Matthew Israel

Matthew Israel is a controversial American behavioral psychologist who is known for founding the Judge Rotenberg Center and inventing the Graduated Electronic Decelerator, a device used by the center on disabled students, and condemned as torture by advocacy groups and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

As a freshman in college, Israel read B. F. Skinner's novel, ''Walden Two'', in which the heroes build a utopia by conditioning the residents of a commune through the behaviorist principles of reward and punishment. Israel said that reading ''Walden Two'' was like a "religious conversion" for him. After reading the book, Israel devoted himself to making the utopia described in it a reality. Israel said that the period between reading the book and his first attempts to start the utopia was a very difficult time of his life. "I thought about committing suicide," he said. "If I couldn't bring a community into existence, [in] what sense was life worth living?" Israel went on to study behaviorism under B. F. Skinner and to receive his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960.

In 1966, Israel attended a ''Walden Two'' conference, where he shared ideas with ''Walden Two'' enthusiasts about how to start the utopia. Israel created the Association of Social Design, an organization for people trying to create behaviorist communities on the principles laid out in ''Walden Two''. In 1967 Israel tried for the first time to build a utopia modeled after ''Walden Two'' by starting a small communal house in Arlington. While at the house, Israel met a 3-year-old resident whose mother allowed him to perform behavioral experiments on her. Israel learned that with the use of punishment, he could control and reshape her behavior as he desired. When his first attempt to build a utopia failed, he tried a second time. The second attempt also quickly failed. Israel believed that the reason the experiments had failed was because he had too little control over the participants, and because they all had the option to move out.

Israel then decided to build a school for people with disabilities, as he knew that he would be able to practice behaviorism on them with very few restrictions. After starting the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center, he gave up on further attempts to build a utopia because he was getting so much satisfaction from running the school. The school has since been condemned for torture by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture. In 2011, Israel was indicted on criminal charges of child endangerment, obstructing justice, and acting as an accessory after the fact. He was forced to resign his position at the JRC as part of a plea deal to avoid prosecution. Provided by Wikipedia