Tag: Intelligence

Topics

Books

But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids

– Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: MOST OF the hand-wringing over American education has been misdirected. While the special problems of the disadvantaged have still not been adequately addressed, a thorough look at… More

A Question of Intelligence, by Daniel Seligman

– Commentary, December 1, 1992.
Excerpt: In the tight and sometimes nervous world of people who write about IQ, this book has been a topic of conversation for a long time. It was originally commissioned as one of the… More

What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?

– The Public Interest, Winter 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: AUTUMN 1991 saw renewed controversy about SAT scores and American education. First it was revealed that the national average on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test… More

The Aristocracy of Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1994.
Excerpt: A perusal of the Harvard’s Freshman Register for 1952 shows a class looking very much as Harvard freshman classes had always looked. Under the portraits of the well-scrubbed,… More

What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

– Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 16, 1994.
Excerpt: In “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write, “Mounting evidence indicates that… More

IQ: What’s the Fuss?

– Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, October 21, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” is a powerful, scrupulous, landmark study of the relationship between intelligence and social class, which is what the book is mainly about. It is… More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

– Peter Brimelow, Forbes, October 24, 1994.
Excerpt: “MY POLITICAL aspiration,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray tells FORBES, “is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic.” Murray’s critics… More

‘Bell Curve’ Ballistics

– Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, October 26, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” — the controversial book about the role of intelligence in society — is already a commercial success. Its publisher reports that it has now… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia

– The New Republic, October 31, 1994 (with Richard Herrnstein.)
Excerpt: As of 1994, then, we can say nothing for certain about the relative roles that genetics and environment play in the formation of the black-white difference in I.Q. All the evidence… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

The Real ‘Bell Curve’

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1994.
Excerpt: In the past few weeks, I have found myself occasionally leafing through “The Bell Curve” to reassure myself. Richard Hernnstein and I didn’t really write the book… More

Sins of the Cognitive Elite

– Michael Novak, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Our intellectual landscape has been disrupted by the equivalent of an earthquake and, as the ground settles, intellectuals are looking around nervously and bracing themselves. At… More

Acting Smart

– James Q. Wilson, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Serious readers will ask four main questions about The Bell Curve. Is it true that intelligence explains so much behavior? How can IQ produce this effect? If it does, is there… More

Common Knowledge

– Michael Barone, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is not an argument for racial discrimination. It is an argument against racial discrimination, against the one form of racial discrimination that is sanctioned by… More

Legacy of Racism

– Pat Shipman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight. Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein make a heroic attempt… More

Not Hopeless

– Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve shows that cognitive ability measured by IQ tests reliably predicts success—professional, academic, pecuniary—and that, on average, African-Americans have an IQ… More

Going Public

– Richard John Neuhaus, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The statistical data on which the book bases its conclusions about the cognitive differences between whites and blacks are impressive. And, since it would seem to be nearly… More

Living with Inequality

– Eugene D. Genovese, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve has much to offer. Its excellent analysis of the transformation of the American elite deserves high praise and a many-sided elaboration and critique, as do its… More

Trashing The Bell Curve

– Daniel Seligman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: It is clear enough what The Bell Curve‘s liberal critics want. They want its ideas suppressed. They want the data to go away. They want the authors depicted as kooks and… More

Paroxysms of Denial

– Arthur R. Jensen, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Commenting not as an advocate but as an expert witness, I can say that The Bell Curve is correct in all its essential facts. The graphically presented analyses of fresh data (from… More

Is Intelligence Fixed?

– Nathan Glazer, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Herrnstein and Murray give some surprising data (surprising in the light of their argument that intelligence is fixed early and can’t be changed appreciably through… More

Meritocracy That Works

– Loren E. Lomasky, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: If the aim of social policy is to raise the abilities of the less well-off, without trying to achieve parity across races and classes, then speculation concerning the genetic basis… More

Moral Intelligence

– Michael Young, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence—or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time—seems to have swept almost all before it.… More

Methodological Fetishism

– Brigitte Berger, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: For all its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological… More

Dispirited

– Glenn C. Loury, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Reading Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise causes me once again to reflect on the limited utility in the management of human affairs of that academic endeavor generously termed… More

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Excerpt: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions… More

The Bell Curve

– Chester Finn, Commentary, January 1995.
Excerpt: As any author can attest who has brought forth a book and waited months for even the hometown paper—let alone the New York Times—to review it, the instant celebrity accorded… More

Ethnicity and IQ

– Thomas Sowell, The American Spectator, February 1995.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage. Its… More

The Bell Curve and Its Critics by Charles Murray

– Charles Murray, Commentary, May 1995.
Excerpt: In November 1989, Richard Herrnstein and I agreed to collaborate on a book that, five years later, became The Bell Curve. It is a book about events at the two ends of the… More

Intelligence and the Social Scientist

– Leon R. Kass, The Public Interest, Summer 1995.
Excerpt: Someone who has not read the book, but “knows” it only from the largely irresponsible things written and said about it, will be surprised to discover that The Bell… More

