Category Archives: Eugenics

BLOOMINGTON Indiana University plans to review the names of all buildings and structures across its nine-campus system following the schools decision to rename an intramural center that once honored a segregationist after its first Black basketball player.

IU President Michael McRobbie announced the planned review after the schools trustees unanimously approved a resolution last week to name the Bloomington campus intramural center after Bill Garrett, who broke the color barrier in Big Ten basketball when he made his varsity debut in 1948.

Garrett, who went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, died in 1974.

The intramural center was once named after Ora Wildermuth, a former IU trustee and Lake County judge who opposed racial integration and made comments about race that McRobbie called deplorable.

He said during a June 12 virtual meeting of the schools trustees that IUs naming committee will review all named buildings and structures on IU campuses to determine if they should remain. McRobbie said there are hundreds of names on structures at IUs campuses and evaluating them will be a slow and deliberate process.

The review comes amid a nationwide movement to get rid of Confederate monuments and other racially offensive symbols. McRobbie said recent events in our country had demonstrated that the nations legacy of racial discrimination can be perpetuated through those we choose to honor, in our public art, our icons, and the names we put on buildings.

We cannot, in any way, be part of perpetuating this legacy, he added.

Trustee Patrick Shoulders, who in 2018 had cast the lone dissenting vote against removing Wildermuths name from the intramural building, voiced support for the schools system-wide names review. But he said that throughout the country, leaders who believed and did things now considered abhorrent are still honored, citing the ownership of slaves by Americas founding fathers as an example.

I see these as complicated issues, Shoulders said. And I want us to be consistent.

In announcing the names review, McRobbie singled out David Starr Jordan, who was IUs president from 1884 to 1891 and has a building on Bloomington campus, Jordan Hall, named after him, which houses IUs biology department and its greenhouse.

Jordan was a proponent of eugenics, the practice of controlled selective breeding of humans often carried out through forced sterilization. He wrote in The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit, of his belief that humanity would thrive only if the fittest were promoted and blamed the downfall of past civilizations on the corruption of that process.

Jordan, who later became the first president of Stanford University and died in 1931, has numerous other locations on the Bloomington campus named after him, including a major thoroughfare and a creek that runs through the campus.

Garrett was Indianas Mr. Basketball in 1947, when he led Shelbyville to a state championship.

He led the Hoosiers in scoring and rebounding each year from 1949 to 1951 (freshmen did not play on the varsity squad in those days). He led the Hoosiers to a 19-3 record and a No. 2 ranking in 1950-51, when he also was chosen as IUs most valuable player.

He was drafted by the Boston Celtics, making him the third African American ever drafted by an NBA team. But Garrett was called to serve in the U.S. Army, and two years later he signed a contract with the Harlem Globetrotters, playing with them for three years.

Within a year of Garretts graduation from IU, six other African Americans were on Big Ten basketball rosters.

He coached Indianapolis Crispus Attucks to a state championship in 1959.

He was inducted into the IU Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984 and the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1974.

See original here:

Indiana University to review names of buildings, structures at all campuses - South Bend Tribune

The government's plan to restructure university fees will have disastrous consequences for all students, not just those studying the humanities.

The Australian governments proposed fee restructuring for universities will have disastrous consequences for the humanities. But its bad news for STEM education, too.

How do I know? Because Im an Australian teaching the history of science to STEM students in a major public university in the United States, and I see first-hand how desperately science undergraduates need training in culture, politics, and society.

They come to my classroom as future geneticists without having ever heard of eugenics. Future doctors without any understanding that medicine can cause pain and injustice just as adeptly as it can give relief. Future engineers who have never had a forum to voice their concerns about how technology can erode our rights as citizens.

As it stands, Australian STEM students are even less exposed to these discussions because, unlike the US system, Australian universities usually do not require students to cross-enroll in humanities credits. This was the case when I was a science undergraduate at the University of Queensland, and I was funneled into science-only courses.

I was never taught that biomedical sciences are social systems that therapeutic innovation can be racist, sexist and classist. Not once in my science degree did I learn how evolutionary theory was born on the assumptions of white supremacy, and how this racism still reverberates in 21st century institutions. Never was I made to appreciate that our abusive relationship with the environment is at once a scientific, economic, historical and philosophical problem, and that intelligent policy is only created through consultation with experts from all these fields.

I only learned about these things when I stumbled into a humanities elective. Taking this first humanities subject was transformative, and it made me a better scientist. Engaging in discussions about race, class, and gender truly reoriented my engagement with the sciences. Not only did I become better and more creative in my biology classes who knew that a history class could help me better understand and challenge theories of heredity? but I had an eye to how science was situated in society.

