Seymour Itzkoff - Life and Career

Life and Career

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Itzkoff earned a B.A. degree from the University of Hartford. While at school, he was a cellist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra; he then joined the United States Army, playing in the U.S. Army Orchestra. He later taught elementary school while earning a master's degree in philosophy from Columbia University in 1956. While studying for his doctorate, he taught education at Hunter College, CUNY. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1965, and took a position at Smith College that year. Itzkoff was married while attending Columbia and subsequently had two children.

Itzkoff is a strong advocate of the effects of biological determinism on intelligence. Itzkoff suggests in Why Humans Vary in Intelligence that hereditary factors probably account for 70% to 80% of variability in IQ. He has stated that standardized test ability is difficult to improve, especially verbal ability.

Itzkoff's work on intelligence has been published in Mankind Quarterly, and he has been a Pioneer Fund recipient. The ensuing tension echoed similar problems faced by Pioneer Fund recipient Linda Gottfredson at University of Delaware. One historian wrote, "While the Delaware and Smith cases are unique, they illustrate an inherent tension between freedom in research and other central academic values."

According to science journalist Malcolm Browne, Itzkoff's 1994 book The Decline of Intelligence in America was one of a series of books that year which claimed Americans "probably no longer have the intellectual capital that can profit from the available educational resources." In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial written by Linda Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which declared the consensus of researchers in intelligence and related fields following the publication of the book The Bell Curve.

Itzkoff, who is an advocate of eugenics, wrote the preface to John Glad's 2008 book, Future Human Evolution: Eugenics in the Twenty-First Century, in which he states, "The real history of eugenics, as Dr. Glad points out, is rich in a truly liberal vision for the improvement in the state of all of humankind."

Itzkoff has published works on Jewish identity and Jewish intelligence, as well as books outlining his predictions about 21st-century global crises and his recommended responses. He has also written about music, including a biography of cellist Emanuel Feuermann.