Reviving Jewish Race Science at Columbia University Conference

The population of Jews in the US is three percent ... but [their 'genius'] leads to their controlling so much power that even presidents are scared [of them]. Whether [President Barack] Obama will be able to escape the notion that three percent of the country is so powerful that the top gentile in the land cannot criticize Israel is not clear.

The above statement was made not by a Hamas or KKK leader, but by Ali al-Amin Mazrui, director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at SUNY Binghamton. He was addressing the Ifriqiyya Colloquium Conference, held on the top floor of Columbia University's International Affairs Building, on Thursday, May 6. Mazrui is a darling of the far left, appearing prominently in venues such as Democracy Now, as well as at Islamist forums like the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Columbia Professor Mahmood Mamdani and Barnard College Professor Nadia Abu El-Haj also sat on the panel, the former serving as moderator. Mamdani introduced the speaker, telling the audience that the Ifriqiyya Colloquium was about "gain[ing] some depth to the study of Africa." It may require a Ph.D. to appreciate how Mazrui's anti-Semitic diatribe relates to that mission statement.

Mazrui's lecture was entitled "Euro-Jews and Afro-Arabs: The Semitic Divergence in History," but he spent most of his time discussing the development of Jewish "genius" and "cultural impurity" in a European context. Ostensibly, Mazrui was comparing the impact of Jews on Europe to the impact of Arabs on Africa. However, he was more interested in why "Arabs lagged behind Jews in manifest genius." After admitting he knew little about Arab history and even less about Jews, Mazrui proceeded to spend his allotted time talking about the history of both peoples.

Mazrui did not flinch in asking rhetorical such questions such as "What aspects of Marxism are taken from Judaism?" He made the nuanced argument that since Karl Marx was ethnically Jewish, he clearly made "the Chosen People [into] the proletariat." Mazrui's lecture was also peppered with statements like "Jews have been at their best when they were Europeanized...almost as if you needed a mixture of Jewishness and Europeanness [for Jewish genius]."

He also claimed that Jews as a people are insular and racist. "Arabs are far less race-conscious and ethnic-conscious than Jews are," he said. "Acceptance of race mixture was more developed in Arab culture than in Jewish culture."

In case anyone thought he was referring to ancient history, Mazrui made it clear that his observation applied to the modern period. He told his audience that Kuwait formerly had a black prime minister, which was not widely reported in the media, but if Israel had one, "that definitely would make world news." He neglected to mention that Kuwait's Prime Minister is not elected, so the fact that a Kuwaiti Prime Minister was black tells us little about Kuwaiti society. Israel, on the other hand, is a multi-ethnic democracy with Arabs and Jews of every color serving in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Abu El-Haj took the stage after Mazrui and attempted to give the conference a more academic tone. She spoke articulately about Mazrui's research and largely succeeded in obfuscating the issue of Mazrui's flirtation with race science. Abu El-Haj brings plenty of baggage to the debate: She has drawn criticism for working on a book claiming Ashkenazi Jews are not genetically related to the ancient Israelites, although she is not a geneticist and there is definitive scientific evidence to the contrary. Her controversial book, Facts on the Ground, argues that Israeli archaeologists have distorted the country's material record in the service of nation-building. It was subjected to harsh reviews.

Yet even Abu El-Haj was taken aback by Mazrui's research: "I don't fully understand what you're doing [in the section of his paper discussing 'Jewish Genius']," she exclaimed.

Mazrui clarified that Jews had "a certain kind of impurity" that led them to be "like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," but now they have "landed with Mr. Hyde's evil identity."

This statement was too much even for Mamdani, a vociferous critic of the Jewish state, who said, "I'm not comfortable with the direction this conversation is going in." Abu El-Haj then made the astute observation that the conversation had "racial-genetic undertones" and that "it's dangerous to talk about the biology of any group."

Mazrui was offended, apparently unaware that he had said anything that could be construed as racist. He clarified that he was talking about "cultural," not "racial," "impurity." He then went off on a political tangent.

This digression led him to the above statement about the "control" exercised by "three percent of the population" over the "highest gentile in the land," determining American ties with Israel. Mazrui must have missed the fact that Americans support Israel over its adversaries at a ratio of over four to one, making the 2.2 percent of the U.S. population that is Jewish relatively trivial in the president's calculations of Middle Eastern policy. Mazrui continued with this theme anyway, saying toward the end of his speech that "[the Nobel Committee] gave [Egyptian President] Anwar Sadat the Nobel Peace Prize for being a good boy toward the Jews."

The conference ended at the completion of Mazrui's diatribe. It was a surreal experience to bear witness to a professor of Mazrui's professional stature dispensing with the usual fig leaf of "anti-Zionism" to espouse classic anti-Semitism. Academia ostensibly supports a world without prejudice, but professors like Mazrui now provide a legitimate façade for Jewish racial stereotypes. This is rank hypocrisy, and it's time we call it what it is.

Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies and an intern at the Middle East Forum. This essay was sponsored by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

And my relatives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and living out in the burbs wonder why I’ve decided to keep a fairly large arsenal of weaponry and ammunition. Some of us have chosen the route of quietly getting on the train for Palestine, and some of us have chosen the route of the Warsaw Uprising.