I saw science for what it is: plonked in a complex social milieu, bigger and more complicated than just facts and data.

Like me, many science students in Australia stumble into humanities classes and make these same realisations. Some of them do what I did: declare a dual degree in Science/Arts, and continue thinking deeply and compassionately about how STEM works in our world.

Under the new government plan, this fortuitous act of stumbling into a humanities class will occur less often, and less easily. As the door to Arts subjects is closed to science students, so too is an opportunity for enrichment.

Australias plan to restructure funding at universities is touted as an investment in the sciences, but it is actually a heavy blow. The next generation will be less equipped to operate in a competitive international marketplace, and less able to adapt their science-making to the increasingly complicated world that demands their attention and expertise.

It takes more than just a science degree to educate future scientists. They need the humanities, too, to train them in a type of critical thinking that cannot be found in a laboratory.

Patrick Walsh is an Australian PhD student in the history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a masters degree from the University of Wisconsin, and bachelors degrees with honours from the University of Queensland.

Save up to 50% on a year of Crikey, or, dig deeper so that we can dig deeper.

Crikey may be small but our goal has always been to focus on the why, not the what of public life to explain how power is used and abused in Australia, and the systems and people who facilitate it.

But to do that effectively, we need subscribers. Lots of them.

Join Crikey now, and for the first time ever, choose what you pay.

Peter FrayEditor-In-Chief of Crikey

Visit link:

Defunding the humanities will destroy STEM education too - Crikey

Geneticist Dr. Kat Arney explores the stories of two women one a scientist fascinated by dancing mice, the other a seamstress with a deadly family legacy who made significant contributions to our understanding of cancer as a disease driven by genetic changes. Yet while their work paved the way for lifesaving screening programs for families, it was used by some as justification for eugenics the idea of removing genetic defectives from the population.

Born in Minnesota in 1879, Maud Slye was a cancer pathologist who dedicated her career to studying patterns of cancer inheritance in more than 150,000 mice. But as well as being a dedicated scientist (as well as a part-time poet), she was also wedded to eugenic ideas, suggesting that If we had records for human beings comparable to those for mice, we could stamp out cancer in a generation. At present, we take no account at all of the laws of heredity in the making of human young. Do not worry about romance. Romance will take care of itself. But knowledge can be applied even to romance.

While her ideas were controversial, Slyes work earned her a gold medal from the American Medical Society in 1914 and from the American Radiological Association in 1922. She was also awarded the Ricketts Prize from the University of Chicago in 1915 and an honorary doctorate from Brown University in 1937. She was even nominated for a Nobel prize in 1923.

Over the decades since Slyes death in 1954, weve come to understand that the hereditary aspects of cancer susceptibility are much more complicated than she originally suggested, although her work was vital in establishing inherited gene variations as an essential thread of cancer research.

Running parallel to Slyes work in mice was the research carried out by Aldred Warthin, a doctor working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. One day in 1895, a chance meeting between Warthin and a local seamstress, Pauline Gross, set the two of them off on a 25-year-long quest to understand why so many members of Paulines family had died from cancer at a young age.

Pauline spent years compiling detailed family histories, enabling Warthin to trace the pattern of inheritance through Family G, as it became known. Like Slye, Warthin was a fan of eugenic ideas, describing Paulines family as an example of progressive degenerative inheritance the running-out of a family line through the gradual development of an inferior stock.

He was also quoted as saying in a 1922 lecture: Today it is recognized that all men are not born equal. We are not equal so far as the value of our bodily cells is concerned.

Perhaps as a direct result of growing public concern about eugenics, Warthins work fell out of favor. Paulines detailed genealogy lay undisturbed in a closet in the university until the 1960s, when American doctor Henry Lynch and social worker Anne Krush rediscovered her work and continued extending and investigating Family G.

Nearly a decade on from that first meeting between Pauline and Warthin, researchers finally pinned down the underlying genetic cause of this deadly legacy: an inherited variant of the MSH2 gene, which normally repairs mismatched DNA strands. Today, members of Family G and others around the world carrying dangerous variants in mismatch repair genes can undergo genetic testing, with a range of preventative and screening options available.

The story of Pauline and Family G, and the impact that their genetic legacy has had on the family down the generations, is beautifully told in the book Daughter of Family G, a memoir by Ami McKay.

