Salt Lake City, Utah: Jul 17, 2004. pg. B.01
  28. "'Workers, go home!'" David L Ostendorf. The Christian Century. Chicago: Dec 19-Dec 26, 2001. Vol. 118, Iss. 35; pg. 8, 2 pgs
  29. 1 2 Southern Poverty Law Center Into the Mainstream; An array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
  30. MacIntyre, B (13 March 1989). "The new eugenics". London Sunday Telegraph. , cited in E.M., Kramer, (2003). The emerging monoculture: assimilation and the "model minority". City: Praeger. pp. 118, 302. ISBN 0-275-97312-3.
  31. Southern Poverty Law Center Race and 'Reason'; Academic ideas a pillar of racist thought. Retrieved April 15, 2008.
  32. Defend Colorado Now: Lamm & FAIR
  33. Pioneer Fund Grants, 1971-1996
  34. http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=214#27
  35. http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=template&story=162
  36. The Pioneer Fund Financier of Fascist Research. STEVEN J. ROSENTHAL. American Behavioral Scientist September 1995 vol. 39 no. 1 44-61
  37. Patricia Ohman (7 March 1984). "Do they get what they Pay for?", Minneapolis City Pages, p. 8.
  38. Hunt, Morton (1998). The New Know-Nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0497-2.
  39. Neisser 2004
  40. Spring, Joel (1997). Political Agendas for Education. Hillsdale: L. Erlbaum Associates. p. 41. ISBN 0-8058-2766-8.
  41. Gordon, Robert A. Open Letter to ABC news, Johns Hopkins University, 1997.

References

Further reading

External links

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