Ulster Institute for Social Research

The Ulster Institute for Social Research is a London publisher and research sponsor founded by the psychologist Richard Lynn, who was its president in 2017 and 2018 and died in 2023. Its website describes it as "established as a think tank for the support of research on social issues and the publication of works by selected authors in this field." It published the journal Mankind Quarterly from January 2015.¹²³ The captured pages of its website give no company or charity registration number and list only an e-mail contact.⁴

Pioneer Fund Grants, 1983 to 1996

Lynn's article "The Intelligence of the Chinese and Malays in Singapore" appeared in Mankind Quarterly in October 1977 over the address "New University of Ulster, Coleraine, N. Ireland."⁵ The Pioneer Fund paid the New University of Ulster 63,186.56 dollars in 1983 and 5,000 dollars in 1986, according to the ledger of its grants that Barry Mehler compiled from the fund's Internal Revenue Service returns. A grantee entered as the Ulster Institute for Social Research first appears in 1990. The nominal payments were 72,500 dollars in 1990, 197,500 in 1991, 50,000 in 1992, none in 1993, 55,000 in 1994, 124,000 in 1995 and 110,000 in 1996. The total is 609,000 dollars, 5.7 percent of the 10,670,040.55 dollars the ledger records for all grantees from 1971 to 1996.⁶

The same ledger records 74,300 dollars paid to the Council for Social and Economic Studies, which published Mankind Quarterly in Washington from 1979 to 2014, in 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994 and 1995, and 944,000 dollars to the Institute for the Study of Man.⁶⁷

Richard Lynn of Coleraine, Northern Ireland, appears on the Editorial Committee of Mankind Quarterly from the issue of September 1979 through at least the issue of Winter 1999.⁸ In the issue of Spring 1991, in the year of the largest recorded payment, Lynn's "Race Differences in Intelligence: A Global Perspective" carried the author line "University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland," and the issue of Fall-Winter 1991 printed his "Reply to Commentaries on Racial Differences in Intelligence."⁹ A review of Lynn's book Dysgenics in the issue of Spring 1997 called him "Director of the Ulster Institute for Social Research in Coleraine, Northern Ireland."¹⁰

Pioneer Fund Directorship and Presidency

After Pioneer Fund president Harry Weyher died on March 27, 2002, J. Philippe Rushton was appointed president, and Weyher's widow Michelle Weyher and Lynn were appointed directors, joining R. Travis Osborne and Karl Schakel. The fund's web page of 2003 described Lynn as emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster and "also a long-time grantee."¹¹ The fund's Grantees page of 2003 describes Lynn's studies of regional IQ differences in the United Kingdom and France and his collaboration with the political scientist Tatu Vanhanen, and also names Arthur Jensen among its grantees.¹² The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that from 2002 to 2006 the Ulster Institute received 286,372 dollars from the fund, while Rushton received 301,326 dollars through the University of Western Ontario.¹³

Rushton died in October 2012. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in October 2013 that the fund's website said Rushton had resigned as president before his death and nominated Lynn as his successor, and that in August 2012 Rushton had transferred half the fund's assets to his Charles Darwin Research Institute. The same report described the Ulster Institute as "primarily an online effort" registered to an address near London, and said Lynn did not answer its inquiries about the fund's remaining money.¹⁴ The fund's total assets were 1,551,404 dollars at the end of 2011 and 94,336 dollars at the end of 2014.¹⁵

Hope Not Hate wrote in October 2024 that in 2010 the fund distributed 35,000 dollars to VDARE, 110,000 dollars to Lynn and 216,376 dollars to Rushton out of 537,709 dollars in total, and that after Rushton's death Lynn "took over the organisation and among his first acts was to award himself $1.2 million."¹⁶

The fund's returns for 2020 through 2024 list Lynn as president, with a Bristol address and two hours a week, no compensation; Edward Miller as secretary-treasurer, with a Potomac, Maryland, address; and Alexander Beaujean of Waco, Texas, as a director.^1718192021 Grants paid were none in 2020, 11,000 dollars in 2021, 37,000 dollars in 2022, 13,200 dollars in 2023 and none in 2024. The 2021 grant went to a recipient entered as "Human," in care of Bryan Pesta of North Olmsted, Ohio, for "Research"; the 2022 grant went to "Human Pheromone Diversity Foundatio," in care of Bryan Pesta at the same address, for "research Support on human Diversity"; and the 2023 grant went to the VDare Foundation of Litchfield, Connecticut, for "Support of writing by Dutton."¹⁸¹⁹²⁰ The fund's assets at fair market value were 295,388 dollars at the end of 2020, 359,363 at the end of 2021, 252,640 at the end of 2022, 277,873 at the end of 2023 and 304,194 at the end of 2024.^1718192021

The Human Phenome Diversity Foundation, whose returns give the North Olmsted address, lists Pesta as president and John Fuerst as vice president, each at six hours a week and unpaid. Its return for 2020 reports revenue of 4,663 dollars and expenses of 11,022 dollars, with the program description "Hire scientists to perform behavioral research." Its return for 2021 reports revenue of 65,395 dollars, 35,948 dollars in grants paid and expenses of 62,537 dollars, with programs described as grants for research, purchases of equipment for research, and funded research surveys.²²²³

