Charles Murray

Charles Murray is the Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute. Murray's work was cited by Iain Duncan Smith when he explained the agenda of the Centre for Social Justice think tank.

1960 Cross Burning

According to a report in the New York Times, when Charles Murray was a teenager in 1960 he burned a cross with his friends. The report states:

In the fall of 1960, during their senior year, they nailed some scrap wood into a cross, adorned it with fireworks and set it ablaze on a hill beside the police station.

Journalist Jason DeParle describes Murray's reaction to being reminded of the incident:

A long pause follows when Murray is reminded of the event. 'Incredibly, incredibly dumb,' he says. 'But it never crossed our minds that this had any larger significance. And I look back on that and say, "How on earth could we be so oblivious?" I guess it says something about that day and age that it didn't cross our minds.'

Career History

• 1965–1967. Peace Corps Volunteer, Ministry of Health, Thailand.
• 1968–1969. Researcher on contract with US-AID, Thailand.
• 1969–1970, 1974–1981. Research Scientist, American Institutes for Research.
• 1982–1990. Scholar, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
• 1990–present. Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

Education

• B.A., Harvard University, History, 1965.
• Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Political Science, 1974.

International Work

• Work and field research in Thailand, 1965–70, 1972–73, 1979, 1983, 1991.
• Field research in Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal, 1974.
• Field research and lectures in the United Kingdom, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2003, 2005, 2007.
• University lectures in New Zealand and Australia, 1987, 2001, 2007.
• Conferences in the Soviet Union and Russia, 1990, 2004.
• Consultant to the Bulgarian government, 1990.
• Consultant to the OECD, France, 1991.
• University lectures in Argentina and Chile, 1992.
• University lectures in Sweden, 1992, 1997, 2004.
• University lectures in Poland, 1996.
• Panelist, European Union Council on Problems of Youth, Madrid, 2000.
• University lectures in Scotland, 2000.

Publications

• A BEHAVIORAL STUDY OF RURAL MODERNIZATION: Social and Economic Change in Thai Villages. New York: Praeger, 1977.
• BEYOND PROBATION: Juvenile Corrections and the Chronic Delinquent. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1979 (with Louis A. Cox, Jr.).
• LOSING GROUND: American Social Policy 1950–1980. New York: Basic Books, 1984.
• IN PURSUIT: Of Happiness and Good Government. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
• APOLLO: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989 (with Catherine Bly Cox).
• THE BELL CURVE: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: The Free Press, 1994 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
• WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN: A Personal Interpretation. New York: Broadway Books, 1997.
• DOES PRISON WORK? London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997.
• INCOME INEQUALITY AND IQ. Washington: AEI Press, 1998.
• THE UNDERCLASS REVISITED. Washington: AEI Press, 1999.
• HUMAN ACCOMPLISHMENT: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. New York: HarperCollins, 2003.
• IN OUR HANDS: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. Washington: AEI Press, 2006.
• REAL EDUCATION: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America’s Schools Back to Reality. New York: Crown Forum, 2008.

