Category Archives: Eugenics

Charles Darwins Descent of Man is full of unexpected delights such as the trio of hard drinking, chain-smoking koalas that appear within its first few pages to illustrate our affinity to animals.

Yet Darwins great treatise on human origins is also, in parts, deeply disturbing.

Published a century and a half ago as of February, 2021 many of the opinions expressed in this seminal text (koalas aside) are still pertinent today. Indeed, despite (or rather, because of) the recent revolution in our understanding of genetics, the Descent is more relevant than ever.

Darwins wider musings on mankind have had an immense and lasting influence on our beliefs about human nature and behavior, not just scientifically, but socially and politically as well. And while the more reprehensible later applications of evolutionary theory to human society were not truly Darwinian at all, many troubling arguments about race, class, eugenics and the like can nonetheless be discerned within his Descent of Man.

Darwins intellectual legacy is part of the DNA of modern genetics, within which still lurk like malignant metaphorical retroviruses liable to revival and resurgence many of the odious beliefs that plagued its past.

What follows, therefore, are a few brief illustrative examples of problematic passages in the Descent of Man. The point is not as is common with many of Darwins detractors to simply cherry-pick quotes to make Darwin look bad (although, unfortunately, this is easy to do); rather it is to highlight how Darwin himself struggled with the social implications of his theory and this despite the many decades he had to dwell on these questions. Indeed, the rapid, recent explosion in our knowledge of genetics has not made the situation clearer, but rather more confused.

But lets begin with the contrast of some of the more captivating aspects of the Descent those which provide a glimpse of Darwin as an actual human being. (The on-going fascination with Darwin and the impetus for the seemingly inexhaustible Darwin Industry is not just due to his ideas and his genius, but also because he was a fascinating individual.)

Within the first few pages of Chapter 1, for example, Darwin notes that [m]any kinds of monkeys have a strong taste for tea, coffee, and spirituous liquors: they will also, as I have seen, smoke tobacco with pleasure. Not content with this as a single amusing anecdote of animals addictive affinities to mankind, he proceeds to discuss the three koalas mentioned above ones that acquired a strong taste for rum, and for smoking tobacco and an American Ateles monkey that, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus was wiser than many men. He also delights in describing the consequences for a group of African baboons of over-indulgence in strong beer:

On the following morning they were very cross and dismal; they held their aching heads with both hands, and wore a most pitiful expression: when beer or wine was offered them, they turned away with disgust

Similar endearing animal anecdotes pepper the rest of the text, culminating after chapter upon chapter of detailed argument and speculation on the evolutionary origins of mankind (plus an extended interlude of the theory of sexual selection) with the rousing conclusion that we should not feel much shame, if forced to acknowledge that the blood of some more humble creature flows in [our] veins.

For my own part I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper; or from that old baboon, who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogsas from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up bloody sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions.

Darwin clearly liked animals better than people. Less facetiously, it is lurid passages such as these that make modern readers uncomfortable. Admittedly, this particular quotation does come straight after another glimpse of Darwin as an actual person; already in his sixties when he wrote these words, he evokes the memories of his 20-something self, aboard the Beagle, on first seeing a party of Fuegians on a wild and broken shore:

The astonishment which I felt will never be forgotten by me for the reflection at once rushed into my mindsuch were our ancestors. These men were absolutely naked and bedaubed with paint, their long hair was tangled, their mouths frothed with excitement, and their expression was wild, startled, and distrustful.

Given a modern appreciation of the manifold horrors of colonialism, it is a thorny question how we should deal with descriptions that clearly reflect the prejudices of their author. Does such obvious subjective opinion, for example, undermine the purportedly objective arguments that accompany it?

In this instance at least we can perhaps make allowances; after all, the first encounter between Darwin a wealthy young man from what was then the most technologically-advanced nation in the world and the Stone Age inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego must indeed have been astonishing. Moreover, unlike his cousin Francis Galton (who both coined and promoted the concept of eugenics), Darwin was not an explicit racist. (His loathing of slavery, for instance, comes across particularly strongly in the Journal of the Voyage of the Beagle.) Yet Darwin was also a product of a time when it seemed patently obvious that the English (and possibly the Scots) were the first among the civilized races. Further, the Descent also reflects the prevailing concept of a human hierarchy, descending from Europeans through the various barbarous, savage or lower races to mankinds closest living relatives amongst the anthropomorphous apes.

In a now-notorious passage, Darwin ranks the native inhabitants of Africa and Australia as just above the gorilla in the natural scale. At the same time, he callously concludes that the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.

Nor was Darwins chauvinism confined simply to other races the lower classes of his own society were equally a target for his blatant prejudice. Indeed, as he remarks, at least [w]ith savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health.

We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.

