A Gathering of Academic Bigots

The American Renaissance Conference was held recently at the Crowne Plaza hotel near Dulles International Airport in Herndon, Virginia. The conference, sponsored by the New Century Foundation, featured a full slate of white supremacist speakers with academic credentials. Male attendees were required to wear jackets and ties as they heard talks on topics such as “The Heritability of World IQ Differences,” “Understanding the African Mind,” and “Why is There So Much Resistance to Race Realism?”

The featured speaker was J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist from the University of Western Ontario and president of the Pioneer Fund. Over three quarters of a century the Pioneer Fund has made dozens of grants for research exploring genetic racial differences. Rushton’s research has included studies on the relation of brain and penis size to intelligence.

A small group of protesters demonstrated outside the American Renaissance Conference but police kept them from gaining access to the hotel.

Copyright © 2008. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.