Nikki Frey

Frey's contest-winning artwork; it appeared on the cover of many Mensa newsletters in 1996

Nikki Frey was the editor of Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa's newsletter, Lament, in the early-to-mid 1990s, winning several Mensa publications awards. In the November, 1994 issue of that newsletter, she published some articles that seemed to advocate genocide of the less-mentally-gifted. The authors of those articles later complained that the articles were extensively edited by Frey from their original versions, and that pieces of different articles were stitched together so that the more controversial parts were presented without their original context. Somebody leaked the articles to the outside news media, starting with the Los Angeles Times, and a big flap resulted, with many reports around the world implying that Mensa was supporting the killing off of less-intelligent people. The American Mensa national office (then in Brooklyn, New York) received a bomb threat which shut down the office, and somebody ripped up his Mensa membership card on the air on the Rush Limbaugh radio show, among other incidents. Frey was accused of fanning the flames of this controversy for the manner in which she dealt with the news media as it unfolded, and she was ultimately removed as editor.

In 1996, Frey's artwork was selected as the winner of a contest to design a cover to be run on many different Mensa publications simultaneously in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Mensa's founding in England.

External links and references

• Time: Mensa... Kill All the Stupid People (Jan. 10, 1995)
• Los Angeles Times (via San Francisco Chronicle): High-IQ Group's Paper Is Short on Empathy (Jan. 11, 1995)
• Time: Mensa mess... Editor Euthanized (Jan. 13, 1995)
• San Francisco Chronicle: Death Instead of Taxes (Jan. 13, 1995)
• The New York Times: I.Q. Group Ousts Editor Over Euthanasia Articles (Jan. 14, 1995)
• M-Grapevine message #76558 (T.J. Lundeen, Aug. 10, 2007; requires list membership to view archives)