Civil
rights group condemns work of CSULB professor
Kevin MacDonald
By
Karl Peterson
On-line Forty-Niner
The
Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights
group based in Montgomery, Ala., recently
condemned the work of a Cal State Long Beach
professor and the Web site on which he publishes
as being anti-Semitic and anti-immigration.
Kevin
MacDonald, a professor in the psychology
department since 1985, has published three
books and many articles in his career. MacDonald
concludes that Jews have for centuries had
a strategy to keep their gene pool separate
from other races and religions. He also
studies the Jewish political influence,
writing that Jews are heavily involved in
the Bush administration’s pro-Israel
foreign policy.
“He
put the anti-Semitism under the guise of
scholarly work,” said Mark Potok,
the editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s
quarterly magazine, Intelligence Report.
“Kevin MacDonald’s work is nothing
but gussied up anti-Semitism. At base it
says that Jews are out to get us through
their agenda.”
The
Southern Poverty Law Center is a civil rights
group that started in 1971 and became renowned
in the early ’80s for its work studying
and subsequently suing the Ku Klux Klan.
Arlene
Lazarowitz, the director of the Jewish studies
program at CSULB, said that while she does
not agree with many of MacDonald’s
conclusions and that they are too subjective,
she is happy that CSULB allows its faculty
to think and publish freely without the
threat of censorship.
In
a debate about the validity of MacDonald’s
research by members of the College of Liberal
Arts it was determined that the tenured
professor did not teach any of his research
in the classroom and therefore was entitled
to publish his research.
Lazarowitz
added that instead of censorship, the best
response to MacDonald’s research is
to prove it wrong.
MacDonald
said that his work is purely intended to
describe breeding trends in the Jewish community,
which is very influential the world over.
The 60-year-old professor, who teaches child
and adolescent development and social personality
development, said the Southern Poverty Law
Center was too quick to jump to conclusions
about his work.
“The
Jews are a very influential group,”
MacDonald said. “All I’m trying
to do is describe their breeding patterns.”
MacDonald
said that people are too concerned about
being politically correct and that one cannot
write anything about the Jewish community
or about cutting off immigration into the
United States without being labeled an anti-Semite
or anti-immigration.
Joyce
Greenspan, the regional director of the
Orange County/Long Beach office of the Anti-Defamation
League, said that MacDonald’s trilogy
of books is about the Jewish people planning
to take over the world. She added that whether
MacDonald is an anti-Semite is not a yes
or no answer but “that some of his
concepts are very questionable.”
Greenspan
said the ADL has been aware of MacDonald
for some time and despite whether or not
their civil rights group believes his work
is anti-Semitic, he is entitled to say whatever
he wants under the First Amendment, which
the ADL also works to protect. She said
that the ADL would only be concerned if
there were a violent call to action.
The
Web site, www.vdare.com, that Potok said
is “primarily white supremacist,”
on which MacDonald published an article
entitled “Thinking about Neoconservatism,”
was also condemned by the Southern Poverty
Law Center and is linked on MacDonald’s
home page to the CSULB Web site. V Dare
also features articles written by controversial
figures like Jared Taylor, the editor of
the white supremacist magazine American
Renaissance and Sam Francis, the editor
of a white supremacist newspaper, whose
Web site describes blacks as “a retrograde
species of humanity.”
“His work is bandied about by just
about every neo-Nazi group in America,”
Potok said of MacDonald, who received a
bachelor’s degree from University
of Wisconsin, Madison and a Ph.D. from University
of Connecticut.
“It
is like nuclear energy, you can use it for
good or you can use it for evil,”
MacDonald said of the white supremacist’s
interest in his articles and books.
MacDonald
also received attention for his role in
the 1996 to 2000 libel trial of David Irving.
Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel after
her book review caused Penguin books to
stop publication of Irving’s book.
Irving lost his case when the judge agreed
with the statements in the book review,
that said his book both sympathized with
Nazis and that his misrepresantation of
evidence amounted to a denial of the holocaust.
MacDonald
was the only witness in the trial to appear
on behalf of Irving. In his testimony, MacDonald
said that he felt Irving was being unfairly
targeted by the defendant and other Jewish
groups.
MacDonald
said he has no personal relationship with
Irving and that he was involved in the trial
because of the free speech issues involved
with the trial.
Just
as MacDonald hoped to protect the free speech
rights of Irving he has been granted the
same privilege by CSULB.
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