Speaker biographies
Joshua Aronson is an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University. Through his research on social and psychological influences on motivation and confidence, he seeks to understand and remediate race- and gender-based gaps in educational achievement and standardized test performance. In 1995, Mr. Aronson and his colleague Claude Steele published groundbreaking laboratory studies on “stereotype threat,” which they describe as a performance-inhibiting phenomenon that occurs when students face negative stereotypes assigned to their particular race or gender. Since then, Mr. Aronson has published many chapters and scholarly articles on the topic, as well as the guidebook Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education. Mr. Aronson’s forthcoming book is titled The Nurture of Intelligence. His work has been cited in two recent Supreme Court cases, including Grutter v. Bollinger, and it is frequently referred to in policy debates about educational equality. Mr. Aronson has received a number of awards and grants for his research, including Early Career awards from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the National Science Foundation and the G. Stanley Hall Award from the American Psychological Association.
Rosalind Chait Barnett is a senior scientist at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University and executive director of its community, families, and work program. She has authored or coauthored over 110 articles and six books, the most recent of which is Same Difference: How Gender Myths are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children and our Jobs, coauthored with Caryl Rivers. Her writing has appeared in many scholarly journals, as well as the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times , and Self magazine. Ms. Barnett’s current research projects are an examination of the role communities play in the lives of families with school-aged children and an assessment of concerns employees have about adult relatives and elder care and how they relate to employees well-being and job productivity. Ms. Barnett is the recipient of several national and international awards, including the American Personnel and Guidance Association’s Annual Award for Outstanding Research, the Radcliffe College Graduate Society’s Distinguished Achievement Medal and the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government’s 1999 Goldsmith Research Award.
Simon Baron-Cohen is a professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge. He is best known for his research on autism, particularly his theory that autism is an extreme form of the “male brain,” a theory that has led to entirely new ways of comprehending psychological gender differences with regard to empathy and systemizing. Mr. Baron-Cohen has written and edited several books, including Mindblindness, The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain, and, most recently, Prenatal Testosterone in Mind. His work has had significant influence in the fields of developmental and clinical psychology, psychiatry, cognitive neuroscience, primatology, and philosophy of mind. Mr. Baron-Cohen is president of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and vice president of the National Autistic Society. Last year, he received the President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge from the British Psychological Society.
Christopher DeMuth is the president of AEI. Before coming to AEI in 1986, he was managing director of Lexecon, Inc., an economics consulting firm (1984–86); editor and publisher of Regulation magazine (1986–87); administrator for regulatory affairs at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration (1981–84); lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government and director of the Harvard Faculty Project on Regulation (1977–81); and a lawyer in private practice (1973–77). His articles on government regulation and other subjects have appeared in The Public Interest, the Harvard Law Review, The Yale Journal on Regulation, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The American Enterprise, and elsewhere.
David Geary is the Curators' Professor and former chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri. He specializes in cognitive developmental psychology with an interest in mathematical learning and in evolution. Mr. Geary has published more than 150 articles and chapters across a wide range of topics, as well as three books, the most recent of which is The Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence, published in 2005. His 1998 book, Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences, explores many frequently asked questions about gender differences, such as why men tend to be more aggressive than women. A member of the President’s National Mathematics Panel, Mr. Geary is the lead investigator for a longitudinal study of children’s mathematical development and learning disabilities, and he was a key contributor to the 1999 Mathematics Framework for California public schools. Among many other distinctions, he received the 1996 Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity in the Social and Behavioral Sciences and a scientific MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health.
Richard Haier is a professor of psychology in the Pediatric Neurology Division of the School of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine. He is best-known for his research on general intelligence, sex and intelligence, and psychometrics. Mr. Haier has conducted numerous research projects using brain imaging techniques, such as voxel-based morphometric analysis and positron emission tomography, to study higher cognitive processes. His research has been published in numerous leading publications, including Intelligence, Developmental Neuropsychology, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, Anesthesiology, Consciousness and Cognition, and NeuroImage.
Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at AEI. His first book, Losing Ground, which advanced the claim that the Great Society anti-poverty programs were hurting the poor, was widely criticized when it was published in 1984. Twelve years later, it was being credited as the intellectual inspiration for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. His 1994 New York Times bestseller, The Bell Curve, coauthored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein, sparked heated controversy for its analysis of the role of IQ on life outcomes in America, but it has found support from a growing body of scientific evidence in years since. Mr. Murray has written many books and scores of articles for publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Washington Post, and he has been the subject of cover stories by Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. He was named by National Journal as one of fifty people who make a difference in national policy-making.
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at AEI. She has been a professor of philosophy at Clark University since 1981. Ms. Sommers specializes in ethics and contemporary moral theory and has published many scholarly articles in such journals as the Journal of Philosophy and the New England Journal of Medicine. She edited Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life, one of the most popular ethics textbooks in the country. Ms. Sommers became known to the wider public as the author of Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women. Her book The War Against Boys received widespread attention and praise and was excerpted for a cover story in The Atlantic Monthly. It was included in the New York Times’ “Notable Books of the Year.” Her most recent book, One Nation Under Therapy, coauthored with Sally Satel, M.D., has received a great deal of attention and critical acclaim. Ms. Sommers’s articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, National Review, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard.
Elizabeth Spelke is the Marshall L. Berkman Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. She directs Harvard's Laboratory for Developmental Studies and co-directs its Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. Ms. Spelke’s research on human cognition and developmental psychology has been published in numerous journals and publications, including The American Psychologist, Nature, Science, Cognition, and The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A distinguished leader in the field, Ms. Spelke received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the William James Award from the American Psychological Society in 2000. The following year, she was named by Time magazine as one of America’s best in science and medicine.
Amy Wax, M.D., is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Dr. Wax has been able to bring her extensive training in the sciences to bear on her long career arguing, teaching, and writing about the law. She was editor of the Columbia Law Review. As assistant to the solicitor general at the U.S. Department of Justice in the late 1980s and early 1990s, she argued fifteen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Dr. Wax taught for seven years at the University of Virginia Law School before joining the Penn Law faculty in 2001, where she specializes in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. She has published widely in leading law journals. Dr. Wax’s work in progress includes articles on law and evolutionary psychology, the political psychology of Social Security reform, and economic models of the family-friendly workplace.
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