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Ashley Montagu

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Ashley Montagu
File:AshleyMontague.jpg
Ashley Montagu
Born(1905-06-28)28 June 1905
London, England, U.K.
Died26 November 1999(1999-11-26) (aged 94)
Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
NationalityBritish
CitizenshipAmerican
Scientific career
FieldsAnthropology

Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu (born Israel Ehrenberg on June 28, 1905, London, England - 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 Harriet Lyons in the publication Current Anthropology, Montagu grew up in London's East End. He remebered often being 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, under whom he studied informally. 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.[citation needed] He also studied at the London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of Bronisław Malinowski. In 1931, he emigrated to the United States. At this time, he wrote a letter introducing himself to Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton, falsely claiming to having been "educated at Cambridge, Oxford, London, Florence, and Columbia" and having earned M.A. and PhD degrees. In reality, Montagu had not graduated from Cambridge or Oxford, and would not receive a PhD degree until 1936, when he produced a dissertation at Columbia University 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. Nevertheless, he taught anatomy to medical students in the United States,[1] before becoming a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University from 1949 until 1955.[citation needed]

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 disputes concerning his involvement with the UNESCO Statement on Race, Montagu became a target for anti-communists, and, untenured, was dismissed from Rutgers University and "found all other academic avenues blocked."[1] 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 The 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.[2] 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

  • Coming Into Being Among the Australian Aborigines, New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1938.
  • Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, New York: Harper, 1942.
  • On Being Human, New York: H. Schuman, 1950.
  • The Natural Superiority of Women, New York: Macmillan, 1953. Fifth Edition, Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 1999, ISBN 0-76198-982-X
  • The Direction of Human Development: Biological and Social Bases, New York: Harper, 1955.
  • Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews (editor) (1956 ed.). Boston: Extending Horizons Books. ISBN 0-87558-026-2. {{cite book}}: External link in |publisher= (help). A critique of Arnold J. Toynbee's seminal A Study of History.
  • Anthropology and Human Nature, Boston: P. Sargent, 1957.
  • Man: His First Million Years, Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1957.
  • The Cultured Man, Cleveland: World Pub. Co., 1958.
  • Human Heredity, Cleveland: World Pub. Co, 1959.
  • Life Before Birth, New York: New American Library, 1964.
  • The Concept of Race (editor), New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964.
  • Man's Evolution: An Introduction to Physical Anthropology, (co-authored with C. Loring Brace), New York: Macmillan, 1965. Second edition published as Human Evolution: An Introduction to Biological Anthropology, New York: Macmillan, 1977, ISBN 0-02313-190-X.
  • The Anatomy of Swearing, New York: Macmillan, 1967.
  • Man and Aggression, New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
  • Touching: The Human Significance of The Skin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1971, ISBN 0-23103-488-1
  • The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey, 1971.
  • Culture and Human Development, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974, ISBN 0-13195-578-0.
  • Race and IQ (editor), New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
  • The Nature of Human Aggression, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
  • Learning Non-Aggression: The Experience of Non-Literate Societies (editor), New York: Oxford University Press, 1978, ISBN 0-19502-342-0
  • The Human Connection (co-authored with Floyd W. Matson), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979, ISBN 0-07042-840-9.
  • Growing Young, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. Second edition, Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey, 1989, ISBN 0-89789-166-X
  • Science and Creationism (co-edited with Isaac Asimov), Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-195-03252-7. Features the writing of Roger Lewin, Kenneth R. Miller, Robert Root-Bernstein, George M. Marsden, Stephen Jay Gould, Gunther S. Stent, Kenneth E. Boulding, Garrett Hardin, Laurie R. Godfrey, Isaac Asimov, Sidney W. Fox, L. Beverly Halstead, Roger J. Cuffey, Roy A. Gallant, Robert M. May, Michael Ruse, WIlliam R. Overton, and Sidney Ratner.
  • Living and Loving (edited with notes by Tsuyoshi Amemiya and Kazuo Takeno), Tokyo: Kinseido, 1986, ISBN 4-76470-470-6.
  • The Peace of The World, Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1987, ISBN 4-32742-050-6.
  • The Dehumanization of Man (co-author with Floyd Matson), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.

Montagu wrote the Foreword and Bibliography of the 1955 edition (reprinted 2005) of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Petr Kropotkin.

Film

He is the writer and director of the film One World or None. Produce in 1946 by The National Committee on Atomic Information, this short documentary expose the danger of the nuclear weapons and argues that only world's integration and a proper control of atomic energy can avoid war and use this force for the benefit of mankind.

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 Montagu The Universal Nature of Play

Cinema and television

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Marks, J. (2008). Chapter 14: "Race Across the Physical-Cultural Divide in American Anthropology". Kuklick, Henrika, ed. A New History of Anthropology. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell ISBN 978-0-470-76621-7
  2. ^ The Ashley Montagu Institute; Roderic Gorney MD, Los Angeles
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