Gene Weltfish

Who is Gene Weltfish?

Gene Weltfish was an American anthropologist and historian working at Columbia University from 1928 to 1953. She studied with Franz Boas and was a specialist in the culture and history of the Pawnee people. Her 1965 ethnography The Lost Universe is considered the authoritative work on Pawnee culture to this day.

She is also known for the 1943 pamphlet for the U.S. Army called The Races of Mankind, which she co-wrote with Ruth Benedict, meant to teach military personnel about the cultural differences between the peoples of the world. In the text they argued that perceived differences between the races are cultural rather than biological. Among the data used in the text was an IQ study that had found higher scores among some northern Blacks than among some southern Whites. The pamphlet was not widely circulated within the army, and eventually it was banned as subversive. Weltfish was engaged in social activism and attracted the attention of the FBI which suspected her to be a communist. In 1952 and 1953 she was called in for questioning by two of the committees dedicated to investigating "un-American activity" during the 1950s red scare. Two weeks before appearing at the 1953 hearing in which she refused to answer questions from Roy Cohn and Joseph McCarthy as to whether she was a communist, her 16 year appointment at Columbia was terminated, and she was unable to find an academic position for nearly a decade.