# Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence

Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, often colloquially referred to as "Jewish genius", is the stereotype that Ashkenazi Jews tend to have a higher intelligence than other ethnic groups.

## Background

Measures of intelligence often exhibit cultural bias.
In response to controversy sparked by the publication of The Bell Curve in 1994, a 1995 task force by the American Psychological Association found that racial and ethnic groups have wider range of intelligence test performance within groups than the mean difference between groups.
Over the course of subsequent decades, a consensus has emerged in the scientific community that ethnic or racial differences in average intelligence test performance are not due to genetic differences between these groups. Growing evidence indicates that sociocultural factors explain such differences.

## Analysis

Jewish success in many intellectual fields often prompts the stereotype. Many who argue for Jewish intelligence have pointed out the List of Jewish Nobel laureates amassing 22% of Nobel Prizes across all scientific categories while Jewish people comprise only 0.2% of global population at roughly 14 million people. Even a small increase in average IQ would represent significant representation of outliers. One psychologist, commenting on the state of research, says "it is fair to say that most, though not all, studies give Ashkenazi descendants a higher IQ than non-Jewish whites", but argues that the effect size remains contentious and unknown. Many studies in the literature are often done by disreputable researchers, which may make assessing the size of difference difficult.

### Selected studies

A 2004 paper by self-professed "scientific racist" Richard Lynn reported that American Jews obtained significantly higher verbal IQ scores than the average white gentile, and even higher scores compared to black peoples.

#### Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence

In 2006, a controversial paper titled "Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence" proposed a biological basis for Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence. The paper was authored by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending; who have been linked to theories described as "scientific racism". The authors hypothesize that Ashkenazi Jews as a group inherit higher verbal and mathematical intelligence on the basis of inherited diseases, selective pressure from the peculiar economic situation of Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages, and supposed lack of intermarriage with outside groups. This paper suggested that the average IQ score of Ashkenazi Jews fall in a range of 108–115 under some studies, which would be significantly higher than that of any other ethnic group in the world. The paper received widespread coverage in media.
The paper attracted significant criticism and controversy. Steven Pinker described the paper's central theory as "tentative", stating that it "could turn out to be mistaken" and cautioning that "any characterization of Jews in biological terms smacks of Nazi pseudoscience". David Reich has argued that contrary to selective pressure theory, some of the inherited diseases that Ashkenazi Jews suffer may be more likely due to genetic drift. Adam Rutherford argues that some of these diseases may have been commonplace during the Middle Ages, and that genetic studies may indicate the bottleneck that caused the accumulation of disease occurred before the Medieval period. Sander Gilman has argued it is problematic to paint Jews with tropes of being physically enfeebled geniuses, with the idea of hereditary illnesses in Ashkenazi Jews being due to consanguinity, having been previously suggested by 19th century French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.
Bret Stephens cited the study in a New York Times op-ed, suggesting that Jewish genius is innate to culture instead of biology, which later led to an editor's note apologizing for referencing the study at all. Adam Shapiro has argued that while praising Jewish genius may seem to combat antisemitism, Stephens was actually attempting to co-opt White supremacy ideals by using race science. Shapiro and other commentators also argue that using intelligence tests to divide and describe specific ethnic groups, even when to prove superiority of one group, is still linked to eugenics.

#### 2019 polygenic score paper

A controversial 2019 paper by Dunkel et al. suggested that a Jewish sample had higher polygenic scores for educational attainment and cognitive ability than other religious groups. Political scientist Evan Charney argued that this paper displays methodological flaws similar to early candidate gene studies.
According to Panofsky et al., purported indicators of a Jewish genotypic advantage predict average IQ scores "four standard deviations above non-Jews" rather than the "slightly above average" results actually observed, which they argue shows the limitations of such purported indicators. Jordan et al. say that the relatively invariant nature of polygenic scores cannot account for changes in Jewish intellectual achievement over time.

### Sociological explanations

Bret Stephens has opined in The New York Times that the intellectual rigor of religious studies, especially in the context of constant upheaval, has allowed intellectual flexibility. Malcolm Gladwell similarly argues in Outliers that the rigorous Talmud schools may foster intellectualism and perseverance in Jewish students. Cochran et al. say that Sephardic and Oriental Jews "do not have high average IQ test scores" compared to Ashkenazi, arguing that any theory of Ashkenazi intelligence must explain why this is.$^{:662}$

### Criticism

Some have argued that the elevation of Jewish intelligence based on both biology or sociology may feed into model minority myths that harm both Jewish and black peoples. Matt Yglesias has written that the idea is used to legitimise scientific racism, including that the idea that Black people in particular are genetically inferior.
Sander Gilman has argued that racializing intelligence is particularly problematic for Jews as it may feed into multiple antisemitic tropes and other categorization of a vast group of people. Gilman also argued that pointing out identity when attributing success is only helpful for tribalism, and does nothing to point out social situations that allow such success to occur. Gilman also says that implicit assumptions of Jewish intelligence may help fuel fear and common stereotypes of Jews controlling higher professions such as law.