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns

– Ulrich Neisser, chair, report of a Task Force established by the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, February 1996.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature… More

Income Inequality and IQ

– (Washington: AEI Press, 1998.)
Summary from Publisher: What causes income inequality? The usual answers are economic and sociological. Capitalism systematically generates unequal economic rewards. Social class… More

IQ since The Bell Curve

– Christopher F. Chabris, Commentary, August 1998.
Excerpt: In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray set out to prove that American society was becoming increasingly meritocratic, in the sense that wealth and other positive social outcomes… More

Race and IQ: Part III

– Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, October 3, 2002.
Excerpt: I happened to run into Charles Murray in Dulles International Airport while he and Richard Herrnstein were writing “The Bell Curve.” When I asked him what he was… More

Interview with James Heckman

– Douglas Clement, The Region, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2005.
Excerpt: Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs… More

Intelligence in the Classroom

– Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
Excerpt: Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is… More

Jewish Genius

– Commentary, April 2007.
Excerpt: Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.… More

Sentimental Education

– James Pierson, The New Criterion, September 2008.
Excerpt: Murray thinks that the nation would be better served if we lowered our expectations about what schools can accomplish and found new ways to train and educate students outside the… More

Murray’s Truths

– Liam Julian, Weekly Standard, September 22, 2008.
Excerpt: Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should… More

Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains

– Pathways, Winter 2008.
Excerpt: It may be said with only a little exaggeration that policy analysts are happy describing the causes of problems while ignoring their solution, and politicians are happy proposing… More

Intelligence and College

– National Affairs, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: Imagine a high-school senior who is trying to decide whether to go to college. He walks into the office of his school’s counselor and asks for help in making up his mind. The… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ

– Bloomberg View, November 14, 2014.
Excerpt: It’s one thing to point out that programs to improve children’s cognitive functioning have had a dismal track record. We can always focus on short-term improvements, blame… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

The Bell Curve: IQ, Race and Gender

– Video, discussion with Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio, September 14, 2015.
Summary: In continuing our discussion on Human Intelligence and the predictive powers of IQ, Charles Murray joins the broadcast to discuss the latest science regarding ethnic and gender… More

An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community

– American Enterprise Institute, March 17, 2016.
Excerpt: Last week, the president of Virginia Tech, Tim Sands, published an “open letter to the Virginia Tech community” defending lectures delivered by deplorable people like me (I’m… More

Essays

But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids

– Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: MOST OF the hand-wringing over American education has been misdirected. While the special problems of the disadvantaged have still not been adequately addressed, a thorough look at… More

A Question of Intelligence, by Daniel Seligman

– Commentary, December 1, 1992.
Excerpt: In the tight and sometimes nervous world of people who write about IQ, this book has been a topic of conversation for a long time. It was originally commissioned as one of the… More

What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?

– The Public Interest, Winter 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: AUTUMN 1991 saw renewed controversy about SAT scores and American education. First it was revealed that the national average on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test… More

The Aristocracy of Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1994.
Excerpt: A perusal of the Harvard’s Freshman Register for 1952 shows a class looking very much as Harvard freshman classes had always looked. Under the portraits of the well-scrubbed,… More

What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

– Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 16, 1994.
Excerpt: In “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write, “Mounting evidence indicates that… More

IQ: What’s the Fuss?

– Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, October 21, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” is a powerful, scrupulous, landmark study of the relationship between intelligence and social class, which is what the book is mainly about. It is… More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

– Peter Brimelow, Forbes, October 24, 1994.
Excerpt: “MY POLITICAL aspiration,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray tells FORBES, “is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic.” Murray’s critics… More

‘Bell Curve’ Ballistics

– Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, October 26, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” — the controversial book about the role of intelligence in society — is already a commercial success. Its publisher reports that it has now… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia

– The New Republic, October 31, 1994 (with Richard Herrnstein.)
Excerpt: As of 1994, then, we can say nothing for certain about the relative roles that genetics and environment play in the formation of the black-white difference in I.Q. All the evidence… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

The Real ‘Bell Curve’

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1994.
Excerpt: In the past few weeks, I have found myself occasionally leafing through “The Bell Curve” to reassure myself. Richard Hernnstein and I didn’t really write the book… More

Sins of the Cognitive Elite

– Michael Novak, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Our intellectual landscape has been disrupted by the equivalent of an earthquake and, as the ground settles, intellectuals are looking around nervously and bracing themselves. At… More

Acting Smart

– James Q. Wilson, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Serious readers will ask four main questions about The Bell Curve. Is it true that intelligence explains so much behavior? How can IQ produce this effect? If it does, is there… More

Common Knowledge

– Michael Barone, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is not an argument for racial discrimination. It is an argument against racial discrimination, against the one form of racial discrimination that is sanctioned by… More

Legacy of Racism

– Pat Shipman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight. Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein make a heroic attempt… More