And if this nimrod wants to know why we obtained so much affluence in the United States, perhaps he needs to look at hard work, focused study, strong families, and faith in a place that nurtures individual liberty and personal freedom. The same virtues also allowed the Protestants from England to make fortunes and have influence in the United States, and soon will allow Asian people with a Confucian ethic to do the same thing, assuming the Progressives don’t wreck the foundation of the country first. Culture matters. The Progressives know that the unique characteristics of the American experiment lead those with drive and desire to achieve great things, and that doesn’t sit well with their “equality of outcome” belief system.

Please don’t post me with questions about why most Jews vote Democrat and liberal, either. I don’t know myself, and this is my mom and sister I’m talking about. All I know about my people is that we have a historical tendency to forget our traditions and spend a little time dancing around the Golden Calf, so to speak, and then God gives us a swift kick in the tookus to get back on track. *sigh*

I can eviscerate these arguments in several ways. First of all, that for every brilliant Jew, that are a whole bunch that are average, and an equal number to the brilliant that are below average. So take the total number of Jews, and reduce it by 2/3rds.

As far as the reason the smart Jews do better, there are two reasons.

The first is that Jews have a cultural and religious tradition that is not inclusive. In other words, they believe that anyone, not just Jews, are capable of having good ideas, and only a fool would ignore a good idea, just because his people didn’t think of it.

You would not believe how powerful, and unusual, this idea is, over time. As intellectually cosmopolitan as are most non-Jewish Americans, many would still have a hard time accepting the idea that some “foreigner” had a really good idea. For example, when was the last time you heard Americans expressing admiration for a good idea out of Africa, by an African? Or out of South America, by a South American?

The second reason is that the Jews in Europe, on and off, over the course of more than a thousand years, were restricted as to what kinds of labor they could do. Often they were pushed into finance, because Christians were prohibited from engaging in usury, what we today call the finance and loan business. They could also deal in currency, precious metals and gemstones, and intellectual pursuits.

Being restricted in this way, again over time, generations in a family would become very expert in what they were allowed to do, and those who were best at it became the most prosperous among their people.

Now compare this with Semitic, but Muslim Arabs. From its very beginnings, Muslims rejected that which was not Muslim as inferior and barbaric. Only in its furthest reaches, where there was extended interface with Christians, did non-Islamic scholarly development warrant any interest at all.

Then, in the 11th Century, a Persian scholar named Al-Ghazali, put an effective end to any foreign knowledge or learning outside of the Koran and its dialogues. This pretty much froze Islamic progress in amber for many centuries.

Today, the Muslims have ironically become the new barbarians, while still holding on to notions of intellectual superiority dispelled every time they see a non-Muslim. Much of their jihadi vehemence is due to their own misgivings and lack of faith. It has become very hard to embrace primitivism and to shun enlightenment and civilization.

HERE IS THE AVERAGE IQ AS MEASURED FOR VARIOUS COUNTRIES WORLD WIDE:

Rank	Country	IQ estimate^[3]
1	Hong Kong	107
2	South Korea	106
3	Japan	105
4	Taiwan	104
5	Singapore	103
6	Austria	102
6	Germany	102
6	Italy	102
6	Netherlands	102
10	Sweden	101
10	Switzerland	101
12	Belgium	100
12	China	100
12	New Zealand	100
12	United Kingdom	100
16	Hungary	99
16	Poland	99
16	Spain	99
19	Australia	98
19	Denmark	98
19	France	98
19	Mongolia	98
19	Norway	98
19	United States	98
25	Canada	97
25	Czech Republic	97
25	Finland	97
28	Argentina	96
28	Russia	96
28	Slovakia	96
28	Uruguay	96
32	Portugal	95
32	Slovenia	95
34	Israel	94
34	Romania	94
36	Bulgaria	93
36	Ireland	93
36	Greece	93
39	Malaysia	92
40	Thailand	91
41	Croatia	90
41	Peru	90
41	Turkey	90

Rank	Country	IQ estimate^[3]
44	Colombia	89
44	Indonesia	89
44	Suriname	89
47	Brazil	87
47	Iraq	87
47	Mexico	87
47	Samoa	87
47	Tonga	87
52	Lebanon	86
52	Philippines	86
54	Cuba	85
54	Morocco	85
56	Fiji	84
56	Iran	84
56	Marshall Islands	84
56	Puerto Rico	84
60	Egypt	83
60	Saudi Arabia	83
60	United Arab Emirates	83
61	India	81
62	Ecuador	80
63	Guatemala	79
64	Barbados	78
64	Nepal	78
64	Qatar	78
67	Zambia	77
68	Congo	73
68	Uganda	73
70	Jamaica	72
70	Kenya	72
70	South Africa	72
70	Sudan	72
70	Tanzania	72
75	Ghana	71
76	Nigeria	67
77	Guinea	66
77	Zimbabwe	66
79	Democratic Republic of the Congo	65
80	Sierra Leone	64
81	Ethiopia	63
82	Equatorial Guinea	59

Although not a nation, Hong Kong appears on this list. The sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to China by the United Kingdom in 1997. However, Hong Kong still maintains most of the colonial administrative system and hence appears in many "international" rankings.

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