Charles E. Orser jnr. is a professor of anthropology at New York State University and is frequently put forward(a) as an “Atlantis expert” although he is extremely sceptical of its reality. He achieved global fame 
in February 2009 when he was again introduced by the media as ‘one of the world’s leading experts on Atlantis’. The same media endeavoured to suggest that Dr. Orser supported the idea that the apparent grid-like pattern discovered that month with Google Ocean on the Atlantic floor west of the Canaries was associated with Atlantis. He is currently writing a critical assessment of the work of Ignatius Donnelly, depicting him as the instigator of today’s Atlantis ‘industry’.
Orser is convinced that Donnelly’s perennial book on Atlantis was stimulated by the writings of Jules Verne and is now seeking the sources of Verne’s inspiration to determine if they were anything other than Plato’s original dialogues.
Orser is the author of a valuable book[317] on the interplay between race and archaeology. He opens his study with a chapter on the perception in previous centuries of the Irish as an inferior race, a perception that led to the infamous “NO BLACKS OR IRISH” signs outside some British boarding-houses as recent as the mid-20th century. Orser explores the racial undertones that have coloured theories relating to the likes of the American Mound Builders, the Celts and Atlantis.