Not Hopeless

– Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve shows that cognitive ability measured by IQ tests reliably predicts success—professional, academic, pecuniary—and that, on average, African-Americans have an IQ… More

Going Public

– Richard John Neuhaus, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The statistical data on which the book bases its conclusions about the cognitive differences between whites and blacks are impressive. And, since it would seem to be nearly… More

Living with Inequality

– Eugene D. Genovese, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve has much to offer. Its excellent analysis of the transformation of the American elite deserves high praise and a many-sided elaboration and critique, as do its… More

Trashing The Bell Curve

– Daniel Seligman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: It is clear enough what The Bell Curve‘s liberal critics want. They want its ideas suppressed. They want the data to go away. They want the authors depicted as kooks and… More

Paroxysms of Denial

– Arthur R. Jensen, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Commenting not as an advocate but as an expert witness, I can say that The Bell Curve is correct in all its essential facts. The graphically presented analyses of fresh data (from… More

Is Intelligence Fixed?

– Nathan Glazer, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Herrnstein and Murray give some surprising data (surprising in the light of their argument that intelligence is fixed early and can’t be changed appreciably through… More

Meritocracy That Works

– Loren E. Lomasky, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: If the aim of social policy is to raise the abilities of the less well-off, without trying to achieve parity across races and classes, then speculation concerning the genetic basis… More

Moral Intelligence

– Michael Young, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence—or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time—seems to have swept almost all before it.… More

Methodological Fetishism

– Brigitte Berger, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: For all its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological… More

Dispirited

– Glenn C. Loury, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Reading Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise causes me once again to reflect on the limited utility in the management of human affairs of that academic endeavor generously termed… More

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Excerpt: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions… More

The Bell Curve

– Chester Finn, Commentary, January 1995.
Excerpt: As any author can attest who has brought forth a book and waited months for even the hometown paper—let alone the New York Times—to review it, the instant celebrity accorded… More

Ethnicity and IQ

– Thomas Sowell, The American Spectator, February 1995.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage. Its… More

The Bell Curve and Its Critics by Charles Murray

– Charles Murray, Commentary, May 1995.
Excerpt: In November 1989, Richard Herrnstein and I agreed to collaborate on a book that, five years later, became The Bell Curve. It is a book about events at the two ends of the… More

Intelligence and the Social Scientist

– Leon R. Kass, The Public Interest, Summer 1995.
Excerpt: Someone who has not read the book, but “knows” it only from the largely irresponsible things written and said about it, will be surprised to discover that The Bell… More

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns

– Ulrich Neisser, chair, report of a Task Force established by the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, February 1996.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature… More

Income Inequality and IQ

– (Washington: AEI Press, 1998.)
Summary from Publisher: What causes income inequality? The usual answers are economic and sociological. Capitalism systematically generates unequal economic rewards. Social class… More

IQ since The Bell Curve

– Christopher F. Chabris, Commentary, August 1998.
Excerpt: In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray set out to prove that American society was becoming increasingly meritocratic, in the sense that wealth and other positive social outcomes… More

Race and IQ: Part III

– Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, October 3, 2002.
Excerpt: I happened to run into Charles Murray in Dulles International Airport while he and Richard Herrnstein were writing “The Bell Curve.” When I asked him what he was… More

Interview with James Heckman

– Douglas Clement, The Region, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2005.
Excerpt: Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs… More

Intelligence in the Classroom

– Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
Excerpt: Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is… More

Jewish Genius

– Commentary, April 2007.
Excerpt: Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.… More

Sentimental Education

– James Pierson, The New Criterion, September 2008.
Excerpt: Murray thinks that the nation would be better served if we lowered our expectations about what schools can accomplish and found new ways to train and educate students outside the… More

Murray’s Truths

– Liam Julian, Weekly Standard, September 22, 2008.
Excerpt: Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should… More

Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains

– Pathways, Winter 2008.
Excerpt: It may be said with only a little exaggeration that policy analysts are happy describing the causes of problems while ignoring their solution, and politicians are happy proposing… More

Intelligence and College

– National Affairs, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: Imagine a high-school senior who is trying to decide whether to go to college. He walks into the office of his school’s counselor and asks for help in making up his mind. The… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ

– Bloomberg View, November 14, 2014.
Excerpt: It’s one thing to point out that programs to improve children’s cognitive functioning have had a dismal track record. We can always focus on short-term improvements, blame… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

The Bell Curve: IQ, Race and Gender

– Video, discussion with Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio, September 14, 2015.
Summary: In continuing our discussion on Human Intelligence and the predictive powers of IQ, Charles Murray joins the broadcast to discuss the latest science regarding ethnic and gender… More

An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community

– American Enterprise Institute, March 17, 2016.
Excerpt: Last week, the president of Virginia Tech, Tim Sands, published an “open letter to the Virginia Tech community” defending lectures delivered by deplorable people like me (I’m… More

Commentary

But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids

– Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: MOST OF the hand-wringing over American education has been misdirected. While the special problems of the disadvantaged have still not been adequately addressed, a thorough look at… More

A Question of Intelligence, by Daniel Seligman

– Commentary, December 1, 1992.
Excerpt: In the tight and sometimes nervous world of people who write about IQ, this book has been a topic of conversation for a long time. It was originally commissioned as one of the… More

What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?

