Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu
Ashley Montagu
Born	June 28, 1905 London, England
Died	26 November 1999 Princeton, New Jersey, United States
Nationality	England
Fields	anthropology

Montague Francis Ashley Montagu (born Israel Ehrenberg on June 28, 1905, London, Great Britain - died November 26, 1999, Princeton, New Jersey, United States) was a British-American anthropologist and humanist, of Jewish ancestry, who popularized topics such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development. He was the rapporteur (appointed investigator), in 1950, for the UNESCO statement The Race Question. As a young man he changed his name to "Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu". After relocating to the United States he used the name "Ashley Montagu".

Life and career

According to a 1995 interview by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons and Hariet Lyons in the publication Current Anthropology, Montagu grew up in London's East End. He claimed that he was often subjected to antisemitic abuse when he ventured from his own Jewish neighborhood. He developed an interest in anatomy very early and as a boy was befriended by Arthur Keith. In 1922, at the age of 17, he entered University College London, where he received a diploma in psychology after studying with Karl Pearson and Charles Spearman and taking anthropology courses with Grafton Elliot Smith and Charles Gabriel Seligman. He also studied at the London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of Bronisław Malinowski. He did postgraduate work at Columbia University in New York, where he produced a dissertation in 1936 entitled Coming into being among the Australian Aborigines: A study of the procreative beliefs of the native tribes of Australia which was supervised by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict. He taught anatomy at various schools in the United States before becoming a professor of anthropology at Rutgers from 1949 until 1955.

During the 1950s Montagu published a series of works questioning the validity of race as a biological concept, including the UNESCO Statement on Race and his very well known Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. He was particularly opposed to the work of Carleton S. Coon. In 1952, together with William Vogt, he gave the first Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, inaugurating the series.

Due to political disputes concerning Montagu's involvement with the UNESCO Statement on Race, he was dismissed from Rutgers University and "found all other academic avenues blocked." He retired from his academic career in 1955 and moved to Princeton, New Jersey to continue his popular writing and public appearances. He became a well-known guest of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He addressed his numerous published studies of the significant relationship of mother and infant to the general public. The humanizing effects of touch informed the studies of isolation-reared monkeys and adult pathological violence that is the subject of his Time-Life documentary "Rock A Bye Baby" (1970).

Later in life, Montagu actively opposed genital modification and mutilation of children. In 1994, James Prescott, Ph.D., wrote the Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide: A Petition to the World Court, The Hague, named in honor of Dr. Montagu, who was one of its original signers.

In 1995, the American Humanist Association named him the Humanist of the Year.

Montagu, who became a naturalized American citizen in 1940, taught and lectured at Harvard, Princeton University, Rutgers University, the University of California, and New York University. He wrote over 60 books.

Anthropologist Dr. Stephen Juan is the Ashley Montagu Fellow for the Public Understanding of Human Sciences at the University of Sydney.

Partial bibliography

• Science and Creationism 1984
• Life Before Birth
• Touching: The Human Significance of The Skin 1971
• On Being Human
• The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases
• Culture and human development
• The Nature of Human Aggression
• The Natural Superiority of Women
• . (1989), Growing Young (2nd ed.), Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, ISBN 0-89789-166-X, http://books.google.com/books?id=EoTXLpEX-h4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=growing+young#v=onepage&q&f=false, retrieved 16 September 2010 
• Race and IQ
• Living and Loving
• The Anatomy of Swearing
• The Human Connection
• The Peace of The World
• Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942)
• Human Evolution
• Anthropology and Human Nature
• The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity. (1942)
• The Cultured Man
• Man: His first Million Years

• Human Heredity

Montagu wrote the Foreword and Bibliography of the 1955 edition (reprinted 2005) of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Petr Kropotkin, and in 1956, he edited Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews (1956 Cloth ed.). Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers. ISBN 0-87558-026-2. , a critique of Arnold J. Toynbee's seminal A Study of History.

He is co-author with Floyd Matson of The Human Connection and The Dehumanization of Man. He is the writer and director of the film One World or None, described as one of the best documentaries ever made.

Quotations

• "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof".
• "The idea is to die young as late as possible".
• "... circumcision, an archaic ritual mutilation that has no justification whatever and no place in a civilized society" — in Mutilated Humanity
• "The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness" - said to Johnny Carson during an appearance on the Tonight Show promoting the reissue of the hardbound edition of his book The Natural Superiority of Women.
• "The Eskimos live among ice all their lives but have no single word for ice." - from Man: His first Million Years, this quote begins the penultimate chapter of Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan
• "The world is so full of wonderful things we should all, if we were taught how to appreciate it, be far richer than kings". Ashley Montagu. Growing Young (Granby, MA: Bergin & Garvey, 1989), p. 120.
• "The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health"* Ashley Montaque The Universal Nature of Play

Footage of Ashley Montagu

Footage of Ashley Montagu talking with Charlton Heston about his character in the movie appears as a bonus in the special DVD edition of The Omega Man. Archive footage of him, among others (including Carl Sagan), is also featured in The X-Files episode Gethsemane.

See also

• UNESCO statement The Race Question (1950)
• The Ashley Montagu Resolution - A petition by Ashley Montagu in the World Court to outlaw male genital cutting and female genital cutting of children.

External links

• Commemorative essay
• Biographical sketch and publications
• Ashley Montagu Institute: Bio of Ashley Montagu
• Ashley Montagu Resolution
• Mutilated Humanity
• An Interview with Ashley Montagu, by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons, Harriet Lyons, in Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 5 (Dec., 1995), pp. 835–844 (on JSTOR)
• Territorialism and War from The Nature of Human Aggression (1976)