Full transcript, links and references available online atGeneticsUnzipped.com

Genetics Unzippedis the podcast from the UKGenetics Society,presented by award-winning science communicator and biologistKat Arneyand produced byFirst Create the Media.Follow Kat on Twitter@Kat_Arney,Genetics Unzipped@geneticsunzip,and the Genetics Society at@GenSocUK

Listen to Genetics Unzipped onApple Podcasts(iTunes)Google Play,Spotify,orwherever you get your podcasts

See the original post here:

Podcast: The dark connection between cancer research and the eugenics movement - Genetic Literacy Project

UCL has renamed two lecture theatres and a building that honoured the prominent eugenicists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson.

The university said on Friday that the Galton lecture theatre had been renamed lecture theatre 115, the Pearson lecture theatre changed to lecture theatre G22 and the Pearson building to the north-west wing.

Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 and endowed UCL with his personal collection and archive along with a bequest for the countrys first professorial chair of eugenics of which Pearson was the first holder, the university said.

It said that signs on the building and lecture theatres would be taken down with immediate effect. Other changes to the names on maps and signposts would be made as soon as practicable.

UCLs president and provost, Prof Michael Arthur, said the move was an important first step for the university as it acknowledged and addressed its historical links with the eugenics movement.

This problematic history has, and continues, to cause significant concern for many in our community and has a profound impact on the sense of belonging that we want all of our staff and students to have, he said.

Although UCL is a very different place than it was in the 19th century, any suggestion that we celebrate these ideas or the figures behind them creates an unwelcoming environment for many in our community.

I am also clear that this decision is just one step in a journey and we need to go much further by listening to our community and taking practical and targeted steps to address racism and inequality.

Eugenics was the study of the selective breeding of humans to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable.

The decision was made by Arthur and ratified by the universitys council following a recommendation from its buildings naming and renaming committee.

The committee, made up of staff, students, and equality, diversity and inclusion representatives, will also oversee any future renaming of the areas, UCL said.

Ijeoma Uchegbu, a professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience and the provosts envoy for race equality, said: I cannot begin to express my joy at this decision. Our buildings and spaces are places of learning and aspiration and should never have been named after eugenicists.

Today UCL has done the right thing.

The renaming follows a series of recommendations made by members of the inquiry into the history of eugenics at UCL, which reported back earlier this year.

A response group of senior UCL representatives, including academic staff, equality experts and the Students Union, is being formed to consider all the recommendations from the inquiry.

The group will look at action such as funding new scholarships to study race and racism, a commitment to ensure UCL staff and students learn about the history and legacy of eugenics, and the creation of a research post to further examine the universitys history of eugenics.

It will draw up an implementation plan for consideration by the academic board and approval by UCLs council.

View original post here:

UCL renames three facilities that honoured prominent eugenicists - The Guardian

University College London has denamed buildings which honour eugenicists as a step towards addressing its historic links with the movement.

Lecture theatres and a building named after prominent eugenicists Francis Galton and Karl Pearson have been given new names, the university announced.

The Galton Lecture Theatre has been renamed Lecture Theatre 115, the Pearson Lecture Theatre changed to Lecture Theatre G22 and the Pearson Building to the North-West Wing.

Victorian scientist Francis Galton coined the term eugenics and endowed UCL with his personal collection and archive along with a bequest for the country's first professorial chair of eugenics of which Karl Pearson was the first holder, the university said.

It said that signs on the building and lecture theatres will be taken down with immediate effect while other changes to the names on maps and signposts will take place as soon as "practicable".

UCL president and provost Professor Michael Arthur said he was "delighted" that the decision to "dename" the lecture theatres and buildings has been ratified by the university's council.

He said the move was an "important first step" for the university as it acknowledges and addresses its historic links with the eugenics movement.

"This problematic history has, and continues, to cause significant concern for many in our community and has a profound impact on the sense of belonging that we want all of our staff and students to have," he said.

"Although UCL is a very different place than it was in the 19th century, any suggestion that we celebrate these ideas or the figures behind them creates an unwelcoming environment for many in our community.

"I am also clear that this decision is just one step in a journey and we need to go much further by listening to our community and taking practical and targeted steps to address racism and inequality."

The decision was made by Prof Arthur and ratified by the university's council following a recommendation from its buildings naming and renaming committee.

The committee, made up of staff, students, and equality, diversity and inclusion representatives, will also oversee any future renaming of the areas, UCL said.

Professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience Ijeoma Uchegbu, the provost's envoy for race equality, said: "I cannot begin to express my joy at this decision.