– The Public Interest, Winter 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: AUTUMN 1991 saw renewed controversy about SAT scores and American education. First it was revealed that the national average on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test… More

The Aristocracy of Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1994.
Excerpt: A perusal of the Harvard’s Freshman Register for 1952 shows a class looking very much as Harvard freshman classes had always looked. Under the portraits of the well-scrubbed,… More

What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

– Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 16, 1994.
Excerpt: In “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write, “Mounting evidence indicates that… More

IQ: What’s the Fuss?

– Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, October 21, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” is a powerful, scrupulous, landmark study of the relationship between intelligence and social class, which is what the book is mainly about. It is… More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

– Peter Brimelow, Forbes, October 24, 1994.
Excerpt: “MY POLITICAL aspiration,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray tells FORBES, “is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic.” Murray’s critics… More

‘Bell Curve’ Ballistics

– Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, October 26, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” — the controversial book about the role of intelligence in society — is already a commercial success. Its publisher reports that it has now… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia

– The New Republic, October 31, 1994 (with Richard Herrnstein.)
Excerpt: As of 1994, then, we can say nothing for certain about the relative roles that genetics and environment play in the formation of the black-white difference in I.Q. All the evidence… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

The Real ‘Bell Curve’

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1994.
Excerpt: In the past few weeks, I have found myself occasionally leafing through “The Bell Curve” to reassure myself. Richard Hernnstein and I didn’t really write the book… More

Sins of the Cognitive Elite

– Michael Novak, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Our intellectual landscape has been disrupted by the equivalent of an earthquake and, as the ground settles, intellectuals are looking around nervously and bracing themselves. At… More

Acting Smart

– James Q. Wilson, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Serious readers will ask four main questions about The Bell Curve. Is it true that intelligence explains so much behavior? How can IQ produce this effect? If it does, is there… More

Common Knowledge

– Michael Barone, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is not an argument for racial discrimination. It is an argument against racial discrimination, against the one form of racial discrimination that is sanctioned by… More

Legacy of Racism

– Pat Shipman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight. Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein make a heroic attempt… More

Not Hopeless

– Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve shows that cognitive ability measured by IQ tests reliably predicts success—professional, academic, pecuniary—and that, on average, African-Americans have an IQ… More

Going Public

– Richard John Neuhaus, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The statistical data on which the book bases its conclusions about the cognitive differences between whites and blacks are impressive. And, since it would seem to be nearly… More

Living with Inequality

– Eugene D. Genovese, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve has much to offer. Its excellent analysis of the transformation of the American elite deserves high praise and a many-sided elaboration and critique, as do its… More

Trashing The Bell Curve

– Daniel Seligman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: It is clear enough what The Bell Curve‘s liberal critics want. They want its ideas suppressed. They want the data to go away. They want the authors depicted as kooks and… More

Paroxysms of Denial

– Arthur R. Jensen, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Commenting not as an advocate but as an expert witness, I can say that The Bell Curve is correct in all its essential facts. The graphically presented analyses of fresh data (from… More

Is Intelligence Fixed?

– Nathan Glazer, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Herrnstein and Murray give some surprising data (surprising in the light of their argument that intelligence is fixed early and can’t be changed appreciably through… More

Meritocracy That Works

– Loren E. Lomasky, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: If the aim of social policy is to raise the abilities of the less well-off, without trying to achieve parity across races and classes, then speculation concerning the genetic basis… More

Moral Intelligence

– Michael Young, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence—or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time—seems to have swept almost all before it.… More

Methodological Fetishism

– Brigitte Berger, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: For all its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological… More

Dispirited

– Glenn C. Loury, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Reading Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise causes me once again to reflect on the limited utility in the management of human affairs of that academic endeavor generously termed… More

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Excerpt: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions… More

The Bell Curve

– Chester Finn, Commentary, January 1995.
Excerpt: As any author can attest who has brought forth a book and waited months for even the hometown paper—let alone the New York Times—to review it, the instant celebrity accorded… More

Ethnicity and IQ

– Thomas Sowell, The American Spectator, February 1995.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage. Its… More

The Bell Curve and Its Critics by Charles Murray

– Charles Murray, Commentary, May 1995.
Excerpt: In November 1989, Richard Herrnstein and I agreed to collaborate on a book that, five years later, became The Bell Curve. It is a book about events at the two ends of the… More

Intelligence and the Social Scientist

– Leon R. Kass, The Public Interest, Summer 1995.
Excerpt: Someone who has not read the book, but “knows” it only from the largely irresponsible things written and said about it, will be surprised to discover that The Bell… More