Journal Articles

• “The Two Wars Against Poverty,” Public Interest. Fall, 1982.
• “Stakeholders as Deck Chairs,” New Directions in Program Evaluation. March, 1983.
• “Community Control and the Physical Environment.” In James Q. Wilson, ed., Crime and Public Policy. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983.
• “The War on Poverty 1965–1980,” Wilson Quarterly. Autumn, 1984.
• “Are the Poor ‘Losing Ground’?,” Political Science Quarterly. Fall, 1985.
• “No, Welfare Isn’t Really the Problem,” Public Interest. Summer, 1986.
• “Losing Ground Two Years Later,” Cato Journal. Spring/Summer, 1986.
• “In Search of the Working Poor,” Public Interest. Fall, 1987.
• “The British Underclass,” Public Interest. Spring, 1990.
• “What’s Really Behind the SAT Score Decline?” Public Interest. Winter, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein).
• “Welfare and the Family: The American Experience,” Journal of Labor Economics. January, 1993.
• “Does Welfare Bring More Babies?” Public Interest. Spring, 1994.
• “The Next British Revolution,” Public Interest. Winter, 1995.
• “The Physical Environment.” In James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, eds., Crime. San Francisco: ICS Press, 1995.
• “The Partial Restoration of Traditional Society,” Public Interest. Fall, 1995.
• “Reducing Poverty and Reducing the Underclass: Different Problems, Different Solutions.” In Michael R. Darby, ed., Reducing *Poverty in America. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1996.
• “IQ and Economic Success,” Public Interest. Summer, 1997.
• “IQ, Success in Life, and Inequality: The Ambiguous Merits of Meritocracy.” In Finis Welch, ed., The Causes and Consequences of *Increasing Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
• “The British Underclass: Ten Years Later,” Public Interest. Fall, 2001.
• “Family Formation,” in Rebecca Blank and Ron Haskins, eds., New World of Welfare Reform. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.
• “IQ and Income Inequality in a Sample of Sibling Pairs from Advantaged Family Backgrounds,” Proceedings, American Economic Review. May, 2002.
• “Measuring Achievement: The West and the Rest,” Public Interest. Summer, 2003.
• “How to Accuse the Other Guy of Lying with Statistics,” Statistical Science. Vol. 20, No. 3, 2005.
• “Changes Over Time in the Black-White Difference on Mental Tests: Evidence from the Children of the 1979 Cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,” Intelligence. Vol. 34, 2006.
• “The Magnitude and Components Change in the Black-White IQ Difference from 1920–1991: A Birth Cohort Analysis of the Woodcock-Johnson Standardizations. Intelligence, Vol. 35, 2007.
• “Poverty and Marriage, Inequality and Brains.” Pathways. Winter, 2008.
• “The (Improper) Role of Government in Defining Our Culture.” Northwestern University Law Review. Winter, 2008
• “Guaranteed Income as a Replacement for the Welfare State.” Basic Income Studies. August, 2008. ARTICLES FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE
• “The Poverty War: Great Society vs. Trickle-Down,” Wall Street Journal. March 25, 1982.
• “The Fairness Delusion,” American Spectator. October, 1984.
• “The Domino that Didn’t Fall,” Atlantic Monthly. November, 1984.
• “The New Racism,” New Republic. December 31, 1984.
• “Helping the Poor: A Few Modest Proposals,” Commentary. May, 1985.
• “White Welfare, White Families, ‘White Trash’,” National Review. March 28, 1986.
• “The Coming of Custodial Democracy,” Commentary. September, 1988.
• “Underclass,” Sunday Times Magazine (London). November 26, 1989.
• “Here’s the Bad News on the Underclass,” Wall Street Journal. March 8, 1990.
• “How to Win the War on Drugs,” New Republic. May 21, 1990.
• “The Pursuit of Happiness on the Road to Democracy,” American Enterprise. January, 1991.
• “Bad Lessons,” New York Times. January 8, 1992.
• “But We’re Ignoring Gifted Kids,” Washington Post. Feb. 2, 1992 (with Richard J. Herrnstein)
• “Thomas Jefferson Goes East,” National Review. March 30, 1992.
• “Causes, Root Causes, and Cures,” National Review. June 8, 1992.
• “The Legacy of the Sixties,” Commentary. July 1992.
• “Stop Favoring Unwed Mothers,” New York Times. January 16, 1993.
• “The Local Angle: Giving Meaning to Freedom,” Reason, October, 1993.
• “The Coming White Underclass,” Wall Street Journal. October 29, 1993.
• “Underclass: The Deepening Crisis,” Sunday Times (London). May 22 and May 29, 1994.
• “The Aristocracy of Intelligence,” Wall Street Journal. October 10, 1994.
• “Genes, Race, and IQ—An Apologia,” New Republic. October 31, 1994.
• “What to Do about Welfare,” Commentary. December, 1994.
• “The Real ‘Bell Curve’,” Wall Street Journal. December 2, 1994.
• “The Bell Curve and Its Critics,” Commentary. May, 1995.
• “Catastrophe Now,” New York Times. Nov. 14, 1995.
• “A Stroll Through the Income Spectrum,” American Enterprise. July/August 1996.
• “Keeping Priorities Straight on Welfare Reform,” Society. August 1996.
• “As the Bell Curves,” National Review. December 8, 1997 (with Daniel Seligman)
• “Americans Remain Wary of Washington,” Wall Street Journal. December 23, 1997.
• “What Government Must Do,” American Enterprise. January/February, 1998.
• “The Perils of GOP Activism,” Wall Street Journal. February 20, 1998.
• “And Now for the Bad News,” Wall Street Journal. February 2, 1998.
• “Our Dreyfus Case,” Weekly Standard. February 22, 1999.
• “Deeper into the Brain,” National Review. January 24, 2000.
• “Prole Models,” Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2001.
• “The Fathers Are Still Missing,” Washington Post. October 30, 2001.
• “Family Decay Hurts Equality,” American Enterprise. April/May 2002.
• “SAT Reform Fails the Needy,” Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2002.
• “An Opportunity Lost,” Public Interest, Winter, 2003.
• “Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” New York Times, November 30, 2003.
• “No Justice,” and “Simple Justice,” Sunday Times (London), Jan. 18 and 25, 2004.
• “You Are What You Tax,” New York Times, April 14, 2004.
• “Portrait of Privilege?” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2004.
• “Marriage-Lite,” Public Interest, Summer, 2004.
• “Sex Education at Harvard,” New York Times, January 23, 2005.
• “The Advantages of Social Apartheid,” Sunday Times (London), April 4, 2005.
• “The Inequality Taboo,” Commentary, September, 2005.
• “The Hallmark of the Underclass,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2005.
• “Thomas Sowell: Seeing Clearly,” National Review, December 19, 2005.
• “A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,” Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2006.
• “The $10,000 Solution,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2006.
• “Acid Tests,” Wall Street Journal, July 25, 2006.
• “The GOP’s Bad Bet,” New York Times, October 19, 2006.
• “Intelligence in the Classroom,” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2007.
• “What’s Wrong with Vocational School?” Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2007
• “Aztecs vs. Greeks,” Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2007.
• “Abolish the SAT,” The American, July-August 2007.
• “The Age of Educational Romanticism,” The New Criterion, May, 2008.
• “Francophilia,” Weekly Standard, June 2, 2008.
• “For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time,” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2008.
• “Leave This Child Behind,” New York Post, August 17, 2008.
• “College Daze,” Forbes, September, 2008.
• “Good Teachers in Bad Times” Washington Times, October 14, 2008.
• “We Can’t All Make the Grade,” Standpoint, October 2008.
• “Should the Obama Generation Drop Out?,” New York Times, December 28, 2008