"Our buildings and spaces are places of learning and aspiration and should never have been named after eugenicists. Today UCL has done the right thing."

The renaming follows a series of recommendations made by members of the inquiry into the history of eugenics at UCL, which reported back earlier this year.

A response group of senior UCL representatives, including academic staff, equality experts and the Students' Union, is being formed to consider all the recommendations from the inquiry.

The group will look at action such as funding new scholarships to study race and racism, a commitment to ensure UCL staff and students learn about the history and legacy of eugenics, and the creation of a research post to further examine the university's history of eugenics.

It will draw up implementation plan for consideration by the academic board and approval by UCL's council.

More:

University College London changes names of three buildings that were named in honour of eugenicists - Telegraph.co.uk

Stephen Hsu / Michigan State University

Away from the main battlegrounds of the war on racism and on the unresolved legacy of slavery in the United States, there are bitter skirmishes over eugenics.

This week Michigan State University's senior vice president of research and innovation Stephen Hsu walked the plank after vehement criticism of his views on inherited IQ. He will remain as a tenured professor of theoretical physics.

I believe this is what is best for our university to continue our progress forward," MSU President Samuel Stanley Jr explained. "The exchange of ideas is essential to higher education, and I fully support our faculty and their academic freedom to address the most difficult and controversial issues.But when senior administrators at MSU choose to speak out on any issue, they are viewed as speaking for the university as a whole.Their statements should not leave any room for doubt about their, or our, commitment to the success of faculty, staff and students.

The controversy has become so heated that it is difficult to assess what it is all about. However, Dr Hsu has worked with BGI, a Chinese genome-sequencing company which is trying to market genome-sequencing for parents who want babies with high IQs.

In 2017, he co-founded a company called Genomic Prediction, which provides advanced genetic testing for IVF. According to its website its technology identifies candidate embryos for implantation which are genetically normal screening for Down syndrome, for instance, which no one at MSU objected to.

What was controversial was Hsus suggestion that his company might be able to spot embryos with genes that make a high IQ more likely.

He has also defended the notion that people with higher intelligence are more useful to society. "If you study the history of science or technology, you're going to inevitably come to the conclusion that it's people who are of above average ability who make these breakthroughs and generate a disproportionate amount of value for humanity," he told the Lansing State Journal in 2012.

Views like this were enough for critics on Twitter and elsewhere to tag his work as promoting scientific racism, sexism, eugenicist research and conflicts of interest.

Petitions for and against Hsu circulated on the internet. Harvards Professor Steven Pinker and about 1500 others argued that

The charges of racism and sexism against Dr. Hsu are unequivocally false and the purported evidence supporting these charges ranges from innuendo and rumor to outright lies. We highlight that there is zero concrete evidence that Hsu has performed his duties as VP in an unfair or biased manner. Therefore, removing Hsu from his post as VP would be to capitulate to rumor and character assassination.

But, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and his association with eugenics, Hsu was doomed. The #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia movement was influential on the MSU campus and its activists appear to have forced his resignation. (It argues that Academia and STEM are global endeavors that sustain a racist system, where Black people are murdered.)

Michael Cook is editor of BioEdge

Continued here:

More protests over eugenics, this time at Michigan State - BioEdge

Jacques Testart, the father of the first test-tube baby in France, in his book, Le dsir du gne(1992), wrote: With Christian evangelization the elimination of unwanted children disappeared, at least officially, until the Renaissance. This author is most unlikely to be suspected of benevolence towards the Church. He says of himself: When, as a militant Trotskyist, I deepened the principles of the permanent revolution... [Luf transparent]. It is one of the characteristics of evangelization to have been able to impose respect for enfants on peoples won over to the cause of eugenics in all its formsapart from the Jewish people who are custodians of the Old Testament, and to have defended them [enfants] against the crimes of which they were the object.

This defense of the little ones is both positive, encouraging the procreation and education of children, and negative, by banning infanticide and its substitutes.

From the first century, the Didache (around A.D.70) testified to an absolute prohibition: do not murder a child by abortion or kill a newborn (2,2). Shortly after, an author wrote (around A.D. 130): Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shalt thou kill it when it is born (Epistle to Barnabas, 19:5). This warning came up very often in the following centuries, due to the entrenchment of barbaric habits among pagan nations which were converted only little by little.

St. Justin Martyr states (around A.D. 150): But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part ofwickedmen. He gives several reasons: and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we shouldsinagainstGod. But there is another reason, which reveals a terrible reality: first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution so now we see you rear children only for this shameful use; And any one who uses suchpersons, besides the godless andinfamousand impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or brother (First Apology, chp. 27).