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns

– Ulrich Neisser, chair, report of a Task Force established by the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, February 1996.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature… More

Income Inequality and IQ

– (Washington: AEI Press, 1998.)
Summary from Publisher: What causes income inequality? The usual answers are economic and sociological. Capitalism systematically generates unequal economic rewards. Social class… More

IQ since The Bell Curve

– Christopher F. Chabris, Commentary, August 1998.
Excerpt: In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray set out to prove that American society was becoming increasingly meritocratic, in the sense that wealth and other positive social outcomes… More

Race and IQ: Part III

– Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, October 3, 2002.
Excerpt: I happened to run into Charles Murray in Dulles International Airport while he and Richard Herrnstein were writing “The Bell Curve.” When I asked him what he was… More

Interview with James Heckman

– Douglas Clement, The Region, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2005.
Excerpt: Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs… More

Intelligence in the Classroom

– Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
Excerpt: Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is… More

Jewish Genius

– Commentary, April 2007.
Excerpt: Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.… More

Sentimental Education

– James Pierson, The New Criterion, September 2008.
Excerpt: Murray thinks that the nation would be better served if we lowered our expectations about what schools can accomplish and found new ways to train and educate students outside the… More

Murray’s Truths

– Liam Julian, Weekly Standard, September 22, 2008.
Excerpt: Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should… More

Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains

– Pathways, Winter 2008.
Excerpt: It may be said with only a little exaggeration that policy analysts are happy describing the causes of problems while ignoring their solution, and politicians are happy proposing… More

Intelligence and College

– National Affairs, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: Imagine a high-school senior who is trying to decide whether to go to college. He walks into the office of his school’s counselor and asks for help in making up his mind. The… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ

– Bloomberg View, November 14, 2014.
Excerpt: It’s one thing to point out that programs to improve children’s cognitive functioning have had a dismal track record. We can always focus on short-term improvements, blame… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

The Bell Curve: IQ, Race and Gender

– Video, discussion with Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio, September 14, 2015.
Summary: In continuing our discussion on Human Intelligence and the predictive powers of IQ, Charles Murray joins the broadcast to discuss the latest science regarding ethnic and gender… More

An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community

– American Enterprise Institute, March 17, 2016.
Excerpt: Last week, the president of Virginia Tech, Tim Sands, published an “open letter to the Virginia Tech community” defending lectures delivered by deplorable people like me (I’m… More

Multimedia

But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids

– Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: MOST OF the hand-wringing over American education has been misdirected. While the special problems of the disadvantaged have still not been adequately addressed, a thorough look at… More

A Question of Intelligence, by Daniel Seligman

– Commentary, December 1, 1992.
Excerpt: In the tight and sometimes nervous world of people who write about IQ, this book has been a topic of conversation for a long time. It was originally commissioned as one of the… More

What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?

– The Public Interest, Winter 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: AUTUMN 1991 saw renewed controversy about SAT scores and American education. First it was revealed that the national average on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test… More

The Aristocracy of Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1994.
Excerpt: A perusal of the Harvard’s Freshman Register for 1952 shows a class looking very much as Harvard freshman classes had always looked. Under the portraits of the well-scrubbed,… More

What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

– Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 16, 1994.
Excerpt: In “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write, “Mounting evidence indicates that… More

IQ: What’s the Fuss?

– Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, October 21, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” is a powerful, scrupulous, landmark study of the relationship between intelligence and social class, which is what the book is mainly about. It is… More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

– Peter Brimelow, Forbes, October 24, 1994.
Excerpt: “MY POLITICAL aspiration,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray tells FORBES, “is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic.” Murray’s critics… More

‘Bell Curve’ Ballistics

– Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, October 26, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” — the controversial book about the role of intelligence in society — is already a commercial success. Its publisher reports that it has now… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia

– The New Republic, October 31, 1994 (with Richard Herrnstein.)
Excerpt: As of 1994, then, we can say nothing for certain about the relative roles that genetics and environment play in the formation of the black-white difference in I.Q. All the evidence… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

The Real ‘Bell Curve’

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1994.
Excerpt: In the past few weeks, I have found myself occasionally leafing through “The Bell Curve” to reassure myself. Richard Hernnstein and I didn’t really write the book… More

Sins of the Cognitive Elite

– Michael Novak, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Our intellectual landscape has been disrupted by the equivalent of an earthquake and, as the ground settles, intellectuals are looking around nervously and bracing themselves. At… More

Acting Smart

– James Q. Wilson, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Serious readers will ask four main questions about The Bell Curve. Is it true that intelligence explains so much behavior? How can IQ produce this effect? If it does, is there… More

Common Knowledge

– Michael Barone, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is not an argument for racial discrimination. It is an argument against racial discrimination, against the one form of racial discrimination that is sanctioned by… More

Legacy of Racism

– Pat Shipman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight. Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein make a heroic attempt… More

