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Kistler Prize
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2011 Recipient
Dr. Charles A. Murray
 Foundation For the Future selected political scientist and author Dr. Charles Murray as the 2011 recipient of the Kistler Prize. Dr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and is best known for his book The Bell Curve (1994), co-authored with the late Richard J. Herrnstein. Other important publications include Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality (2008) and Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (1984), which has been credited as the intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Dr. Murray was honored with the Kistler Prize in recognition of his ongoing writings in the relationship of human abilities to public policy.
Murray's work has critically examined the assumption that human characteristics can be molded by the right government interventions, drawing upon a large body of evidence documenting the failures of social programs from the 1960s onward to produce their intended outcomes. He has argued that the reason for these failures is not technical defects in the design or implementation of the programs, but refusal to confront the genetic reality that people differ in their abilities for reasons that are beyond the power of policy to alter.
His work has repeatedly urged that the nation return to its traditional goal of abundant opportunity for all individuals, not equal outcomes for groups, as the measure of success in social policy.
“… it is precisely the wealthy societies that ought to be looking most carefully at the way these things are linked and the absolute importance – and I would say the universal importance – of making sure that people are living lives filled with meaning, and lives are only filled with meaning when you feel you are, and actually literally are, an actor who is making choices, taking responsibility for the consequences of those choices, trying to think ahead, trying to be the best, thoughtful, persevering human being you can be. And the regime that fosters that, in my view, is the system that the founders gave us here in this country.”
—From the on-stage interview with Dr. Murray at the 2011 Kistler Prize Banquet
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