This is explained by the fate that often awaited abandoned children in Rome. When they were collected, they were sometimes adopted. But more often than not they fell into the worst abjection; these alumni (the name given to these abandoned and taken in children) became pleasure slaves, who were delivered to prostitution. Saint Justin is not the only one to note this fact.

Clement of Alexandria (150-215) writes: Besides, the wretchesknownot how many tragedies the uncertainty of intercourse produces. For fathers, unmindful of children of theirs that have been exposed, often without theirknowledge, have intercourse with a son that has debauched himself, and daughters that are prostitutes (The Instructor, Bk. 3, ch. 3). When you expose your children, adds Tertullian (155-220) in his Apology, counting on the compassion of others to collect them and give them better parents than you, do you forget the risks of incest, the awful chances that you make them run? Minucius Flix (died around 250) also says: You often expose the children born in your homes to the mercy of others; then you happen to be pushed towards them by a blind passion, to sin without knowing it towards your sons; so you prepare without being aware of the vicissitudes of an incestuous tragedy. Finally Lactantius (250-325): who is ignorant what things may happen, or are accustomed to happen, in the case of each sex, even through error? For this is shown by the example of dipus alone, confused with twofold guilt (The Divine Institutes, Bk.VI, ch. 20).

Christian charity intervened very early to save these unfortunates from their fate. The Apostolic Constitutions, at the beginning of the 4th century, warn the faithful that if When any Christian becomes an orphan, whether it be a young man or a maid, it is good that some one of the brethren who is without a child should take the young man, and esteem him in the place of a son (Bk.IV, #1). But charity did not extend only to Christian children, since Tertullian calls out the persecutors thus: our compassion spends more in the streets than yours does in the temples (Apology, ch. 42). And St. Augustine adds: sometimes foundlings which heartless parents have exposed in order to their being cared for by any passer-by, are picked up by holy virgins, and are presented for baptism by these persons (Letter 98).

Athenagoras (133-190) joins the prohibition of abortion to that of the exhibition: And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it (A Plea for the Christians, ch. 35). Take note of the vigorous affirmation of the humanity of the fetus and its intangibility, which contrasts with contemporary thought.

Tertullian also noted the crime of the pagans, and taking advantage of the accusation of the Thyestian Feast[1] launched against the Christians, he made this scathing retort: how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting their offspring to death?

As to any difference in the kind of murder, it is certainly the more cruel way to kill by drowning, or by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs... In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed (op cit ch. 9).

Minucius Flix also opposes this accusation: And now I should wish to meet him who says or believes that we are initiated by the slaughter and blood of an infant. Think you that it can be possible for so tender, so little a body to receive those fatal wounds; for any one to shed, pour forth, and drain that new blood of a youngling, and of a man scarcely come into existence? No one can believe this, except one who can dare to do it. And I see that you at one time expose your begotten children to wild beasts and to birds; at another, that you crush them when strangled with a miserable kind of death. There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. It is from your gods that this barbaric use comes (op. cit. c. XXX).

Lactantius who influenced Constantine, sums up the arguments of the previous centuries: Therefore let no one imagine that even this is allowed, to strangle newly-born children, which is the greatest impiety; for God breathes into their souls for life, and not for death. But men, that there may be no crime with which they may not pollute their hands, deprive souls as yet innocent and simple of the light which they themselves have not givenWhat are they whom a false piety compels to expose their children? Can they be considered innocent who expose their own offspring as a prey to dogs, and as far as it depends upon themselves, kill them in a more cruel manner than if they had strangled them?... It is therefore as wicked to expose as it is to kill (op.cit.).

St. Jerome does not fail to castigate these abominable practices which alas! were also found among Christians: Some go so far as to take potionsand thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder (Letter 22:13).

St. Augustine sends a terrible warning to the prevaricators: Those who, either by bad will or by criminal action, seek to obstruct the generation of children, although called by the name of spouses, are really not such; they retain no vestige of true matrimony, but pretend the honorable designation as a cloak for criminal conduct. Having also proceeded so far, they are betrayed into exposing their children, which are born against their will. They hate to nourish and retain those whom they were afraid they would beget Well, if both parties alike are so flagitious, they are not husband and wife; and if such were their character from the beginning, they have not come together by wedlock but by debauchery (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Bk. I, ch. XV).

