Evan Charney is an American political scientist and associate professor of the practice in the

Sanford School of Public Policy The Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University is named after former Duke president and Governor of North Carolina Terry Sanford, who established the university's Institute for Policy Sciences and Public Affairs in 1971 as an interdiscipli ...

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

. He is also an affiliate of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society and a faculty network member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. He originally joined the Sanford School faculty in 1999, while he was still a Ph.D. student. His research focuses on the intersection between

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...

and

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, development ...

. He is known for his criticism of

genopolitics Genopolitics is the study of the genetic basis of political behavior and attitudes. It combines behavior genetics, psychology, and political science and it is closely related to the emerging fields of neuropolitics (the study of the neural basis o ...

and the assumptions on which such research is based. He has compared studies linking human genetic variants to political beliefs to

phrenology Phrenology () is a pseudoscience which involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits.Wihe, J. V. (2002). "Science and Pseudoscience: A Primer in Critical Thinking." In ''Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience'', pp. 195–203. C ...

, arguing, "The truth of the matter is so much more complicated. The problem is that people don’t like complicated stories." In 2018, the Sanford School announced it would not renew Charney's contract after some of his students alleged that his classes reproduce and reinforce racial, gender, and class inequality. In response to this decision, a group of 101 current and former Duke students signed on to a letter to

Sally Kornbluth Sally Ann Kornbluth is a cell biologist and the James B. Duke Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. Since 2014, she served as the Provost at Duke, and is the first woman to serve in this role. She ...

, the provost of Duke University, urging her to reconsider her decision. The letter was published in the ''

Duke Chronicle ''The Chronicle'' is a daily student newspaper at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. It was first published as ''The Trinity Chronicle'' on December 19, 1905. Its name was changed to ''The Chronicle'' when Trinity College was renamed Duk ...

'' on May 8, 2018. Despite this letter, Kornbluth rejected Charney's appeal on May 23, 2018.

References

External links

Faculty website
* American political scientists Living people Duke University faculty Hunter College alumni Harvard University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the National Academy of Medicine {{US-polisci-bio-stub