Henry Cosad Harpending (January 13, 1944 – April 3, 2016) was an American anthropologist and distinguished professor at the University of Utah,[1] best known for his 2009 book The 10,000 Year Explosion, co-authored with Gregory Cochran.
[5] Harpending worked primarily in biological anthropology and population genetics, but also conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the !Kung and Herero peoples of Southern Africa.
In The 10,000 Year Explosion, Harpending and Cochrane argued that human evolution has accelerated since the development of agriculture around 10,000 years ago and drove much of human history, including their controversial theory that Ashkenazi Jews became more intelligent than other people due to natural selection in the Middle Ages.
This and other aspects of the book were criticised for its reliance on discredited theories of biological race and a lack of evidence for many of their claims.
Outside of his scientific publications, Harpending made numerous racist comments concerning innate negative characteristics of black people, the genetic superiority of Europeans and East Asians, and advocated for eugenics.
The KPF was an outgrowth of the multidisciplinary Harvard Kalahari Research Group led by Richard Lee and Irven DeVore.
The final chapter of The 10,000 Year Explosion expands on their paper from the Journal of Biosocial Science[19] on the issue of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence.
The SPLC notes he attributed stereotypes of different human populations to genetic differences, often saying that Sub-Saharan Black Africans, Papua New Guineans, and "Baltimore Blacks" possess the same genetic temperamental predispositions which he said are characterized by "violence, laziness, and a preference for 'mating instead of parenting'",[21] while Europeans and East Asians "have evolved higher intelligence and 'tend to be more disciplined than people who take life for granted'";[21] that he favored mass deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States using FEMA camps as part of the process and did not believe that more money and government resources should be spent on education in the United States because he thought the race-based disparities are based on genetics rather than disparities in government funding; that he gave conferences at what the SPLC designates as white supremacist groups; and that he supported eugenics, crediting it in the form of the death penalty for the "genetic pacification" of the Western European population.
[22] Harpending once stated that people of Sub-Saharan Black African ancestry do not have the same genetic propensity for "hard work" as Europeans and East Asians do.
[24] In 2011, he delivered a lecture on race and intelligence at the H. L. Mencken Club, a white nationalist conference founded by Paul Gottfried and Richard Spencer,[25][26][27] described by the Anti-Defamation League as a "racist gathering".