Gene Weltfish

Gene Weltfish (born Regina Weltfish) (August 7, 1902 – August 2, 1980) was an American anthropologist and historian working at Columbia University from 1928 to 1953. She had studied with Franz Boas and was a specialist in the culture and history of the Pawnee people of the Midwest Plains. Her 1965 ethnography, The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, is considered the authoritative work on Pawnee culture to this day.

She is also known for the 1943 pamphlet for the U.S. Army, called The Races of Mankind, which she co-wrote with Ruth Benedict. It was intended to educate military personnel about the cultural differences among the peoples of the world in preparation for their fighting with a variety of allies from other cultures. The authors stated that perceived differences between the races are cultural rather than biological. Among the data used in the text was an IQ study from World War I, which found higher scores among some northern Blacks in the United States forces than among some southern Whites. The pamphlet was not widely circulated within the Army, and by the early 1950s, it was banned as subversive.

Engaged in social activism during the 1940s, Weltflish attracted the attention of the FBI, which suspected her (and others on the Left) of being a communist. In 1952 and 1953 she was called to Congress for questioning by two of the Senate sub-committees dedicated to investigating "un-American activity" during the 1950s red scare. Two weeks before appearing at a 1953 hearing, in which she refused to answer questions from staffer attorney Roy Cohn and Senator Joseph McCarthy as to whether she was a communist, her 16-year appointment at Columbia was terminated. She was blacklisted and unable to find an academic position for nearly a decade. During her last decade in academia full-time, she taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She continued to teach part-time after retirement.

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