Hope Not Hate wrote that in 2021 the fund gave 11,000 dollars to Pesta, "an academic at Cleveland State University in Ohio," and nothing else, and that in four of the last ten years it gave out no money at all. The report states that the Human Diversity Foundation, a limited liability company, is the fund's successor, and that Emil Kirkegaard, "who has for several years been involved in Mankind Quarterly, now controls the fund."¹⁶

Publications

The institute's earliest captured page, from September 2011, announces Lynn's Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations, a second revised edition of the 1996 Praeger book, in 381 pages with two new chapters, "one on the decline of the world's IQ, and the other on the dysgenics of immigration." The page reproduced comments on the first edition from William Hamilton of the University of Oxford, Tom Bouchard of the University of Minnesota and Victor Serebriakov, president of British Mensa, and gave the publisher as "Ulster Institute for Social Research, London."¹⁰²⁴

By December 2013 its list included John Harvey's Race and Equality: The Nature of the Debate (2012), Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen's Intelligence: A Unifying Construct for the Social Sciences (2012), Vanhanen's Ethnic Conflicts: Their Biological Roots in Ethnic Nepotism (2012), and Race and Sex Differences in Intelligence and Personality: A Tribute to Richard Lynn at Eighty, edited by Helmuth Nyborg and published on December 30, 2013.²⁵ The institute's page for the 2011 Dysgenics edition, as captured in April 2012, carried reviewers' comments from Raegan Murphy of University College Cork, "Thomas Jackson, American Renaissance," and "Dr Edward Dutton, Quarterly Review."²⁶ A page captured in November 2014 lists Vanhanen's Global Inequality as a Consequence of Human Diversity: A New Theory Tested by Empirical Evidence.²⁷ The 2017 site lists as recent publications Race and Sport: Evolution and Racial Differences in Sporting Ability by Edward Dutton and Lynn (September 7, 2015), The Life History Approach to Human Differences: A Tribute to J. Philippe Rushton, edited by Nyborg (July 13, 2015), and The Roma: A Balkan Underclass by Jelena Čvorović (2014).¹ Race and Sport runs to 423 pages and is sold as an e-book.²⁸ Lynn and David Becker's The Intelligence of Nations, of 436 pages and reporting IQs for 128 nations, was published in 2019, and Lynn's Memoirs of a Dissident Psychologist, of 476 pages, in 2020.²⁹³⁰

Mankind Quarterly

Mankind Quarterly's own history states that it was published in Edinburgh from 1961, by the Council for Social and Economic Studies in Washington, "chaired by Roger Pearson," from 1979 to 2014, and from January 2015 by "the Ulster Institute for Social Research, a non-profit organization in London, England."²⁷ The editorial panel in April 2015 listed Gerhard Meisenberg of Dominica as editor-in-chief and Lynn of Bristol as assistant editor, with an advisory board that included Jüri Allik, Salah Eldin Farah Attallah Bakhiet, Adel Batterjee, Jelena Čvorović, Edward Dutton, Lee Ellis, Aurelio José Figueredo, Edward M. Miller of New Orleans and Goran Štrkalj.² The panel in August 2020 listed Lynn as editor-in-chief.⁷ The Pioneer Fund's returns list an Edward Miller as secretary-treasurer; the records opened do not state whether he is the Edward M. Miller of the journal's board.⁷²¹

Officers and Advisers

The institute's website in February 2017 listed Lynn as president, Sophy Carroll as director, and an academic advisory council of Edward Miller, Nyborg, Donald Templer, Andrei Grigoriev, James Thompson and Meisenberg.¹ Thompson is the organizer of the London Conference on Intelligence discussed below.³¹

London Conference on Intelligence

University College London's investigation report on the London Conference on Intelligence, drafted in January 2018 and released in redacted form in March 2020, states that the conferences ran on the campus between 2014 and 2017 without the university's knowledge, hosted by an honorary senior lecturer, and that they were booked and paid for as an external event. The report records 16 talks in 2015, 19 in 2016 and 22 in 2017, with 13 of the 2017 presentations from people who had presented in the two previous years, and names Thompson as the organizer who paid the room charges himself.³¹

London Student reported in January 2018 that Lynn, as president of the Ulster Institute, spoke at the 2015 and 2016 conferences along with four of the six members of the institute's academic advisory council, that Thompson was a member of the council, and that 82 percent of those who spoke at both the 2015 and 2016 conferences were directly associated with the institute or Mankind Quarterly. It reported that John Fuerst, "a fellow of the UISR," spoke in 2015 and 2016, and that Emil Kirkegaard attended all four conferences and designed the conference website.³² The Human Phenome Diversity Foundation's returns list a John Fuerst as vice president; the records opened do not state that he is the same person.²²²³

Ulster University

On February 14, 2018, The Irish News reported that the University of Ulster's student union had voted 29 to 1, with two abstentions, to call for revocation of Lynn's emeritus title. A university spokeswoman said that Lynn "no longer works for Ulster University nor does he contribute to our research and teaching," and that the university "has been actively considering" the title. The newspaper described Lynn as assistant editor of Mankind Quarterly, "which is published by the Ulster Institute for Social Research, of which Professor Lynn is president."³³

After 2023

The institute's home page in August 2026 states: "Following the death in 2023 of its founder, Richard Lynn, the Institute now concentrates mainly on its book and journal publishing activities." Its latest listed publication is Lynn's memoirs.³