Yale students explore university’s links to eugenics

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Three Yale students spoke at a panel on Yale’s relationship with eugenics on Wednesday.

Kaashif Ahmed

12:36 AM, Sep 24, 2021

Contributing journalist


Dora Guo, illustration editor

On Wednesday, three undergraduates presented their research on Yale’s relationship to eugenics at The Legacies of Eugenics in New England: Part 1, hosted by the University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Harvard.

The Yale student presenters were José Garcia ’22, Sidney Velasquez ’24 and Dora Guo ’23, an illustration editor for News. They carried out their research with their comrades Tallulah Keeley-Leclaire ’22 and Emily Xu ’24. Associate Professor of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Professor of American Studies Daniel HoSang, who mentored the students, also spoke at the event. HoSang made initial comments, followed by remarks from each of the three students.

HoSang introduced eugenics as a concept put forward by colonial, elite white men. This is the idea of ​​”the biological and hereditary superiority of the white man over the black man,” he said in his comments.

Guo said eugenics includes “better reproductive techniques” that aim to prevent racial minorities, and added that while ideas tarnish the concepts America was founded on, various people at Yale were the first pioneers of eugenic beliefs.

According to the group’s presentation, the American Eugenics Society was founded on the Yale campus in 1926, located at 185 Church St. at the east end of New Haven Green. Guo added that the American Eugenics Society was “particularly close to the office of former Yale president James Angell, Yale psychobiologist Robert Yerkes and Yale economist Irving Fisher.”

Student leaders on the project argued that despite the term “eugenics” which does not exist in practice today, the problem is rooted in the founding of Yale. Their findings emerged from the analysis of primary sources from the Beinecke Library, Yale Divinity School, and Yale School of Medicine. In addition, they spoke with various archivists and collaborated with students from different universities.

In his part of the project, Guo analyzed a letter from Yerkes to his friend and fellow eugenicist Charles Gould.

“Exploring the legacy of eugenics at Yale reminded me of the Yale motto ‘Lux and Veritas’ – light and truth,” Guo said. “It’s easy for us to point the finger at the past and condemn Yale’s history as exclusionary and problematic, but the most rigorous and important form of research asks how we all continue to play a role in these constructions of the truth “. Today, both professors and students will have to question themselves in depth about the history of our university and our disciplines. We need to have conversations about the lasting effects of eugenics. “

HoSang described how the student-led research project started as an idea that he proposed to his major lectures, and he explained that he believed that students interested in psychology, environmental science , economics, medicine and anthropology should explore eugenics as it affects their fields. study too. HoSang added that he was so inspired by the summer work on eugenics that he will be teaching a eugenics research seminar in the spring of 2022.

Other speakers discussed places other than Yale with ties to eugenics, including Harvard University. Many explained that more university communities will need to learn from the history of eugenics rooted in the foundation of their universities in order to tackle systemic racism, sexism and inequality.

Wednesday’s event is part of an ongoing series on the history of eugenics, organized largely by Harvard, to mark the centenary of the Second International Eugenics Congress in 1921.

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