Murray was raised in Newton, Iowa in a Republican, non-collegiate "Norman Rockwell kind of family" that stressed moral responsibility. He is the son of Frances B. (née Patrick) and Alan B. Murray, a Maytag Company executive.[5] He had an intellectual youth marked by a rebellious and prankster sensibility.[6] As a teen he played pool at a hangout for juvenile delinquents, studied debate, espoused labor unionism (to his parents' annoyance), and on one occasion burned a cross next to a police station.[7] Murray credits the SAT with helping him get out of Newton and into Harvard.[8] "Back in 1961, the test helped get me into Harvard from a small Iowa town by giving me a way to show that I could compete with applicants from Exeter and Andover," wrote Murray.[8] "Ever since, I have seen the SAT as the friend of the little guy, just as James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard, said it would be when he urged the SAT upon the nation in the 1940s."[8] However, in an editorial published in the New York Times on March 8, 2012, Murray suggested removing the SAT's role in college admissions, noting that the SAT "has become a symbol of new-upper-class privilege, as people assume (albeit wrongly) that high scores are purchased through the resources of private schools and expensive test preparation programs".[9] Murray obtained a BA in history from Harvard in 1965 and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974. Murray left for the Peace Corps in Thailand in 1965, staying abroad for a formative six years.[10] At the beginning of this period, the young Murray kindled a romance with his Thai Buddhist language instructor (in Hawaii), Suchart Dej-Udom, the daughter of a wealthy Thai businessman, who was "born with one hand and a mind sharp enough to outscore the rest of the country on the college entrance exam."[6] Murray subsequently proposed by mail from Thailand, and their marriage began the following year, a move that Murray now considers youthful rebellion.[6] "I'm getting married to a one-handed Thai Buddhist," he said.[6] "This was not the daughter-in-law that would have normally presented itself to an Iowa couple."[6] Murray credits his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand with his lifelong interest in Asia.[11] "There are aspects of Asian culture as it is lived that I still prefer to Western culture, 30 years after I last lived in Thailand," says Murray.[11] "Two of my children are half-Asian. Apart from those personal aspects, I have always thought that the Chinese and Japanese civilizations had elements that represented the apex of human accomplishment in certain domains."[11] Recalling his time in Thailand in a 2014 episode of "Conversations with Bill Kristol," Murray noted that his worldview was fundamentally shaped by his time there. "Essentially, most of what you read in my books I learned in Thai villages." He went on, "I suddenly was struck first by the enormous discrepancy between what Bangkok thought was important to the villagers and what the villagers wanted out of government. And the second thing I got out of it was that when the government change agent showed up, the village went to hell in terms of its internal governance." [12] Murray's work in the Peace Corps and subsequent social research in Thailand for research firms associated with the U.S. government led to the subject of his statistical doctoral thesis in political science at M.I.T., in which he argued against bureaucratic intervention in the lives of the Thai villagers. By the 1980s, his marriage to Suchart Dej-Udom had been unhappy for years, but "his childhood lessons on the importance of responsibility brought him slowly to the idea that divorce was an honorable alternative, especially with young children involved."[15] Murray divorced Dej-Udom after fourteen years of marriage[6] and three years later married Catherine Bly Cox (born 1949, Newton, Iowa),[16] an English literature instructor at Rutgers University. Cox was initially dubious when she saw his conservative reading choices, and she spent long hours "trying to reconcile his shocking views with what she saw as his deep decency." In 1989, Murray and Cox co-authored a book on the Apollo program, Apollo: Race to the Moon.[17] Murray attends and Cox is a member of a Quaker meeting in Virginia, and they live in Frederick County, Maryland near Washington, D.C.[18] Murray has four children, two by each wife, and remains close with both families. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_%28political_scientist%29

• published: 31 Jan 2015
• views: 9