Wilfred Reilly

Wilfred Reilly is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University, a historically Black college in Frankfort, Kentucky. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Southern Illinois University and a law degree from the University of Illinois. Reilly's research focuses on empirical testing of political claims which are often very influential but, he claims, rarely well-supported by scientific data.

Hate Crime Hoax

Reilly's book Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, was published by Regnery Publishing in February 2019. For the book, Reilly assembled a data set of 409 allegedly false or dubious hate crime allegations (concentrated during the past five years), which he describes as hoaxes on the basis of reports in mainstream national or regional news sources. Reilly claims this data set is available to anyone who requests it. He uses this data to support his claim that a substantial percentage of all hate crime allegations must be hoaxes, given that, per his analysis, only about 7,000 reported hate crimes take place in a typical year, and at most 8-10% of these receive the national or regional reporting that is required for inclusion in his data set. In the wake of the Jussie Smollett alleged assault, Reilly authored an editorial outlining his case in USA Today. After interviewing Reilly, the Washington Post argued that hate crimes are on the rise and a relatively small percentage of allegations are hoaxes, but quoted him as saying "It’s politicization to say there’s a massive surge of hate" under President Trump and that political liberals tend to "characterize all hate crimes as attacks on innocent people of color" even where what actually happened may be unknown or ambiguous.

Reilly, who is African American, has appeared or been quoted in television, radio and print media outlets, claiming that many or most recent high profile hate crimes (i.e. Jussie Smollett, Yasmin Seweid, Air Force Academy, Eastern Michigan, Hopewell Baptist) have turned out to be hoaxes.

Other work

Reilly has debated the racialist alt-right. On April 21, 2016, he participated in a regionally televised debate against alt-right personality Jared Taylor. Reilly argued for the social value of diversity, contending that it makes life "more interesting, civilized, and fun," and using published research to point out that mono-racial societies (e.g. Bosnia, Somalia) are often no more peaceful or less conflicted than multi-racial societies, due to the greater prevalence of tribal in-fighting within them. Taylor took the anti-diversity position.

Reilly's PhD thesis, submitted in 2015, was titled "The Effect of Racial Status and Other Core Characteristics on Collective Self-Esteem A Quantitative Test of Divergent Theories of Identity Valuation." which he published a summary of in Commentary magazine in 2019.

In January 2020, Reilly published Taboo, a book in which he argues that certain race, gender, and class issues can no longer be discussed in mainstream American society.

In 2016, Reilly criticized then-candidate Donald Trump for dog-whistling to the alt-right, and described the 2016 race as "shining light on some dark corners of the Internet."