Boas might even go so far as to fudge his data or inflate their significance in order to support his political attitudes

 If . . . we were to treat Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa as utopia, not as ethnography, then we would understand it better and save a lot of pointless debate.

— Robin Fox, 1989, p. 3 

Several writers have commented on the “radical changes” that occurred in the goals and methods of the social sciences consequent to the entry of Jews to these fields (C. Liebman, 1973, p. 213; see also Degler, 1991; Hollinger, 1996; I. L. Horowitz, 1993, p. 75; Rothman & Lichter, 1982/1996). Degler (1991, pp. 187ff) notes that the shift away from Darwinism as the fundamental paradigm of the social sciences resulted from an ideological shift rather than from the emergence of any new empirical data:

As we have seen in regard to the shift in outlook among anthropologists and sociologists, professional or scientific attitudes were not the full explanation. One needs to look beyond professionalism and standard science; for the change in outlook was too fundamental, too radical to be accounted for on those grounds alone. After all, we are not dealing here with a long-held, well-substantiated theory (that is, race) which new and conclusive evidence had unambiguously disproved and overturned. Rather we see essentially the substitution of one unproved (though strongly held) assumption by another. (p. 187)

Degler (1991, p. 200) also notes that Jewish intellectuals have been instrumental in the decline of Darwinism and other biological perspectives in American social science since the 1930s. The opposition of Jewish intellectuals to Darwinism has long been noticed (e.g., Lenz, 1931, p. 674; see also the comments of John Maynard Smith in Lewin, 1992, p. 43).33

In sociology, the advent of Jewish intellectuals in the pre-World War II period resulted in “a level of politicization unknown to sociology’s founding fathers. It is not only that the names of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim replaced those of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, but also that the sense of America as a consensual experience gave way to a sense of America as a series of conflicting definitions” (I. L. Horowitz, 1993, p. 75). In the post-World War II period, sociology “became populated by Jews to such a degree that jokes abounded: one did not need the synagogue, the minyan [i.e., the minimum number of Jews required for a communal religious service] was to be found in sociology departments; or, one did not need a sociology of Jewish life, since the two had become synonymous” (p. 77). Indeed, the ethnic conflict within American sociology parallels to a remarkable degree the ethnic conflict in American anthropology, a theme of this chapter. Here the conflict was played out between leftist Jewish social scientists and an old-line, empirically oriented Protestant establishment that was eventually eclipsed:

American sociology has struggled with the contrary claims of those afflicted with physics envy and researchers . . . more engaged in the dilemmas of society. In that struggle, midwestern Protestant mandarins of positivist science often came into conflict with East Coast Jews who in turn wrestled with their own Marxist commitments; great quantitative researchers from abroad, like Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia, sought to disrupt the complacency of native bean counters. (Sennett, 1995, p. 43)

This chapter will emphasize the ethnopolitical agenda of Franz Boas, but it is worth mentioning the work of Franco-Jewish structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss because he appears to have been similarly motivated, although the French structuralist movement as a whole cannot be viewed as a Jewish intellectual movement. Lévi-Strauss interacted extensively with Boas and acknowledged his influence (Dosse, 1997 I, pp. 15, 16). In turn, Lévi-Strauss was very influential in France, Dosse (p. xxi) describing him as “the common father” of Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Lacan. He had a strong Jewish identity and a deep concern with anti-Semitism (Cuddihy, 1974, pp. 151ff). In response to an assertion that he was “the very picture of a Jewish intellectual,” Lévi-Strauss stated,

[C]ertain mental attitudes are perhaps more common among Jews than elsewhere. . . . Attitudes that come from the profound feeling of belonging to a national community, all the while knowing that in the midst of this community there are people—fewer and fewer of them, I admit—who reject you. One keeps one’s sensitivity attuned, accompanied by the irrational feeling that in all circumstances one has to do a bit more than other people to disarm potential critics. (Lévi-Strauss & Eribon, 1991, pp. 155–156)

Like many Jewish intellectuals discussed here, Lévi-Strauss’s writings were aimed at enshrining cultural differences and subverting the universalist Western approaches to science, a position that validates the position of Judaism as a non-assimilating group. Like Boas, Lévi-Strauss rejected biological and evolutionary theories. He theorized that cultures, like languages, were arbitrary collections of symbols with no natural relationships to their referents. Lévi-Strauss rejected Western modernization theory in favor of the idea that there were no superior societies. The role of the anthropologist was to be a “natural subversive or convinced opponent of traditional usage” (in Cuddihy, 1974, p. 155) in Western societies, while respecting and even romanticizing the virtues of non-Western societies (see Dosse, 1997 II, p. 30). Western universalism and ideas of human rights were viewed as masks for ethnocentrism, colonialism, and genocide:

Lévi-Strauss’s most significant works were all published during the breakup of the French colonial empire and contributed enormously to the way it was understood by intellectuals. . . . [H]is elegant writings worked an aesthetic transformation on his readers, who were subtly made to feel ashamed to be Europeans. . . . [H]e evoked the beauty, dignity, and irreducible strangeness of Third World cultures that were simply trying to preserve their difference. . . . [H]is writings would soon feed the suspicion among the new left . . . that all the universal ideas to which Europe claimed allegiance—reason, science, progress, liberal democracy—were culturally specific weapons fashioned to rob the non-European Other of his difference. (Lilla, 1998)

(...)

The Guru Phenomenon in Boasian Anthropology. A theme in later chapters is that Jewish intellectual and political movements tend to center around guru-like charismatic figures who are slavishly admired by their followers. This phenomenon has strong roots in Jewish history and can still be seen today among Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish leaders such as Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, “a towering charismatic figure in the Jewish world” (Keinon, 2020). Twenty-six years after Schneerson’s death in 1994, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz wrote, “For Hasidic movements . . . the death of any Rebbe is a disaster, almost like the death of a father. Because of the particularly close bond that existed between the Rebbe and his hassidim, that trauma was multiplied many times” (in Keinon). The following is an account of a service at a synagogue in Galicia in 1903:

There were no benches, and several thousand Jews were standing closely packed together, swaying in prayer like the corn in the wind. When the rabbi appeared the service began. Everybody tried to get as close to him as possible. The rabbi led the prayers in a thin, weeping voice. It seemed to arouse a sort of ecstasy in the listeners. They closed their eyes, violently swaying. The loud praying sounded like a gale. Anyone seeing these Jews in prayer would have concluded that they were the most religious people on earth. (Ruppin, 1971, p. 69) 

At the end of the service, those closest to the rabbi were intensely eager to eat any food touched by him, and the fish bones were preserved by his followers as relics. Another account notes that “devotees hoping to catch a spark from this holy fire run to receive him” (R. Mahler, 1985, p. 8).

Boasian anthropology, at least during Boas’s lifetime, was highly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent, and it was centered around a charismatic figure who served as an unquestioned leader. As in the case of Freud (see Ch. 5), Boas was a patriarchal father figure, strongly supporting those who agreed with him and excluding those who did not. Alfred Kroeber regarded Boas as “a true patriarch” who “functioned as a powerful father figure, cherishing and supporting those with whom he identified in the degree that he felt they were genuinely identifying with him, but, as regards others, aloof and probably fundamentally indifferent, coldly hostile if the occasion demanded it” (in Stocking, 1968, pp. 305–306). “Boas has all the attributes of the head of a cult, a revered charismatic teacher and master, ‘literally worshipped’ by disciples whose ‘permanent loyalty’ has been ‘effectively established’” (L. White, 1966, pp. 25–26).As in the case of Freud, in the eyes of his disciples, virtually everything Boas did was of monumental importance and justified, placing him among the intellectual giants of all time. Like Freud, Boas did not tolerate theoretical or ideological differences with his students. Individuals who disagreed with the leader or had personality clashes with him, such as Clark Wissler and Ralph Linton, were simply excluded from the movement. Paul Radin, mentioned above as an influential member of the core group of Boas’s students, claimed that Boas was a “powerful figure who did not tolerate theoretical or ideological differences in his students” (in Darnell, 2001, p. 35). Essentially, he made a generation of students an extension of himself and his ideas. 

L. White (1966, pp. 26–27) represents the exclusion of Wissler and Linton as having ethnic overtones, as both were gentiles. Wissler was a member of the Galton Society (founded by eugenicist scientist Charles Davenport and Nordicist writer Madison Grant), which promoted eugenics and accepted the theory that there is a gradation of cultures from lower forms to higher forms, with Western civilization at the top (Gershenhorn, 2004, p. 23), so his exclusion is not surprising. However, White (pp. 26–27) also suggests that George A. Dorsey’s status as a gentile was relevant to his exclusion from the Boas group despite Dorsey’s intensive efforts to be a member. Kroeber (1956, p. 26) notes that Dorsey, “an American-born gentile and a Ph.D. from Harvard, tried to gain admittance to the select group but failed.” (It should be noted that the very idea of a “select group” in a supposedly scientific enterprise contradicts the entire idea of a science; see Ch. 7). As an aspect of this exclusionary authoritarianism, Boas was instrumental in completely suppressing evolutionary theory in anthropology (D. Freeman, 1990, p. 197). Group solidarity within the Boasians has also drawn this comment from anthropologist Regna Darnell (2001, p. 35): they “shared a heady sense of solidarity, viewing themselves as rewriting the history of anthropology, creating a professionally respectable and scientifically rigorous discipline whose practitioners were loyal to a common enterprise”—a testament to a sense of group commitment that is antithetical to scientific research (see Ch. 7). 