Not Hopeless

– Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve shows that cognitive ability measured by IQ tests reliably predicts success—professional, academic, pecuniary—and that, on average, African-Americans have an IQ… More

Going Public

– Richard John Neuhaus, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The statistical data on which the book bases its conclusions about the cognitive differences between whites and blacks are impressive. And, since it would seem to be nearly… More

Living with Inequality

– Eugene D. Genovese, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve has much to offer. Its excellent analysis of the transformation of the American elite deserves high praise and a many-sided elaboration and critique, as do its… More

Trashing The Bell Curve

– Daniel Seligman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: It is clear enough what The Bell Curve‘s liberal critics want. They want its ideas suppressed. They want the data to go away. They want the authors depicted as kooks and… More

Paroxysms of Denial

– Arthur R. Jensen, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Commenting not as an advocate but as an expert witness, I can say that The Bell Curve is correct in all its essential facts. The graphically presented analyses of fresh data (from… More

Is Intelligence Fixed?

– Nathan Glazer, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Herrnstein and Murray give some surprising data (surprising in the light of their argument that intelligence is fixed early and can’t be changed appreciably through… More

Meritocracy That Works

– Loren E. Lomasky, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: If the aim of social policy is to raise the abilities of the less well-off, without trying to achieve parity across races and classes, then speculation concerning the genetic basis… More

Moral Intelligence

– Michael Young, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence—or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time—seems to have swept almost all before it.… More

Methodological Fetishism

– Brigitte Berger, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: For all its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological… More

Dispirited

– Glenn C. Loury, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Reading Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise causes me once again to reflect on the limited utility in the management of human affairs of that academic endeavor generously termed… More

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Excerpt: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions… More

The Bell Curve

– Chester Finn, Commentary, January 1995.
Excerpt: As any author can attest who has brought forth a book and waited months for even the hometown paper—let alone the New York Times—to review it, the instant celebrity accorded… More

Ethnicity and IQ

– Thomas Sowell, The American Spectator, February 1995.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage. Its… More

The Bell Curve and Its Critics by Charles Murray

– Charles Murray, Commentary, May 1995.
Excerpt: In November 1989, Richard Herrnstein and I agreed to collaborate on a book that, five years later, became The Bell Curve. It is a book about events at the two ends of the… More

Intelligence and the Social Scientist

– Leon R. Kass, The Public Interest, Summer 1995.
Excerpt: Someone who has not read the book, but “knows” it only from the largely irresponsible things written and said about it, will be surprised to discover that The Bell… More

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns

– Ulrich Neisser, chair, report of a Task Force established by the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, February 1996.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature… More

Income Inequality and IQ

– (Washington: AEI Press, 1998.)
Summary from Publisher: What causes income inequality? The usual answers are economic and sociological. Capitalism systematically generates unequal economic rewards. Social class… More

IQ since The Bell Curve

– Christopher F. Chabris, Commentary, August 1998.
Excerpt: In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray set out to prove that American society was becoming increasingly meritocratic, in the sense that wealth and other positive social outcomes… More

Race and IQ: Part III

– Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, October 3, 2002.
Excerpt: I happened to run into Charles Murray in Dulles International Airport while he and Richard Herrnstein were writing “The Bell Curve.” When I asked him what he was… More

Interview with James Heckman

– Douglas Clement, The Region, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2005.
Excerpt: Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs… More

Intelligence in the Classroom

– Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
Excerpt: Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is… More

Jewish Genius

– Commentary, April 2007.
Excerpt: Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.… More

Sentimental Education

– James Pierson, The New Criterion, September 2008.
Excerpt: Murray thinks that the nation would be better served if we lowered our expectations about what schools can accomplish and found new ways to train and educate students outside the… More

Murray’s Truths

– Liam Julian, Weekly Standard, September 22, 2008.
Excerpt: Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should… More

Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains

– Pathways, Winter 2008.
Excerpt: It may be said with only a little exaggeration that policy analysts are happy describing the causes of problems while ignoring their solution, and politicians are happy proposing… More

Intelligence and College

– National Affairs, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: Imagine a high-school senior who is trying to decide whether to go to college. He walks into the office of his school’s counselor and asks for help in making up his mind. The… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ

– Bloomberg View, November 14, 2014.
Excerpt: It’s one thing to point out that programs to improve children’s cognitive functioning have had a dismal track record. We can always focus on short-term improvements, blame… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

The Bell Curve: IQ, Race and Gender

– Video, discussion with Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio, September 14, 2015.
Summary: In continuing our discussion on Human Intelligence and the predictive powers of IQ, Charles Murray joins the broadcast to discuss the latest science regarding ethnic and gender… More

An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community

– American Enterprise Institute, March 17, 2016.
Excerpt: Last week, the president of Virginia Tech, Tim Sands, published an “open letter to the Virginia Tech community” defending lectures delivered by deplorable people like me (I’m… More

Teaching

But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids

– Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: MOST OF the hand-wringing over American education has been misdirected. While the special problems of the disadvantaged have still not been adequately addressed, a thorough look at… More

A Question of Intelligence, by Daniel Seligman

– Commentary, December 1, 1992.
Excerpt: In the tight and sometimes nervous world of people who write about IQ, this book has been a topic of conversation for a long time. It was originally commissioned as one of the… More

What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?

