BRUSSELS – Researcher claims there is a decline in IQ in France linked to mass migration from North Africa. He has co-authored a book about the global decline of intelligence, detailing the relationship between ethnicity and cognitive abilities. And he argues that humans can be divided into subspecies, a cornerstone of white supremacist ideology.
He was also cited, among other educational references, in a manifesto written by a teenager inspired by racist views who killed 10 black people at a supermarket in Buffalo last month.
Despite his own extreme views, the researcher, Michael Woodley – a 38-year-old British man – has been affiliated with the Vrije Universitt Brussels, one of Belgium’s leading universities, and his controversial work was originally done as he studied some of the world’s had studied in Most reputed educational institute.
The discovery, which Gunman cited as referring to Mr. Woodley’s work, shocked many academics, who said he hoped it would now show institutions their responsibility to society, academic rigor and extremist views given to them by them. Can force you to face questions about location.
Alex Mas Sandoval, a Spanish researcher in population genetics at the University of Bologna, said he was “shocked” when he heard that the Buffalo gunman was trying to use science to justify his actions.
Scientists involved in the field of population genetics and other related fields were “concerned about the misinterpretation of our findings,” he said, adding that he had checked the manifesto for all references to his field.
“In most cases, the killer made non-referential scientific findings,” he said. But, he said, one person cited by the gunman stood out for his extreme views: Mr. Woodley, whose expertise is in plant ecology but whose work also includes research into human genetics and intelligence.
“Woodley has been clearly racist,” said Mr Sandoval, who started an online petition calling for the British researcher to be suspended and his Ph.D. Canceled. Mr. Woodley holds degrees from Columbia University and Royal Holloway, University of London. “He has a history of spreading racist, white supremacist theories,” Mr Sandoval said, adding that “he is questioning a consensus based on decades of research.”
The Vrije Universitt Brussels suspended its relationship with Woodley last week after Mr Sandoval launched his petition and a Belgian newspaper published a story about the researcher. In a statement, the university said it was “shocked” that “an element from a paper” by Mr. Woodley had appeared in the manifesto of the Buffalo gunman. A university scientific committee will now examine Mr Woodley’s work to decide on further steps, it said.
Mr Woodley declined to comment, but Francis Helighen, director of the Leo Apostle Centre, an interdisciplinary research institute at the university with which British academics has been affiliated, described him as “utterly devastated by the turn of events”. did.
Mr Helighen said the center had no position on Woodley’s theories, as “he has published dozens of highly technical articles in a variety of respected, peer-reviewed scientific journals, which greatly appeal to those lacking specialized scientific expertise. Will meet. Difficult to evaluate.”
At the core of Mr. Woodley’s article cited by Gunman is an argument that humans can be scientifically divided into subspecies. A table in which he compared humans with several animal species, including jaguars and leopards, was used in the Buffalo Gunman’s manifesto.
Theories such as Mr. Woodley have long been a mainstay of pseudoscientific attempts to justify slavery, colonialism and Nazism that have been widely rejected by contemporary mainstream academics.
During his career Mr. Woodley’s academic interests have been liberal, including papers on ways of communicating with the dead and intelligence in parrots, in addition to human genetics and intelligence.
A spokesman for Royal Holloway said Mr Woodley completed his doctorate in plant ecology there from 2007 to 2011, and his 2010 article referenced by the Buffalo Gunman was “written and published in a personal capacity.” The article described the author’s affiliation as “School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London”. Elsevier, a major, mainstream academic publisher that produced the magazine that printed Mr Woodley’s article, declined to comment.
Angela Saini, a British journalist who wrote a book called “Superior: The Return of Race Science”, said Mr Woodley was a fixture in a group of far-right academics he researched, called The Mankind Quarterly. was centered around an academic journal that has been accused of promoting scientific racism and in which the researcher is published.
“I think things have changed in recent years, partly because of political discourse,” Ms Saini said. “And with the rise of ethnic nationalism and the far-right, we have become more aware of how risky, how dangerous these people are,” he said, “they have gained a huge following over the years.”
The Vrije Universitt Brussels declined to answer questions about who started the relationship with Mr Woodley in 2013 and for what purpose. According to university records, Mr. Woodley was a speaker at a symposium in April, but video of his appearance is missing from the official website, which includes recordings of three other speakers.
And on Mr. Woodley’s personal website, sections about his research and media presence were removed over the past week.
Mr Woodley’s status as an affiliated researcher meant he was not paid by a Belgian university, and it is unclear how he financed his work.
One of his papers mentioned that the funding was provided by the Unz Foundation, a non-profit organization run by Ron Unz, a software entrepreneur. Mr Anz is the founder of The Anz Review, a far-right website that was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League as hosting racist and anti-Semitic content. Mr. Woodley refers to himself as an “Unz Foundation Junior Fellow” in several other publications.
“I am independently funded, and the person who independently funds me is not going to take my money back because I am involved in political research,” Mr. Woodley told Stephen Molyneux, a white-supremacist blogger. , with which he appeared in a video in 2019. “In fact, he’s likely to give me more money, so I’m very lucky.”
Multiple Vrije Universitt Brussels employees expressed displeasure at the fact that no one at the university had raised the alarm over Mr. Woodley’s views.
Karen Selis, a political scientist at the university, said she was shocked when she read Mr Sandoval’s petition. “It’s the opposite of what we stand for,” she said. “It made me wonder: how come, if it’s known in some circles, didn’t sound alarm bells?”
He said: “Our university stands for humanistic values: freedom, solidarity, justice, inclusion. We are also in favor of free research, but sometimes there is tension between the two and it is clear to me which side we stand on. have to be