Boas as Pseudoscientist. Boas was the quintessential skeptic and an ardent defender of methodological rigor when it came to theories of cultural evolution and genetic influences on individual differences, yet “the burden of proof rested lightly upon Boas’s own shoulders” (L. White, 1966, p. 12). Although Boas (like Freud; see Ch. 5) made his conjectures in a very dogmatic manner, his “historical reconstructions are inferences, guesses, and unsupported assertions [ranging] from the possible to the preposterous. Almost none is verifiable” (p. 13). An unrelenting foe of generalization and theory construction (such as the cultural gradation theory that previously dominated anthropology), Boas nevertheless completely accepted the “absolute generalization at which [Margaret] Mead had arrived after probing for a few months into adolescent behavior on Samoa,” even though Mead’s results were contrary to previous research in the area (D. Freeman, 1983, p. 291). Moreover, Boas uncritically allowed Ruth Benedict to distort his own data on the Kwakiutl (see Torrey, 1992, p. 83).

This suggests that Boas might even go so far as to fudge his data or inflate their significance in order to support his political attitudes. Boas’s famous study purporting to show that skull shape changed as a result of immigration from Europe to America was a very effective propaganda weapon in the cause of the anti-racialists and against those who wanted to restrict immigration. As noted in Chapter 1, Boas was greatly motivated by the immigration issue. Indeed, it was likely intended as propaganda and has been highly successful in that regard, having been “cited innumerable times by writers of textbooks and anyone wishing to make the point that the cranium is plastic” (Sparks & Jantz, 2003, p. 334). Boas was far more concerned with showing that the cranial measurements of Eastern European Jews had altered toward the American (i.e., northwest European) type than showing similar results among Italians, writing in 1909, “The composition of the Italian types in the schools proved to be so complex that no safe inference could be drawn in regard to the stability of the type” (in Sparks & Jantz, p. 334). Quite possibly this emphasis on showing the malleability of Jewish skulls reflected Boas’s ethnic affinity to this group as well as the fact that Eastern European Jews were seen as particularly unassimilable at the time (see Ch. 8). 

Based on their reanalysis of Boas’s data, physical anthropologists Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz (2002) do not accuse Boas of scientific fraud, but they do find that his data do not show any significant environmental effects on cranial form as a result of immigration. Moreover, Boas made inflated claims about the results: very minor changes in cranial index were described as changes of “type” so that Boas was claiming that within one generation immigrants developed the long-headed type characteristic of northwest Europeans (Sparks & Jantz, 2003, p. 334). As Sparks and Jantz (2003) note, several modern studies show that cranial shape is under strong genetic influence, including a study showing that, while both American Blacks and Whites have altered their cranial measurements over the last 150 years, these changes have occurred in parallel and have not resulted in convergence. Their reanalysis of Boas’s data indicated that no more than one percent of the variation between groups could be ascribed to the environmental effects of immigration, with the remainder due to variation between ethnic groups. 

Sparks and Jantz (2003, p. 335) also claim that Boas may well have been motivated by a desire to end racialist views in anthropology:

While Boas [like Herskovits] never stated explicitly that he had based any conclusions on anything but the data themselves, it is obvious that he had a personal agenda in the displacement of the eugenics movement in the United States. In order to do this, any differences observed between European- and U.S.-born individuals will be used to its fullest extent to prove his point.

Conclusion

The entire Boasian enterprise may thus be characterized as a highly authoritarian political movement centered around a charismatic leader. The results were extraordinarily successful: “The profession as a whole was united within a single national organization of academically oriented anthropologists. By and large, they shared a common understanding of the fundamental significance of the historically conditioned variety of human cultures in the determination of human behavior” (Stocking, 1968, p. 296). Research on racial differences ceased, and the profession completely excluded eugenicists and racial theorists like Madison Grant and Charles Davenport.

