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Ashley Montagu

Ashley Montagu (June 28, 1905, London, England - November 26, 1999, Princeton, New Jersey), was a British anthropologist and humanist who popularized issues such as race and gender and their relation to politics and development. He was the rapporteur, in 1950, of the UNESCO statement The Race Question.

According to a 1995 interview by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons and Hariet Lyons in Current Anthropology, Montagu was born in London's East End to Jewish parents as Israel Ehrenberg. He later changed his name to "Montague Francis Ashley-Montagu" and went by "Ashley Montagu" after moving to the United States. He developed an interest in anatomy very quickly and as a boy was befriended by Arthur Keith. 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 C.E. Spearman and taking anthropology courses with Eliott Grafton Smith and Charles Gabriel Seligman. He also studied at the London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of Bronislaw Malinowski. He pursued post-graduate work at Columbia University, where he produced a dissertation in 1938 entitled Coming into being among the Australian Aborigines: A study of the procreative beliefs of the native tribes of Australia which was directed by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. He taught anatomy at various school in the United States before becoming a professor of anthropology at Rutgers from 1949 to 1955.

In the 1950s Montagu produced 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.

Anatomy of Swearing, a 1967 book by Ashley Montagu

He retired from his academic career in 1955 and moved to Princeton, New Jersey to pursue his popular writing and public appearances. He became a well-known guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. He directed his numerous published studies on 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 and named in honor of Dr. Montagu, who was one of its original signers, the Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide: A Petition to the World Court, The Hague. Supporters worldwide sign it now at http://MontaguNoCircPetition.org.

Montagu, who became an naturalized American citizen in 1940, taught and lectured at Harvard, Rutgers University (for one year), the University of California, and New York University. He wrote over 60 books.

(list not complete)

• Life Before Birth
• Touching: The Human Significance of The Skin 1971
• On Being Human
• The Nature of Human Aggression
• The Natural Superiority of Women
• Growing Young
• Living and Loving
• The Human Connection
• The Peace of The World
• Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942)
• Human Evolution
• The Elephant Man
• Anthropology and Human Nature
• The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity. (1942)
• The Cultured Man

Montagu wrote the Foreword and Bibliography of the 1955 edition (reprinted 2005) of Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Petr Kropotkin, and in 1956, he edited Toynbee and History: Critical Essays and Reviews, 1956 Cloth, Boston: Extending Horizons Books, Porter Sargent Publishers. ISBN 0-87558-026-2. , a critique of Arnold J. Toynbee's seminal A Study of History.

He is co-author with Floyd Matson of The Human Connection and The Dehumanization of Man. He is the writer and director of the film One World or None, described as one of the best documentaries ever made.

• "Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof".
• "The natural superiority of women is a biological fact, and a socially acknowledged reality".
• "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 a book-promoting appearance of the latest edition of his book The Natural Superiority of Women.

Footage of Ashley Montagu talking with Charlton Heston about his character in the movie appears as a bonus in the special DVD edition of The Omega Man.

• UNESCO statement The Race Question (1950)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Ashley Montagu

• Commemorative essay
• Biographical sketch and publications
• Ashley Montagu Institute: Bio of Ashley Monatgu
• Ashley Montagu Resolution
• Mutilated Humanity
• An Interview with Ashley Montagu, by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons, Harriet Lyons, in Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 5 (Dec., 1995), pp. 835-844 (on JSTOR)