– The Public Interest, Winter 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
Excerpt: AUTUMN 1991 saw renewed controversy about SAT scores and American education. First it was revealed that the national average on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test… More

The Aristocracy of Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, October 10, 1994.
Excerpt: A perusal of the Harvard’s Freshman Register for 1952 shows a class looking very much as Harvard freshman classes had always looked. Under the portraits of the well-scrubbed,… More

What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?

– Malcolm W. Browne, New York Times, October 16, 1994.
Excerpt: In “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,” Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray write, “Mounting evidence indicates that… More

IQ: What’s the Fuss?

– Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, October 21, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” is a powerful, scrupulous, landmark study of the relationship between intelligence and social class, which is what the book is mainly about. It is… More

For Whom the Bell Tolls

– Peter Brimelow, Forbes, October 24, 1994.
Excerpt: “MY POLITICAL aspiration,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Charles Murray tells FORBES, “is the restoration of the Jeffersonian republic.” Murray’s critics… More

‘Bell Curve’ Ballistics

– Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, October 26, 1994.
Excerpt: “The Bell Curve” — the controversial book about the role of intelligence in society — is already a commercial success. Its publisher reports that it has now… More

A Conversation with Charles Murray

– Transcript, Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, October 1994.
Excerpt: MR. WATTENBERG: Hello. I’m Ben Wattenberg. Welcome to a special two-part edition of Think Tank. You know, sometimes an argument within the scholarly community is so fierce… More

Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia

– The New Republic, October 31, 1994 (with Richard Herrnstein.)
Excerpt: As of 1994, then, we can say nothing for certain about the relative roles that genetics and environment play in the formation of the black-white difference in I.Q. All the evidence… More

Book Discussion on The Bell Curve

– Video, C-SPAN, November 8, 1994.
Summary: The co-author discussed his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The book focuses on human intelligence and the way social problems are affected… More

The Real ‘Bell Curve’

– Wall Street Journal, December 2, 1994.
Excerpt: In the past few weeks, I have found myself occasionally leafing through “The Bell Curve” to reassure myself. Richard Hernnstein and I didn’t really write the book… More

Sins of the Cognitive Elite

– Michael Novak, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Our intellectual landscape has been disrupted by the equivalent of an earthquake and, as the ground settles, intellectuals are looking around nervously and bracing themselves. At… More

Acting Smart

– James Q. Wilson, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Serious readers will ask four main questions about The Bell Curve. Is it true that intelligence explains so much behavior? How can IQ produce this effect? If it does, is there… More

Common Knowledge

– Michael Barone, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is not an argument for racial discrimination. It is an argument against racial discrimination, against the one form of racial discrimination that is sanctioned by… More

Legacy of Racism

– Pat Shipman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Human intelligence is an eel-like subject: slippery, difficult to grasp, and almost impossible to get straight. Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein make a heroic attempt… More

Not Hopeless

– Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve shows that cognitive ability measured by IQ tests reliably predicts success—professional, academic, pecuniary—and that, on average, African-Americans have an IQ… More

Going Public

– Richard John Neuhaus, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The statistical data on which the book bases its conclusions about the cognitive differences between whites and blacks are impressive. And, since it would seem to be nearly… More

Living with Inequality

– Eugene D. Genovese, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve has much to offer. Its excellent analysis of the transformation of the American elite deserves high praise and a many-sided elaboration and critique, as do its… More

Trashing The Bell Curve

– Daniel Seligman, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: It is clear enough what The Bell Curve‘s liberal critics want. They want its ideas suppressed. They want the data to go away. They want the authors depicted as kooks and… More

Paroxysms of Denial

– Arthur R. Jensen, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Commenting not as an advocate but as an expert witness, I can say that The Bell Curve is correct in all its essential facts. The graphically presented analyses of fresh data (from… More

Is Intelligence Fixed?

