Journal of Indo-European Studies

History

JIES was founded in 1973 by Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, Belgian-American philologist Edgar C. Polomé, Finnish linguist Raimo Aulis Anttila, and British publisher Roger Pearson, and published through Pearson's Institute for the Study of Man.

The collaboration with Roger Pearson, "one of Americas foremost Nazi apologists and quite clearly a racist with one of the worlds [sic] best web of contacts", has sparked some controversy. The Institute for the Study of Man also publishes Mankind Quarterly and the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, known to champion "debunked pseudoanthropological claims of a racial Aryanist diaspora".

Pearson was on the journal's editorial board for many years, which prompted some scholars to boycott the journal. However, In 2002 American psychologist William H. Tucker noted that, unlike Pearson's other publications, editorial control of JIES was left to Gimbutas and Polomé. In this context, Tucker referred to the JIES as the one publication at the [Institute for the Study of Man] of acknowledged academic value.

In 2017, the journalist Karin Bojs interviewed archaeologist and long-time JIES editor J. P. Mallory on the topic:

Mallory makes it clear to me that he totally disagrees with Pearson’s views, such as the supposed existence of races hypothetically linked to different levels of intelligence. However, he believes democracy should allow researchers to write about crackpot theories, including politically sensitive ones. Moreover, if Pearson did not publish the Journal of Indo-European Studies, who would? Mallory hopes to see one of Pearson’s sons take over soon.

In 2000, American journalists Chip Berlet and Matthew Nemiroff Lyons applied the terms "racialist" and "Aryanist" to the journal, although without giving any specific examples of such content.

Notes

References

• Arvidsson, Stefan. 2006. Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. University of Chicago Press.
• Barlet, Chip & Matthew Nemiroff Lyons. 2000. Right-wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. Guilford Press.
• Bojs, Karin. 2017. My European Family: The First 54,000 Years. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Lincoln, Bruce. 1998. "På spaning efter den germanska krigsguden: Georges Dumézil, politik och forskning under det sena 1930-talet" in Svensk religionshistorisk årsskrift, vol. 7. (Swedish)
• St. Catherine University Staff. 2020. "St. Catherine University Professor Named Editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies". June 13, 2020. Web: https://www.stkate.edu/newswire/news/st-catherine-university-professor-named-editor-journal-indo-european-studies (Accessed December 2, 2024)
• Tucker, William H. 2002. The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press.

References

1. St. Catherine University 2020.
2. https://jies.org/DOCS/monoseries.html
3. https://buske.de/hbv_de/proceedings-of-the-34th-annual-ucla-indo-european-conference-17591
4. Arvidsson 2006: 303-304: "[By the 1980s] the racial-anthropological perspective had more or less disappeared from view in the Indo-European discipline [...] But behind the scenes, the situation was different. Most notable is perhaps that no one reacted to the fact that the editor of the world-leading journal for research on the Indo-Europeans, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Roger Pearson, had since the 1950s been 'one of Americas foremost Nazi apologists and quite clearly a racist with one of the worlds best web of contacts.' Before Pearson, along with Marija Gimbutas, Edgar C. Polomé, and Raimo Anttila, founded the Journal of Indo-European Studies, he had worked with Hans E. K. Günther, who had continued to spread his racial doctrines after the fall of the Third Reich."
5. Berlet & Lyons 2000: 282, 398.
6. Lincoln 1998.
7. Bojs 2017: 252
8. Tucker 2002: "[...] the one publication at the [Institute for the Study of Man] of acknowledged academic value, the ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'', [Pearson] left to the control of respected scholars Edgar Polomé and Marija Gimbutas, both now deceased."