While lecturing in ex-Soviet countries from the 1990s it was difficult not to contrast the crumbling facades and rotten plumbing with the neatness of Australian universities. There were two striking similarities—the vivid personalities who worked in both environments and the taboo against human nature afflicting the social sciences. Colleagues in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Prague, Budapest and Bucharest, recalled that during the communist era their attempts to adopt biosocial science—behavioural biology applied to the study of human society—were blocked by Marxists.[1] The discoveries of Charles Darwin, Konrad Lorenz, Nikko Tinbergen, William Young, Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, William Hamilton and Edward Wilson and others were mainstream in the study of all species except us. 

It felt just like home. An odd fact that: intolerant leftists held sway in universities on both sides of the Cold War. Ideas can be in poor repair in the best-funded universities.

The intellectual insularity of the social sciences was not a new theme. I had written about sociology’s rejection of biology in a 1996 review of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology.[2] The Dictionary was embarrassingly true to the Standard Social Science Model that has been dominant since the 1930s, according to which the mind and behaviour are shaped only by culture. The Dictionary defined childhood, not as a critical stage of development that is genetically programmed and common to Homo sapiens everywhere, but as “constructed on the inabilities of children as political, intellectual, sexual, or economic beings, despite empirical evidence to the contrary. [This] serves the needs of capitalist states”. The “Marriage” entry did not mention reproduction or child rearing. The entry under “Sex” denied the existence of instinctive sexuality. The “Race” entry denied that visible racial differences are the product of genes. There was no discussion of reproductive interests except for the usual mantra concerning social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer and eugenics. Many of these entries openly criticised conservative values, defining the latter so broadly as to include middle of the road values. There was no entry for “Patriotism”. Just one biologically literate editor could have saved the book by informing contributors of the relevant biosocial facts.

The review’s concluding words bear on the contemporary Australian scene: “Since evolutionary biology is a crucial artery linking the social and the natural sciences, closing off the free flow of biological ideas has resulted in the theoretical and empirical isolation evident in contemporary sociology as summarized in the Dictionary, and calls into question sociology’s status as a science”. I also noted that the part of biosocial science most relevant to understanding society consists of disciplines that study the naturalistic causes of social behaviour: ethology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, biological anthropology, biopolitics, bioeconomics, behavioural endocrinology, and brain science. Evolutionary theory is part of the tool kit of behavioural biology, useful for generating hypotheses about ultimate causes. All these approaches illuminate facets of human nature, especially those universal to the species.

The Dictionary was published almost two decades ago. The question I seek to answer here is whether behavioural biology is now a respectable part of Australia’s elite culture. The question is important because many policy and management issues involve assessments of behaviour. Decision makers are unlikely to adopt prudent policies unless their reasoning is based on realistic assumptions about human nature. That applies whether one is trying to improve educational outcomes, increase the representation of women in non-domestic work roles, smooth race relations, or reduce bullying in schools and at work. To answer the question I shall consider three important domains of intellectual culture: the media, business, and academic social science.

Human nature in the media

On the positive side behavioural biology comes up frequently in the media, probably due to consumer demand. We are living at an exciting time of discovery in the field. The human genome was decoded in 2003 resulting in a steady trickle of news about gene expression. At the same time other species’ genomes are being decoded, most recently that of the gorilla, allowing insights into human adaptations.

Conclusion

Anglo Australians are a subaltern ethnicity. They are second-class citizens, the only ethnic group subjected to gratuitous defamation and hostile interrogation in the quality media, academia and race-relations bureaucracy. The national question is obscured in political culture by fallout from a continuing culture war against the historical Australian nation. Many of the premises on which ethnic policy have been based since the 1970s are simply false, from the beneficence of diversity to the white monopoly of racism and the irrelevance of race. The elite media and strong elements of the professoriate assert that racial hatred in Australia is the product of Anglo-Celtic society. But in the same media and even in the Commission for Race Discrimination most ethnic disparagement is aimed at “homogenised white” people.

What would correct the situation? At the minimum, analysis based on human nature needs to be injected into the study of the national question. Behavioural biology is necessary but not sufficient for that project. The conservative intellectual heritage also needs to be revived and updated for modern times to breathe compassion and affection for Anglo Australia into ethnic studies. The philosophy of Edmund Burke regarding homeland and national cohesion—that a healthy society resembles a family with obligations to generations past, present and future—is supported and signified by the discovery of ethnic kinship, the benefits of relative homogeneity and the issues raised by the political arena’s expansion to the global stage.

Such reveries appear hopelessly academic when confronted with the intolerance of Left intellectuals and an immigration industry that exercises undue influence on the Australian state. Initiatives by isolated academics will be inadequate to counter entrenched politicisation. Dissent exists but not many have the tenure or the stomach to suffer isolation and contumely. Lone heroics are simply not a viable strategy for young scholars seeking to build careers studying the national question without teaching lies. It will be necessary to organise.

One or more Anglo councils are needed, non-governmental organisations along the lines of other ethnic councils but oriented more towards promoting the scientific study of ethnicity and nationalism. The council should also advocate for Anglo Australians, broadly defined. An Anglo council, and ultimately a federation of Anglo councils, would defend its constituents’ ethnic interests—against defamation, exploitation and demographic swamping. It would demand full representation in multicultural bodies and seek consultative access to government. It would lobby for schoolchildren to be taught the true history of the nation. It would affirm its attachment to the land of Australia. And it would insist that if any people is to be recognised in the Constitution, pride of place should be given to that which founded the nation and provided its infrastructure, political and legal systems, culture and language. Representing the core national identity and the majority of Australians, such a council should adopt a conciliatory role to smooth ethnic relations but in a manner compatible with defending its constituents’ rights and legitimate interests. The effect would be to democratise multiculturalism and the immigration industry by giving the majority of Australians representation in those spheres for the first time.

The handful of existing Anglo-Australian associations mostly promote culture and the English language, including the Britain-Australia Society and the English Speaking Union. The body that most closely approximates an ethnic agency is the British Australian Community, a small service organisation originally established to provide assistance to British immigrants.[41]

The rise of a powerful Anglo-Australian lobby would acknowledge the partial separation of nation and state. The latter would be treated as it is conceived in classical liberal theory—a Leviathan of incomparable power that can be hijacked by hostile forces. In a diverse world of self-serving elites, the state inevitably develops agendas that sometimes conflict with the national interest. That has happened in Australia since the 1960s. The case can be made that the nation needs its own institutions, a national lobby that represents its constituents’ ethnic interests. Such a national whip would defend Anglo-Australia’s interests against a political class that has been squandering those interests for decades. That is one, perhaps the only, way, to retain the benefits of the nation-state in an era of mass migration and self-serving elites.