The Fathers also encourage two positive and complementary aspects to fidelity between spouses and to dignified and responsible procreation. St. Justin writes: But whether we marry, it is only that we may bring up children; or whether we decline marriage, we live continently (op. cit., ch. 29). We find the same doctrine in Athenagoras: Therefore, having the hope ofeternallife, we despise the things of this life, even to the pleasures of thesoul, each of us reckoning her his wife whom he has married according to thelawslaid down by us, and that only for the purpose of having children (op. cit., ch. 33).

[1] Thyeste, a mythological person, seduced his brothers wife; his brother then found out about his wife's affair with Thyeste and decided to take revenge. He killed all of his brother's sons, cooked them and served them to Thyeste as revenge. People accused the first Christians of this practice during the mysteries.

Follow this link:

Eugenics Yesterday and Today (5): The Great Parenthesis of the Christian Era - FSSPX.News

As a supporter of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, I looked forward to reading his thoughts on moving the city forward (Worldwide change starts in Minneapolis, Opinion Exchange, June 18) but by the time I finished, my excitement was gone.

Early on he talks about the obstacle of the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation, agreeing that culture eats policy for breakfast but then he proceeds to lay out policy change after policy change, apparently believing that somehow things are going to be different. Sorry, Mayor, without addressing Lt. Bob Kroll and the legacy that created such a toxic culture, your policy proposals dont stand a snowballs chance on a hot summer day of ever making a difference.

Mayor, focus your energy at the source of the problem, and many of the changes you want to put in place may happen. If you dont, expect the citizen vote this fall to change the city charter to do the job for you.

Howie Smith, Minneapolis

Frey speaks of needing a scalpel rather than an ax to change the Minneapolis Police Department, but he needs to brush up on his surgery skills. He identifies a quantifiable definition of bad apples: officers who have a history of sustained misconduct complaints. But his solution is merely to limit new officers exposure to this rotten core rather than to remove the core itself. This problem wont wait on the tortuous path of updating legislation that Frey advocates. If the only way to bring meaningful reform to an insidiously corrupt department is to raze and rebuild, its time to pick up the ax.

Meanwhile, another nail pounds into Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freemans career with the revelation that his office prematurely released autopsy findings with the implication that George Floyds death could be attributed to something other than the knee upon his neck. Freemans latest tenure as county attorney began 10 years ago when he refused to prosecute the Metro Gang Strike Force, a police unit that flagrantly abused its charter by harassing innocent citizens and looting confiscated property. Freemans more recent failures to bring proper charges against the officers who killed Jamar Clark and George Floyd make it crystal clear that certain citizens can always count on immunity from his prosecutorial duties.

There is a petition in circulation to recall Freeman from his post. There is one to recall Frey as well. The urgency of this moment demands that officials who cant move us forward must get out of the way.

Jeff Naylor, Minneapolis

The commentary in Wednesdays Star Tribune by Norm Coleman, Defund and disband City Hall leadership (Opinion Exchange), was excellent and hit the nail on the head in so many ways. It should be read by every single lawmaker in the state. It puts the blame where it should be for the mess Minnesota is in today namely, on the leaders and not the Police Department and gives suggestions for cleaning up this great state. The governor and Minneapolis City Council need to read every word of it and wake up. We need more articles like this and less on the trashing of the Police Department.

Marge Miller, Coon Rapids

There is probably a kernel of truth in Colemans assertion that the remedy isnt to defund and disband the Police Department: In a less-than-ideal world there likely will always be a need for law enforcement. However, he fails to consider what many of us want from such a monumental change to the citys approach to social problems. My understanding of the call for disbanding is not that we desire anarchy and chaos, but rather that policing is a treatment of symptoms of far more profound and pervasive problems, and a much better (look to New Jersey, of all places) approach is to treat those fundamental, underlying problems. (What Mpls. can learn from Camden, editorial, June 18.)

In my own view, money freed up by substantially defunding the police, as well as by increasing tax revenue, should be directed to improved education, nutrition, housing, health care, living-wage requirements, jobs, environmental protection and public transportation, really a long litany of social ills. Unfortunately, media coverage of this aspect of the call has been scant at best, perhaps because proposals like those will not make for striking headlines, and, maybe more likely, because those in the public eye calling for change do not yet have a good grasp of what needs to be done.

John D. Tobin Jr., St. Paul

MEDICAL EXAMINER

Trust the doctor, and the process

Thank you for the article in support of Dr. Andrew Baker, the Hennepin County medical examiner (Autopsy examiner in Floyd case defended as fair-minded, June 19). The reaction to the preliminary report was unfortunate and damaged the reputation of Dr. Baker and his office. It is unfortunate that so many educated people were not just unaware of the process but never bothered to understand and jumped to the conclusion they wanted to hear. Preliminary is just what it means. In the end, the two autopsy reports of George Floyd are nearly identical.

