Jensen on Jensen

Abstract

In 1977, Arthur Jensen, the well-known University of California psychologist, flew to Australia to address the Psychology Department at the University of Sydney. His arrival was almost a state secret. He was booked into a downtown hotel as 'William James' (his own choice of pseudonym). His talk was not publicly advertised, and not even the psychology staff members were informed of the nature of the meeting to which they were summoned. No-one, however, can accuse Jensen of shirking confrontation, and these 'conversations' bear out his reputation for fearlessness, persistence, thoroughness, and intellectual rigour. The subterfuges at Sydney were imposed by his hosts, who feared a repetition of the violent demonstrations that had recently prevented British academic Hans Eysenck from speaking on the same campus on topics quite unrelated to race and IQ. Eysenck was, however, known to hold views similar to Jensen's on the race/IQ issue, and both had for years been denounced as racists by their many critics. On this occasion, Jensen's talk posed the question, 'Is culturefair testing of intelligence possible?' By then, he had delivered his affirmative answer hundreds of times. Today, his elaborate structure of inductive and deductive theorizing, in combination with a large body of empirical research, derived largely from psychometric observations, has become known as 'Jensenism'. Academic supporters and opponents have been numerous, vociferous, and diligent. Their views about race and IQ fitting into the long-running 'nature/nurture' controversy have arguably been the cause of more debate than any other area of twentieth-century psychology.