Ashley Montagu - Life and Career

Life and Career

According to a 1995 interview by Leonard Lieberman, Andrew Lyons and Harriet Lyons in the publication Current Anthropology, Montagu grew up in London's East End. He claimed that he was often subjected to antisemitic abuse when he ventured from his own Jewish neighborhood. He developed an interest in anatomy very early and as a boy was befriended by Arthur Keith, under whom he studied informally. 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 Charles Spearman and taking anthropology courses with Grafton Elliot Smith and Charles Gabriel Seligman. He also studied at the London School of Economics, where he became one of the first students of Bronisław Malinowski. In 1931, he emigrated to the United States. At this time, he wrote a letter introducing himself to Harvard anthropologist Earnest Hooton, falsely claiming to having been "educated at Cambridge, Oxford, London, Florence, and Columbia" and having earned M.A. and PhD degrees. In reality, Montagu had not graduated from Cambridge or Oxford, and would not receive a PhD degree until 1936, when he produced a dissertation at Columbia University entitled Coming into being among the Australian Aborigines: A study of the procreative beliefs of the native tribes of Australia which was supervised by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Nevertheless, he taught anatomy to medical students in the United States, before becoming a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University from 1949 until 1955.

During the 1950s Montagu published 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.

Due to disputes concerning his involvement with the UNESCO Statement on Race, Montagu became a target for anti-communists, and, untenured, was dismissed from Rutgers University and "found all other academic avenues blocked." He retired from his academic career in 1955 and moved to Princeton, New Jersey to continue his popular writing and public appearances. He became a well-known guest of Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show. He addressed his numerous published studies of 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 the Ashley Montagu Resolution to End the Genital Mutilation of Children Worldwide: a Petition to the World Court, The Hague, named in honor of Dr. Montagu, who was one of its original signers.

In 1995, the American Humanist Association named him the Humanist of the Year.

Montagu, who became a naturalized American citizen in 1940, taught and lectured at Harvard, Princeton University, Rutgers University, the University of California, and New York University. He wrote over 60 books.

Anthropologist Dr Stephen Juan is the Ashley Montagu Fellow for the Public Understanding of Human Sciences at the University of Sydney.