Apologies to Dr. Baker and thank you for not jumping to the desired conclusion.

Mark Odland, Edina

HISTORICAL FIGURES

Treat them all with complexity

Jennifer Brooks wrote a thoughtful and thought-provoking column about the toppling of the Columbus statue at the Capitol (History at Capitol isnt carved in stone, June 18).

But there was one jarring sentence in the piece: You can find two statues of aviator and Nazi enthusiast Charles Lindbergh at the Capitol.

In an opinion piece that delves into the complexity and need to understand the historical background of our heroes and villains, I found the cavalier and shallow reference disturbing.

Lindbergh remains one of the most complex and interesting characters in the American pantheon. His historic flight opened up the world of aviation. He invented a biomedical pump that helped develop the science of heart surgeries. His support of Robert Goddard helped America lead the world for a time in rocketry. He was spokesman for millions in trying to keep the U.S. from the war, and when war was declared, he flew 50 combat missions as a civilian and made useful suggestions on improving our military. He spent much of his later life promoting environmental causes.

He has been accused of anti-Semitism, which he denied. He was an advocate of eugenics. He accepted a medal from Hermann Goering, which he refused to return. He fathered seven children with three women while still married to Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

OK, lets sum all that up with aviator and Nazi enthusiast. Doesnt seem to capture the essential Lindbergh, does it? Or, as Brooks stated: If you listen to just one side of history over and over, you can miss the most important parts and the most interesting people.

Al Zdon, St. Paul

RECENT UNREST

Good work, firefighters

Great job to the Minneapolis firefighters for their work during the very difficult circumstances they were up against during the nights of unrest in the city (Firefighters blast city riot response, June 18). I was personally very proud of all of you for the hard work that you did while putting your lives on the line. Hopefully your mayor and fire chief have some emotional empathy and understanding toward all of you and what you all had to endure and experience during those nights.

Please also know that post-traumatic stress disorder is very real. All fire chiefs need to recognize that and take it seriously because there are lasting consequences for those who do not seek or ask for help. Dont be afraid to reach out. PTSD or any other symptoms related to what you witnessed or experienced can be treated.

Mark Olson, St. Louis Park

The writer is a retired firefighter and trauma therapist.

We want to hear from you. Send us your thoughts here.

Read more here:

Readers Write: Police and City Hall reform, medical examiner, treatment of historical figures, firefighters - Minneapolis Star Tribune

It is a sign of these times that a statue to the man who made it possible for people around the world to protest police brutality and racism has been boarded up to protect it from these very same protesters.

Anticipating further demonstrations, authorities in London have put a barrier around the statue to Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. Why? Because, as protesters spray-painted on the statue last week, Churchill was a racist.

This accusation crossed the Atlantic when Aliyah Hasinah of Black Lives Matter U.K. was a guest on National Public Radios 1A program. According to Hasinah, every statue to Britains wartime leader should be torn down because Churchill gave Hitler his ideas and therefore had ideologically started World War II.

Hasinahs complaint centered on Churchills brief support of eugenics, the idea that undesirable traits could be bred out of the human race. Eugenics, and the racial undertones that accompanied it, sprang from Social Darwinism. Its adherents included the novelist H.G. Wells, the economist John Maynard Keynes and, on this side of the Atlantic, Theodore Roosevelt and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

They werent alone. NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois was a eugenicist. So were two of the worlds foremost campaigners for womens reproductive rights: Marie Stopes in Britain and Margaret Sanger in the United States.

Would anyone seriously claim that Keynes or DuBois or Sanger were ideologically responsible for Nazism and the horrors of World War II?

Charges of racism against Churchill go beyond his brief affiliation with the eugenics movement. To quell an Arab uprising in newly acquired lands after World War I, but without the troops to do the job, Churchill then Britains secretary for war and for air power suggested that the Royal Air Force drop gas bombs on rebel towns. To this day, it is unclear how far Churchill was willing to take what he called this experimental work. In his own words, his aim was to use gas bombs that would cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those afflicted.

There is no way to justify this policy. But Churchills willingness to use poison gas hardly can be called racist when it is remembered that, as prime minister, he was fully prepared to unleash his countrys most lethal chemical weapons against the Germans, had they invaded Britain in 1940. The fact that the Nazi assault came to nothing doesnt detract from this point.

