Eugenics includes a wide range of programmes to manage the hereditary contribution of individuals to the next general. Some approaches focused on individuals and pedigrees. Others focused on statistics and census information.
Eugenics programmes always were controversial in the places and periods they were proposed. They were widely understood to be overtly and covertly discriminatory. Eugenics campaigns didn’t need science, but some deployed science to make their arguments seem stronger (and some scientists took central roles in these campaigns because they thought science would improve the campaigns). The relationship between eugenics and scientists is a subject of significant research.
The Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL presented the chair’s individual views as a report to UCL President and Provost Professor Michael Arthur in February 2020. He received that report, but he also received More…
I served on UCL’s Inquiry into the History of Eugenics. I withdrew my support for the chair’s report, which is published today. Together with nine other colleagues also serving on this committee, I and they More…
The Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL was expected to report on how we teach and study eugenics in the university. This instruction about teaching was included in our Terms of Reference: “To More…
The chair’s report from the Investigation into the History of Eugenics at UCL is published today. It did not investigate the London Conference on Intelligence (LCI). That’s odd. I thought that Inquiry was created to More…
These are recommendations from members of the Commission of Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL, convened at the request of UCL Provost Michael Arthur in December 2018. The Commission was comprised of members More…
The “Inquiry into the History of Eugenics at UCL,” also referred to as the “Eugenics Inquiry,” and the “Eugenics Investigation” operated at University College London (UCL) between November 2018 and February 2020. It was a university More…
Francis Galton was a bad piece of work. His racist, nativist, supremacist views are antithetical to UCL’s vision and values. He is no role model for me. He should be no role model for you. More…
The subject of eugenics is back on the agenda for historians of science. I’ve been involved in the UCL Inquiry on the history and legacies of eugenics within that institution. My academic department has reviewed More…
In 1914, Journal of Heredity published a directory of US colleges and universities with eugenics courses. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives a good indication of the range of institutions which supported More…
Did Professor Karl Pearson praise Hitler and Nazi ‘race hygiene’ programmes? Yes, he did. He did this in 1934, at a dinner to mark his retirement the previous year from University College London (UCL). Pearson More…
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