– Nathan Glazer, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Herrnstein and Murray give some surprising data (surprising in the light of their argument that intelligence is fixed early and can’t be changed appreciably through… More

Meritocracy That Works

– Loren E. Lomasky, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: If the aim of social policy is to raise the abilities of the less well-off, without trying to achieve parity across races and classes, then speculation concerning the genetic basis… More

Moral Intelligence

– Michael Young, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: In its main outlines theirs is a story of progress. Intelligence—or cognitive ability, as they prefer to call it most of the time—seems to have swept almost all before it.… More

Methodological Fetishism

– Brigitte Berger, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: For all its wealth of data, skillful argumentation, and scope, The Bell Curve is a narrow and deeply flawed book. Murray and Herrnstein have fallen prey to a methodological… More

Dispirited

– Glenn C. Loury, National Review, December 5, 1994.
Excerpt: Reading Herrnstein and Murray’s treatise causes me once again to reflect on the limited utility in the management of human affairs of that academic endeavor generously termed… More

Mainstream Science on Intelligence

– Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1994.
Excerpt: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions… More

The Bell Curve

– Chester Finn, Commentary, January 1995.
Excerpt: As any author can attest who has brought forth a book and waited months for even the hometown paper—let alone the New York Times—to review it, the instant celebrity accorded… More

Ethnicity and IQ

– Thomas Sowell, The American Spectator, February 1995.
Excerpt: The Bell Curve is a very sober, very thorough, and very honest book—on a subject where sobriety, thoroughness, and honesty are only likely to provoke cries of outrage. Its… More

The Bell Curve and Its Critics by Charles Murray

– Charles Murray, Commentary, May 1995.
Excerpt: In November 1989, Richard Herrnstein and I agreed to collaborate on a book that, five years later, became The Bell Curve. It is a book about events at the two ends of the… More

Intelligence and the Social Scientist

– Leon R. Kass, The Public Interest, Summer 1995.
Excerpt: Someone who has not read the book, but “knows” it only from the largely irresponsible things written and said about it, will be surprised to discover that The Bell… More

Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns

– Ulrich Neisser, chair, report of a Task Force established by the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, February 1996.
Excerpt: In the fall of 1994, the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s book The Bell Curve sparked a new round of debate about the meaning of intelligence test scores and the nature… More

Income Inequality and IQ

– (Washington: AEI Press, 1998.)
Summary from Publisher: What causes income inequality? The usual answers are economic and sociological. Capitalism systematically generates unequal economic rewards. Social class… More

IQ since The Bell Curve

– Christopher F. Chabris, Commentary, August 1998.
Excerpt: In The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray set out to prove that American society was becoming increasingly meritocratic, in the sense that wealth and other positive social outcomes… More

Race and IQ: Part III

– Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com, October 3, 2002.
Excerpt: I happened to run into Charles Murray in Dulles International Airport while he and Richard Herrnstein were writing “The Bell Curve.” When I asked him what he was… More

Interview with James Heckman

– Douglas Clement, The Region, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, June 2005.
Excerpt: Region: In 1995, you wrote a very strong critique of The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray’s book about IQ, genetics and ability, which argued that nature far outweighs… More

Intelligence in the Classroom

– Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
Excerpt: Education is becoming the preferred method for diagnosing and attacking a wide range problems in American life. The No Child Left Behind Act is one prominent example. Another is… More

Jewish Genius

– Commentary, April 2007.
Excerpt: Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.… More

Sentimental Education

– James Pierson, The New Criterion, September 2008.
Excerpt: Murray thinks that the nation would be better served if we lowered our expectations about what schools can accomplish and found new ways to train and educate students outside the… More

Murray’s Truths

– Liam Julian, Weekly Standard, September 22, 2008.
Excerpt: Charles Murray has written a bracing book about education, one determined not only to upset apple carts, but explode them. In varied ways he has succeeded, and for that we should… More

Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains

– Pathways, Winter 2008.
Excerpt: It may be said with only a little exaggeration that policy analysts are happy describing the causes of problems while ignoring their solution, and politicians are happy proposing… More

Intelligence and College

– National Affairs, Fall 2009.
Excerpt: Imagine a high-school senior who is trying to decide whether to go to college. He walks into the office of his school’s counselor and asks for help in making up his mind. The… More

The Bell Curve Revisited

– Video, the Program on Constitutional Government, Harvard University, March 14, 2014.
Summary: Charles Murray, on “The Bell Curve Revisited.” Charles Murray is a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the author of famous and influential books, among… More

Our Futile Efforts to Boost Children’s IQ

– Bloomberg View, November 14, 2014.
Excerpt: It’s one thing to point out that programs to improve children’s cognitive functioning have had a dismal track record. We can always focus on short-term improvements, blame… More

Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’

– Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2015.
Excerpt: Spring is here, which means it’s time for elite colleges to send out acceptance letters. Some will go to athletes, the children of influential alumni and those who round out the… More

Kids Today

– Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2015.
Excerpt: My takeaway from all this was expressed in the closing chapter of my own work on Putnam’s topic, Coming Apart (2012). Very briefly, I don’t think America’s civic culture will… More

The Bell Curve: IQ, Race and Gender

– Video, discussion with Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio, September 14, 2015.
Summary: In continuing our discussion on Human Intelligence and the predictive powers of IQ, Charles Murray joins the broadcast to discuss the latest science regarding ethnic and gender… More

An Open Letter to the Virginia Tech Community

– American Enterprise Institute, March 17, 2016.
Excerpt: Last week, the president of Virginia Tech, Tim Sands, published an “open letter to the Virginia Tech community” defending lectures delivered by deplorable people like me (I’m… More