Seymour W. Itzkoff

Seymour W. Itzkoff has been a professor at Smith College since 1965. He is a true renaissance man, trained in music, education, and the philosophy of science. Itzkoff is the author of a book on Ernst Cassirer, another on Emanuel Feuermann (a virtuoso cellist), several books on education theory, a four book series on the evolution of intelligence, and three (as of 1995) additional books on group intelligence and its national and international implications.

Professor Itzkoff speaks clearly and with a strong voice in his numerous books on evolution and intelligence. Several of his comments are reproduced here from our "Not so Random Thoughts" section, along with some others. Brief descriptions and ordering information on seven of his books will be added here as time allows.

The following is a recent blurb on Professor Itzkoff from the Smith College web site .

Little-Known Facts: Prof Takes a Bow

Although he is better known as an educator and author, Seymour W. Itzkoff also plays a different tune. In late October, Itzkoff took part in the Second Biannual Cello Festival at the International Chamber Music Academy in Kronberg, Germany, where he was honored for his biography of acclaimed cellist Emanuel Feuermann. Originally published by the University of Alabama Press in 1979, the book has been re-released with a new foreword and appendix, creating a revival of interest in Feuermann, who died in 1942 at the age of 39 and whom Itzkoff calls "probably the greatest cello virtuoso of the 20th century." Itzkoff himself has been a cellist since he was a teenager and currently performs with the Amicus Piano Trio. In the 1950s, he played professionally with the Hartford Symphony in Connecticut and the U.S. Army Symphony and Army String Trio in Washington, D.C. After joining the Smith faculty in the mid-1960s, Itzkoff was asked by WFCR, the local National Public Radio affiliate, to produce a series of programs on Feuermann for nationwide broadcast. The Art of Emanuel Feuermann, which he researched, wrote and narrated, garnered an Armstrong FM Award for "excellence in music programming" in 1968. For a decade thereafter, he continued to research the maestro's life, traveling worldwide in the pursuit that culminated in the Feuermann biography, which continues to receive recognition.

Thoughts by professor Itzkoff

On our egalitarian faith. - Yet, don't you, the reader, find it odd that even as the totalitarian Marxist world has dissolved, these ideals of egalitarian uniformity, social homogeneity, still attract, retaining an enormous hold over our allegiances? Somehow we seem to be able to accept modest differences among similars, white males, for examples, but we wouldn't consider the possible existence of substantial separateness between the sexes or the races. Even ethnic and religious differences bother us. We would do almost anything to neutralize these differences.

On intelligence and national power. - The northeast Asiatics, of predominantly Mongoloid racial ancestry, and as nations fairly homogeneous ethnically, are aware of the realities. They are quietly acting in their own interests, confident that their own homogeneously high intelligence will enable then to inherit the civilizational mantle in the twenty-first century... Their intellectuals and academicians give only lip service to the orthodox Western sociological dogmas. The leadership understands the dynamics of national survival and they are quietly acting on the basis of the facts that are in hand.

On immigration and national power. - The Western nations are becoming repositories of new migrant peoples fleeing the demographic cultural disaster in the third-world south. The realities are all about us. The dynamics of the last half century should have forewarned the West about the meaning of cultural decline. Surely the leadership should have addressed these dangers, at the least for their own national destiny. The United States, in this sad tale, leads the world with an astigmatism heavily laced with ideological smugness and the misty memories of earlier invulnerability. Will this once-great nation be the first of the powerful Western societies to unravel and unwarily enter the third world?

Books by Seymour W. Itzkoff.

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.

Human Intelligence and National Power: A Political Essay in Sociobiology, 1991.

The Road to Equality: Evolution and Social Reality, 1992.