Science in the service of the far right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby - International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology - Experts in the Service of Social Reform: SPSSI, Psychology, and Society, 1936-1996

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1998 by Andrew Winston

No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, might be ruined with one blow. Historical experience offers countless proofs of this. It shows with terrifying clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the cultured people.... The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: Lowering of the level of the higher race; Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely progressing sickness.

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925/1971, p. 285)

I think racial mixing is undesirable in this country and could be catastrophic. Racial amalgamation would mean a general lowering of the cultural and intellectual level of the American people.

- Henry E. Garrett, U.S. News & World Report (1963, November 18, p. 92)

While the postwar members of SPSSI worked for liberal, democratic aims and social justice (e.g., Herman, 1995), another group of psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, biologists, and geneticists also devoted great effort to "social issues," but from a very different perspective. These were academics who, even after World War II, remained tied to the intellectual traditions of early 20th century eugenics, racial hygiene, and racial research. They were dedicated to preventing race mixing while preserving segregation and apartheid.(1) In this article, I focus on Henry E. Garrett (1894-1973), a major figure in this movement. To Garrett and others, SPSSI was not only the enemy, but a danger to Western civilization. As a past president of the American Psychological Association, Garrett represents the rebirth and persistence of racial theory at a time when such ideas seemed unsustainable in mainstream psychology (see Richards, 1997, 1998; Samelson, 1978). These themes are most clearly illuminated by examining the intersection of Garrett's career with that of two other individuals: anthropologist Roger Pearson and Liberty Lobby founder Willis Carto. The publications, organizations, and joint projects of Garrett, Pearson, and Carto during the 1950s to 1970s provide insight into the ways in which psychological research and psychological expertise may be used to promote racism and neo-Nazism in North American and international contexts. Furthermore, the intellectual community Garrett helped to form may have had limited influence on academic psychology but more substantial influence in the broader social arena. Unlike those psychologists whose expertise was explicitly contracted for corporate, military, or government agencies, Henry Garrett and his associates provided expertise to a variety of ideological and political communities with an interest in race. Thus Garrett offers us an expanded view of how psychological expertise might function.

The activities of Garrett and the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE) are little known to psychologists, although Garrett's role in fighting integration was described by Newby (1969) in his analysis of social scientists challenging Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Jackson (1996) and Kluger (1976) dealt with Garrett's testimony at the 1952 Davis case, which preceded Brown. Garrett is mentioned briefly and Pearson more extensively in Billig's (1978, 1979) analysis of the interplay of psychology and fascist movements. Mehler (e.g., 1983, 1989) described the connections among eugenics movements, neofascist activities, and the work of Pearson and Carto, although his focus was not on Garrett. The most recent and detailed discussion of these issues is Tucker (1994), who clearly outlined Garrett's role in right-wing political movements.(2) However, the nature of these movements, their shared view of race and history, and their international political activities deserve further analysis. The support of social scientists for neofascist political activity is interesting in itself, but the primary concern here is how social science justified such activities by drawing on the discursive resources of "value-neutral" empiricism.

Henry E. Garrett: The Native Son

Henry E. Garrett, born in 1894 in Clover, Virginia, was educated in the Richmond Public Schools and at the University of Richmond, where he received his BA in 1915.(3) During World War I he taught mathematics in the Coast Artillery Training Center at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and was head of mathematics at the John Marshall High School in Richmond. He took graduate courses in psychology at Columbia University during the summers of 1916 and 1919, primarily with Albert Poffenberger (see Wenzel, 1979). Garrett (1919) described his background in a letter to the psychology department's executive officer, Robert S. Woodworth, asking to become an assistant and to continue graduate work. Woodworth agreed, and Garrett enrolled at Columbia full time and completed his doctorate in 1923 with a dissertation on the relationship of speed to accuracy in psychophysical judgments and motor skills (Garrett, 1922).