And it is perhaps here that Darwins legacy even if distorted and exaggerated by the likes of Galton is most worrying in the modern age of embryonic screening, genetic manipulation and, potentially, genetically-enhanced designer babies. Today we are increasingly able to use genetic techniques to eliminate deleterious genes such as those for Huntingtons disease from future generations. But where is the line between an obviously harmful trait and an undesirable one? Is termination of fetuses with Down syndrome actually eugenics? Or what about those screened as having autism?

In Darwins pre-genetic age, these were questions that could not yet be asked, let alone answered. Of more relevance, however, was Darwins personal concern, having married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood, with the possible inherited ill-effects of inbreeding on his own children. But even here, as he confidently asserts in the Descent, science would eventually come up with an answer:

When the principles of breeding and inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan for ascertaining whether or not consanguineous marriages are injurious to man.

Yet while science can certainly inform our moral (or, in this case, legal) decisions, it cannot decide them facts do not determine values. Darwin half-heartedly acknowledges this when he concedes we ought not check our sympathy [for the weak], even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.

In the concluding paragraph to the Descent of Man, he goes on to claim, we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason allows us to discover it. And while many of Darwins own hopes and fears appear inextricably tangled with his subjective version of the truth, it is his final closing description of humankinds noble qualities and exalted powers that perhaps shows the way beyond these ethical dilemmas: the sympathy which feels for the most debased, the benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, and our godlike intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system.

Modern genetics now allows us to penetrate into the very constitution of life itself. Informed by the history of what Darwin and his followers got right and what they got wrong, surely we can extend our sympathy, our benevolence and our godlike intellect to confront the moral demons that this new exalted power has conjured in our path.

Patrick Whittle has a PhD in philosophy and is a freelance writer with a particular interest in the social and political implications of modern biological science. Follow him on his website patrickmichaelwhittle.com or on Twitter @WhittlePM

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Viewpoint: Darwin's 'Descent of Man' is both deeply disturbing and more relevant than ever - Genetic Literacy Project

Jewish ethicist Paul Root Wolpe will discuss Ethical Challenges of the COVID Pandemic in this years Tzedek Lecture on Thursday, May 14.

The Oregon Humanities Center talk will start at 4 p.m. on Zoom.Registration is required.

Wolpe will speak on emerging ethical issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Included will be questions about allocating scarce resources; inherent biases of age, class, race and disability; privacy; the ethics of social distancing; and the importance of leadership.

Wolpe is the Raymond F. Schinazi Distinguished Research Chair in Jewish Bioethics and director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University, where he is a professor in the departments of Medicine, Pediatrics, Psychiatry and Sociology.

Wolpes work focuses on the social, religious, ethical and ideological effects of medicine and technology on the human condition. His teaching and publications range across multiple fields of bioethics and sociology, including death and dying, genetics and eugenics, sexuality and gender, mental health and illness, alternative medicine, and bioethics in extreme environments such as space.

He also writes and talks about the Jewish contribution to thinking about the ethical aspects of medicine and technology.

Wolpe, a member of Atlantas Congregation Shearith Israel, participates in Scientists in Synagogues, a program that explores interesting and pressing questions surrounding Judaism and science. He is the son of the late Rabbi Gerald I. Wolpe, one of the great figures in American Jewish life, and brother of Rabbi David Wolpe, the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.

Wolpe spent 15 years as a senior bioethicist for NASA, where he still serves as a bioethical consultant. He is the editor in chief of theAmerican Journal of BioethicsNeuroscience. He is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, the current president of the Association of Bioethics Program Directors and served as the first national bioethics adviser to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

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Speaker to explore the ethical dilemmas tied to COVID-19 - AroundtheO

Image Description: Books on a shelf about eugenics.

Warning: this article refers to content which may be considered disturbing, including incitement to hatred, physical violence, racism, ableism, eugenics, and Nazis. It also discusses trigger warnings, triggering content, prejudice, discrimination, and hate crimes.

The most frustrating thing in the debate about the SU motion, and in the broader societal discourse it represents, is that so many people refuse to acknowledge that it is a matter of where to draw the line. Both sides agree that sometimes free speech should be curbed to prevent harm. Thats why incitement to hatred is illegal. And both sides agree that free speech should not be curbed by people being mildly irritated. Calling someone stupid is not very nice, but we should not ban the word.

The point is that there are two key qualities which are incompatible, and hence we must draw a line. Legally, in the UK, the line between freedom of expression and preventing harm has been represented by hate speech. Where we put the line depends on the context: the legal context is one of effectively banning speech by illegalising it. The debate about the SU motion? Also, at its core, about free speech and preventing harm. But we can have a slightly lower bar than the UKs legal bar because we are not banning speech. We are just making it non-mandatory and giving it trigger warnings.

But it would be helpful if people like Dawkins could recognise that the SU is sometimes right. Moreover, if the SU could recognise that Dawkins is sometimes right. Let me illustrate. Imagine a 20-minute long video portraying in graphic detail the physical violence involved in a warincluding gruesome shots of people being shot. I think Dawkins and everyone on the side of free speech shouting about snowflakes would agree that this should not be mandatory. They would probably agree that before being shown it, we would expect a warning of what is to come. If you are not convinced by this example, just make the content more and more graphicat some point, you will agree. There are some things people should not be forced to see, even for the sake of education. Butobviouslynot everything. Some things must be mandatory.

