Early Years
MacDonald is of German and Scottish ancestry. He was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family. His father was a policeman and his mother was a secretary. He went to parochial schools and played basketball in high school. He entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison and became an activist in the anti-war movement from about 1965 to 1975. During this period, he perceived the East Coast Jewish origins of the majority of the movement there (Culture of Critique, p. 104), which motivated his interest in Jewish intellectual movements.
MacDonald became a philosophy major and abandoned leftist radicalism. He embarked on a career as a jazz pianist, but by the late 1970s had abandoned it in favour of academia. While in graduate school, he became attracted to E. O. Wilson's theory of sociobiology.
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