On the other side of the ledger, when British soldiers massacred nearly 400 people during a protest at Amritsar in India in 1919, Churchill, as war secretary, sacked the commanding officer, Reginald Dyer, and, in the House of Commons, condemned the use of military force against peaceful demonstrators for what it was and still is: terrorism.

India also is the place where Churchills critics accuse him not only of racism but of genocide. In 1943-44 a terrible famine hit the state of Bengal. Official estimates put the death toll at 1.5 million men, women and children; unofficial estimates put the figure at least twice as high.

What these critics conveniently forget when attacking the British response to this catastrophe is that a world war was taking place.

The Bengal famine resulted from a combination of poor harvests in India made worse by a major cyclone the year before. Previous food shortages had been alleviated by importing rice from Burma a recourse made impossible because the entire region was occupied by the Japanese army, which still aimed to conquer India.

Should more have been done to aid the Bengalis? Certainly. Could more have been done? That question isnt so easily answered. Throughout World War II, the Allies were confronted with a global shortage of shipping. Nowhere was this more acute than on the Southeast Asian battlefront, a theater of war that was as overlooked then as it is forgotten now. Hunger and starvation were twin features of this conflict in far too many places. To accuse Churchill of using this disaster to commit mass murder is a grotesque distortion of history.

It is easy to cherry-pick Churchills words to paint him in the worst possible light. His views often were controversial and they were public. Over the course of a very active life, he wrote 37 books, a record, according to one recent biographer, that surpasses the works of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens combined. Separately, his speeches fill another eight volumes. Add to that more than 700 magazine and newspaper articles.

But the fact remains that when the world was confronted with fascism, the most deadly incarnation of racism ever known, he stood against it. While he was not alone, even his political opponents recognized that he was the indispensable man. During the Munich Crisis, one Labour parliamentarian told him: You, or God, will have to help if this country is to be saved.

Britain and, eventually the world, was saved.

Leaders of the current protests around the world are reminding everyone that we need to remember the past as it really was. True enough. But they also ought to follow their own advice.

Kevin Matthews is a professor of modern European history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. He is the author of Fatal Influence: The Impact of Ireland on British Politics, 1920-1925. He is writing a book about Winston Churchill and Ireland.

View original post here:

Winston Churchill was many things but 'racist' was not one of them | TheHill - The Hill

Emmy Award-winning director/producer, Erika Cohn, joins Tom Needham for a shocking conversation about BELLY OF THE BEAST, a film about the mass sterilization of women of color in California's prison system on Thursday's SOUNDS OF FILM.

When a courageous young woman and a radical lawyer discover a pattern of illegal involuntary sterilizations in California's women's prison system, they take to the courtroom to wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections. With a growing team of investigators inside prison working with colleagues on the outside, they uncover a series of statewide crimes - from dangerously inadequate health care to sexual assault to coercive sterilizations - primarily targeting women of color. But no one believes them. This shocking legal drama captured over seven years features extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated women, demanding our attention to a shameful and ongoing legacy of eugenics and reproductive injustice in the United States.

Erika Cohn is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning director/producer who Variety recognized as one of 2017's top documentary filmmakers to watch and was featured in DOC NYC's 2019 "40 Under 40." Most recently, Erika completed THE JUDGE, a Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated film about the first woman judge appointed to the Middle East's Shari'a courts, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS' 2018 Independent Lens series. Her work has been supported by IFP, The Sundance Institute, Tribeca Institute, Hot Docs, Sheffield, ITVS, Women in Film, BAVC and the CPB Producer's Academy among others.

The film is currently is available for viewing at the Human Rights Watch Digital Film Festival until June 20th. People can view the recording of the Q&A with filmmaker Erika Cohn, Producer Angela Tucker, HRW's Women's Rights Acting Co-Director Amanda Klasing & film participants Kelli Dillon & Cynthia Chandler at https://www.hrwfilmfestivalstream.org/.

Tom Needham's SOUNDS OF FILM is the nation's longest running film and music themed radio show. For the past 30 years, the program has delivered a popular mix of interviews and music to listeners all over Long Island, parts of Connecticut and streaming live worldwide on the internet. Past people interviewed for the show include Kenneth Lonergan, Mike Leigh, Wallace Shawn, William H. Macy, Peter Yarrow, Melanie, Dionne Warwick, and Don McLean.

Go here to read the rest:

Erika Cohn Talks Eugenics & The Sterilization Of Women Prisoners On Tom Needham's SOUNDS OF FILM - Broadway World