Christopher has posted an entry over at his new blog Безѹмниѥ (Bezumnie). It’s depressing to have to think about the intersection of Indo-European philology and racism, but his entry reminded me of some of the connections between the Journal of Indo-European Studies, several issues of which I own, and the eugenics and racist Mankind Quarterly (which does not have a working website): Roger Pearson (here and here), publisher and editor. Mankind Quarterly is published by Scott-Townsend Publishers (which does not have a website) which is supported by the Pioneer Fund (here and here). Pearson, a British citizen, was invited to come to the USA in 1965 by Willis Carto who is the founder of the Liberty Lobby and the Institute for Historical Review.
Posted by jim at March 27, 2005 07:57 AMOooh, speaking as a philologist-linguist, I must point out that the sort of "scholarship" conducted by some, which you and Christopher call attention to, falls outside philology's province and rather under the rubric "cultural studies".
If anything, Indo-European philology proper, in my opinion, might be guilty of "word-supremacy", i.e."word" in the broad sense 'any instantiation of (a) language, from attested to reconstructed, from phoneme to poem' and "supremacy" merely 'pre-eminence in import for rigorous scientific study', all within the discipline and with no regard whatsoever to other disciplines like Uralic or Afro-Asiatic.
(Though I won't deny individual philologists/linguists weren't/aren't racist, but most practitioners, especially German, have learned the lesson that culminated in WWII.)
(I've seen noted the thread of racial/cultural supremacist views underlying some Uralic linguistics in recent years.)
Posted by: Angelo on March 27, 2005 09:03 AMI am still worried about the finanacial ties, and whether buying the JIES constitutes tacit support of Pearson's other journals.
Posted by: jim on March 27, 2005 09:44 AMYIKES! I just finally noticed who the "Publisher and Founding Editor" is! I don't think most of us know. We only ever pay attention to who the editor(s) is/are.
Posted by: Angelo on March 27, 2005 10:20 AM