The Politics of Intelligence · Episode 5 of 9 · 49 min
Who Paid for Race Science? The Pioneer Fund
Much twentieth-century race-and-IQ research was bankrolled by the Pioneer Fund, a foundation born in 1937 from textile heir Wickliffe Draper's fortune and the eugenics movement. The episode follows the money from its founders through segregation-era politics, the journal Mankind Quarterly, and grants to researchers such as Jensen, Shockley and Rushton, to a scholarly debate over what that funding means.
Who's who
- Wickliffe Draper+1 more episodeTextile heir who founded and funded the Pioneer Fund
- Harry H. Laughlin+4 more episodesEugenics Record Office superintendent and Pioneer Fund founding director
- Harry F. Weyher Jr.Attorney who was Pioneer Fund president from 1958
- Thomas F. EllisFund director and North Carolina segregationist strategist
- Arthur Jensen+7 more episodesBerkeley psychologist and long-time Pioneer grantee
- William Shockley+3 more episodesNobel physicist funded to promote his dysgenics claims
- J. Philippe RushtonCanadian psychologist and later Fund president
- Roger PearsonAnthropologist who became editor of Mankind Quarterly in 1978
Where it happens
- Hopedale, MassachusettsDraper family textile fortune and Draper's birthplace
- Cold Spring Harbor, New York+1 more episodeHome of the Eugenics Record Office
- Edinburgh, ScotlandWhere Mankind Quarterly was founded in 1960
Timeline
- 1937Pioneer Fund incorporated in New York
- 1958Harry Weyher becomes Fund president
- 1960Mankind Quarterly founded with Draper's money
- 1972Draper dies, leaving his estate largely to the Fund
- 1994The Bell Curve draws heavily on Pioneer-funded research
- 2003Southern Poverty Law Center designates the Fund a hate group
Still debated
The Fund and its defenders say it supports legitimate inquiry into human differences. Scholars also debate grant totals, Laughlin's actual influence, whether The Bell Curve was distorted by its reliance on Fund-supported work, and whether the Fund is now dormant.
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