Seymour Itzkoff

Seymour W. Itzkoff (born 22 July 1928) is an American professor known for his controversial research into intelligence.

Born in Brooklyn, he earned a B.A. degree from the University of Hartford. In school, he was a cellist with the Hartford Symphony. The then joined the United States Army and was a cellist in their symphony. He taught elementary school while earning a master's degree in philosophy from Columbia University (1956). While studying for his doctorate, he taught education at Hunter College, CUNY. He earned his Ph.D. in 1965 from Columbia and took a position at Smith College that year.

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."

In 1994 he was one of 52 signatories on "Mainstream Science on Intelligence," an editorial written by Gottfredson and published in the Wall Street Journal, which defended the findings on race and intelligence in The Bell Curve.

Selected bibliography

 * Cultural Pluralism and American Education, 1969
 * Ernst Cassirer: Scientific Knowledge and the Concept of Man, 1971
 * Emanuel Feurermann, Virtuoso, 1979
 * The Forms of Man, 1983
 * Triumph of the Intelligent, 1985
 * How We Learn to Read, 1986
 * Why Humans Vary in Intelligence, 1987
 * The Making of the Civilized Mind, 1990
 * The Decline of Intelligence in America: A Strategy for National Renewal, 1994