Rutgers University — New Brunswick, NJ
Lionel Tiger is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. His title reflects his pioneering role in introducing biosocial data into the social sciences. Since the mid-1960's he has been deeply involved in bridging the gap between the natural and social sciences. He has asserted that the words used appear to imply that human social behavior is somehow not natural. But of course it is. Exploring how and why is Tiger's central adventure. As a teacher, writer of books and articles that have been widely published and translated and as co-Research Director of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, he has been an influential figure in broadening our knowledge about why we do what we do.
A graduate of McGill University, the London School of Economics at the University of London, England, he is a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense on the future of biotechnology. He combines his scientific expertise with a lively sense of humor to offer original, entertaining and informative lectures that challenge what is entrenched or fashionable, and move intellectually where others fear to tread. He is interested in day care, young males, the pill, college demographics, the workforce, and the ways in which humans are becoming progressively more and more alienated from their biological roots. Currently, he has focused on religion: What is its purpose? How did it arise? What is its source? Why does every known culture have some form of it?
His latest book, coauthored with pioneering neuroscientist Michael McGuire, MD, is called God's Brain. In a concise, lively, accessible, and witty style, Tiger and McGuire combine zoom-lens vignettes of religious practices with discussions of the latest research on religion’s neurological effects on the brain. Dr. Tiger is also the author of the classic study Men in Groups, in which he developed the concept of "male bonding." More recently, in The Decline of Males, Dr. Tiger determined that women are in a trend to surpass men in economic, social, and reproductive status - and that the cause of this seismic shift is not political or moral, but biological.
Dr. Tiger is also the author of the much-discussed books The Imperial Animal written with Robin Fox; Optimism: The Biology Of Hope, Female Hierarchies; Women in the Kibbutz; and The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution & the Industrial System. He lives in New York City.Expertise: