| Christopher Richard Brand | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 1, 1943 Preston, United Kingdom |
| Citizenship | British |
| Fields | Psychometrics |
| Institutions | formerly University of Edinburgh |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford |
| Known for | Inspection time as a correlate of intelligence, The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications |
Christopher Richard Brand (born in Preston, England, 1 June 1943) is an English psychological and psychometric researcher who gained media attention for his controversial statements on race and intelligence and pedophilia.[1] He went to Queen Elizabeth's, Barnet, and is a graduate of The Queen's College, Oxford, and a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, 1968-70. He was a Lecturer at Edinburgh University from 1970 (teaching in personality, psychopathology and philosophical problems). He is a Fellow of the Galton Institute. He has three children and was into the tenth year of his third marriage in 2011.
Brand is a proponent of IQ testing and the general intelligence factor and was "a major influence in the spread of influence of inspection time as a theoretically interesting correlate of psychometric intelligence," according to Ian Deary and Pauline Smith in the International Handbook of Intelligence, edited by Robert Sternberg.[2][3] Deary and Smith report the correlation of inspection time with psychometric intelligence is currently considered to be .4.[4] The 25th anniversary of the original discovery of this relationship was observed in 2001 by a special issue of Intelligence.[5]
Contents |
Brand's discussion of the disparity between races in average cognitive ability test scores has caused controversy, especially because of his support for the hereditarian hypothesis of such differences. Brand refers to himself as a race realist and has been called a "scientific racist."[6][7] His views are those of the classical 'London School' of psychology -- other prominent members of which would be professors Richard Lynn and Phil Rushton.
Brand's most controversial views generated headlines in April 1996, when he was quoted in the Independent on Sunday recommending that "low-IQ girls" be "encouraged to have sex with higher-IQ boys" rather than with their more usual low-IQ companions (resulting in genetic deterioration). "There are plenty of intelligent African men for black girls to be having sex with,"[8] he said, though adding that blacks probably needed to be allowed polygamy.[9]
Brand has also written that "women are inclined to deceitful promiscuity" and that Sigmund Freud was therefore right to ascribe weaker super-egos to women than to men. (Brand is a supporter both of psychometrician-psychologist Hans Eysenck and of Freud.) His 1996 book The g Factor: General Intelligence and Its Implications led to accusations of scientific racism and sexism, and his university lectures were protested and closed by the Anti-Nazi League of Edinburgh. Brand's book was subsequently withdrawn by publisher John Wiley & Sons.[10] It was then published free on the web by Douance.[11]
Also, after months of public 'anti-racist' outrage, in October 1996 Brand came to the defense of Nobel laureate Daniel Carleton Gajdusek who had been charged with paedophilia. Brand argued that non-violent paedophilia with a consenting partner over age 12 does no harm so long as both are of above-average IQ.[12][13]
The proceedings were initiated in 1996 after the dean of social sciences complained.[13] (Edinburgh University's Chaplain, a supporter of the Anti-Nazi League, had taken Brand's e-mailed reflections on pederasty to the Scottish press. Edinburgh's Student newspaper's frontpage banner headline was FIRST IT WAS BLACKS, THEN IT WAS WOMEN, NOW IT'S KIDS.)
Brand was fired a year later after hearings from his 27-year tenured position at Edinburgh University in 1997.[14][15] The University said this was for conduct that "brought the university into disrepute."
Brand appealed and sued the University for unfair dismissal, and received £12,000 (in those days the maximum obtainable from an Employment Tribunal) in an out-of-court settlement.[16] His case became a cause célèbre among advocates of academic freedom. Marek Kohn cited the Brand incident in a defence of intellectual freedom on the Internet.[17] Others, however, including a former Brand student, considered academic freedom a privilege that carried with it an expectation of 'social responsibility.'[18]
Eric Barendt (University College London), in the chapter on 'The Chris Brand Case' in his 2010 book Academic Freedom, said Brand should have tried harder to get on with his colleagues [19] - who Brand replied were "Jew-leftie-commie[s]"[20].
From 2000 to 2004, Brand was a research consultant to the Woodhill Foundation and its CRACK program based in Baltimore, Maryland, which pays drug-addicted mothers $200 to be sterilized.[21] His recent thinking can be sampled via his reviews at Amazon Books,[1] his articles in American Renaissance and The Occidental Quarterly, his (co-authored) chapter 'Why ignore the g factor?'[22] and his weblog. His defence of Hans Eysenck (in a review of the biography Playing with Fire) was published in the journal Intelligence and at http://bussorah.tripod.com/ulysses.html in 2011.[23]