By the mid-1930s the Boasian view of the cultural determination of human behavior had a strong influence on social scientists generally (Stocking, 1968, p. 300). The followers of Boas also eventually became some of the most influential academic supporters of another Jewish-dominated movement, psychoanalysis (see Ch. 5). Marvin Harris (1968, p. 431) notes that psychoanalysis was adopted by the Boasian school because of its utility as a critique of Euro-American culture, and, indeed, as we shall see in later chapters, psychoanalysis is an ideal vehicle of cultural critique. In the hands of the Boasian school, psychoanalysis was completely stripped of its evolutionary associations, and there was a much greater accommodation to the importance of cultural variables (p. 433).35

Cultural critique was also an important aspect of the Boasian school. Stocking (1989, pp. 215–216) shows that several prominent Boasians, including Robert Lowie and Edward Sapir, were involved in the cultural criticism of the 1920s, which centered around the perception of American culture as overly homogeneous, hypocritical, and emotionally and aesthetically repressive (especially with regard to sexuality). Central to this program was creating ethnographies of idyllic cultures that were free of the negatively perceived traits that were attributed to Western culture. Among these Boasians, cultural criticism crystallized as an ideology of “romantic primitivism” in which certain non-Western cultures epitomized the approved characteristics Western societies should emulate.

Cultural criticism was a central feature of the two most well-known Boasian ethnographies, Coming of Age in Samoa and Patterns of Culture. These works are not only offered as critiques of Western civilization, but often systematically misrepresent key issues related to evolutionary perspectives on human behavior. For example, Benedict’s Zuni were described as being free of war, homicide, and concern with accumulation of wealth. Children were not disciplined. Sex was casual, with little concern for virginity, sexual possessiveness, or paternity confidence. Contemporary Western societies are, of course, the opposite of these idyllic paradises, and Benedict suggests that we should study such cultures in order “to pass judgment on the dominant traits of our own civilization” (Benedict, 1934, p. 179). Mead’s similar portrayal of the Samoans ignored her own evidence contrary to her thesis (Orans, 1996, p. 155). Negatively perceived behaviors of Mead’s Samoans, such as rape and concern for virginity, were attributed to Western influence (Stocking, 1989, p. 245).

Both of these ethnographic accounts have been subjected to devastating criticisms. The picture of these societies that has emerged is far more compatible with evolutionary expectations than the societies depicted by Benedict and Mead (see Caton, 1990; D. Freeman, 1983; Orans, 1996; Stocking, 1989). In the controversy surrounding Mead’s work, some defenders of Mead have pointed to possible negative political implications of the demythologization of her work (see, e.g., the summary in Caton, pp. 226–227). 

Indeed, one consequence of the triumph of the Boasians was that there was almost no research on warfare and violence among the peoples studied by anthropologists (Keegan, 1993, pp. 90–94). Warfare and warriors were ignored, and cultures were perceived as consisting merely of myth-makers and gift-givers. (Orans, 1996, p. 120 shows that Mead systematically ignored cases of competition, violence, rape, and revolution in her account of Samoa.) Only five articles on the anthropology of warfare appeared during the 1950s. Revealingly, when Harry Holbert Turney-High published his volume Primitive War in 1949 documenting the universality of warfare and its oftentimes awesome savagery, the book was completely ignored by the anthropological profession—another example of the exclusionary tactics used against dissenters among the Boasians and characteristic of the other intellectual movements reviewed in this volume as well. Turney-High’s massive data on non-Western peoples conflicted with the image of them favored by a highly politicized profession whose members simply excluded these data entirely from intellectual discourse. The result was a “pacified past” (Keeley, 1996, pp. 163ff) and an “attitude of self-reproach” (p. 179) in which the behavior of primitive peoples was bowdlerized while the behavior of European peoples was not only excoriated as uniquely evil but also as responsible for all extant examples of warfare among primitive peoples. From this perspective, it is only the fundamental inadequacy of European culture that prevents an idyllic world free from between-group conflict. Of course, these trends have been exacerbated in recent decades far beyond anything envisioned by Benedict or Mead.The reality, of course, is far different. Warfare was and remains a recurrent phenomenon among pre-state societies; indeed, evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander (1979) and others have argued that warfare was a critical force in human evolution, selecting for greater intelligence and a suite of other human characteristics. Surveys indicate over 90 percent of societies engage in warfare, the great majority engaging in military activities at least once per year (Keeley, 1996, pp. 27–32). Moreover, “whenever modern humans appear on the scene, definitive evidence of homicidal violence becomes more common, given a sufficient sample of burials” (p. 37). Because of its frequency and the seriousness of its consequences, primitive warfare was more deadly than civilized warfare. Most adult males in primitive and prehistoric societies engaged in warfare and “saw combat repeatedly in a lifetime” (p. 174).

The Culture of Critique

An Evolutionary Analysis of JewishInvolvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements

Kevin MacDonald