So, the simple question is this: where do we draw the line? How do we define which content counts, and which does not? It is worth really emphasising this: the definitions matter. Not only do they matter, but they are vital when discussing and resolving this debate. Because the real disagreement is about where we should locate the definition. The reason why there is so much debate and concern echoed by moral philosophers and commentators on Twitter alike is because they worry about the definition setting too low a barespecially when it is imprecise. So, if we really do want to introduce TWs and non-mandatory content, it is worth getting this right.

There are some things people should not be forced to see, even for the sake of education. Butobviouslynot everything. Some things must be mandatory.

And that is why the SU motion failed usbecause their motion was devoid of definitions, sloppy, and unclear. It is also why the debate around it is always so slippery and inconclusive. For where did they draw the line and thus what did the motion achieve? Those who are in favour of the general sentiment, or align themselves with the SU/liberally, interpret it as drawing the line where they feel it should be. No wonder, then, that they support it. Those shouting about free speech and snowflakes are also imagining up a line. Moreover, they are imagining it being so low as to genuinely threaten free speech. No wonder, then, that they are so vocally against it.

But no ones ever going to resolve the debate when we are at crossroads like this. We need to look not at where the SU might have drawn the line, or what they might have intended. Rather, we should look at what the SU did, and where they drew the line. I think we should interpret the SUs intentions charitably. Maybe they did have a clear line in mindmaybe they intended to draw a line which is well-motivated. But that is not what is on paper. That is not what the motion does.

Let us first consider the intention to make certain content non-mandatory. What definition did they use to define whether content should be mandatory rather than non-mandatory? Well, officially, the appendix defines this as content which would legally be considered criminal hate speech. Thats assuming that concept is applied to trans, non-binary, disabled, working-class, and women* groups, as well as those already protected. But in the Council Notes section 2, it suggests setting guidelines on non-mandatory content based on what is prejudicial towards these same groups.

So, which is it? Prejudicial content, or criminal hate speech? And it matters because they are completely different. When Boris Johnson wrote the disgusting phrase regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies, he was unequivocally being prejudicial. But it was not criminal hate speech. The SU draws two very different lines, and it is unclear why. This is sloppy, and as I will explore, it has extremely problematic consequences.

One worry is that this falsely equates prejudicial content with criminal hate speech. As I say, these are not the same. That is why they are dealt with separately in the law. The CPS notes that a hate crime can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault and bullying, as well as damage to property. Sure, these things might be done on the grounds of prejudicethen it would be a hate crime. But prejudicial content itself is not a hate crime.

And that is why the SU motion failed usbecause their motion was devoid of definitions, sloppy, and unclear. It is also why the debate around it is always so slippery and inconclusive. For where did they draw the line and thus what did the motion achieve?

Its clear that the SU doesnt really mean to make use of the criminal hate speech criterion because the *one* example it gives as the sort of content that ought to be non-mandatory wouldnt itself be considered criminal hate speech. Yes, the article entitled Why We Should Pick the Best Children is prejudiced. But it does not constitute verbal abuse, intimidation, threatening, harassment, assault/bullying or damage to property. And the protection of freedom of expression explicitly states that this does not prohibit or restrict discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule [or] insult.

Just to give an example, in 2009 Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang were acquitted after insulting Ericka Tazi for wearing a hijab. If insulting someone for wearing a hijab does not count as criminal hate speech, it is unlikely insulting someone for their disability counts. Certainly, the items on the reading list would not.

Some may think that content which does not amount to criminal hate speech should be non-mandatoryin which case, the SU motion was insufficient. Others may think that this definition is about rightbut then, the SUs example and the intent was wrongin which case, the SU motion was insufficient. There is a common theme: the SU motion was insufficientand all because it was sloppy with definitions.

Either way, the fact that their example does not count as criminal hate speech leaves us with just prejudicial as a definitionwhich is far too low a bar. But before I explain why, note that the SU determines content should have a TW on the same basisif it is prejudicial. The phrase trigger warning is used just once in the entire motion and appendix; as it happens, in the last sentence of the appendix. There it proposes introducing TWs for prejudicial material. But content should not be made non-mandatory (or require a TW) just because it is prejudicial. Prejudicial is too low a bar to set.

Some may think that content which does not amount to criminal hate speech should be non-mandatory Others may think that this definition is about rightbut then, the SUs example and intent was wrong There is a common theme: the SU motion was insufficientand all because it was sloppy with definitions.

Lets start by showing how setting too low a bar for content to become non-mandatory is genuinely and seriously problematic. That is if we made all content which irritates people non-mandatory; or content we dislike, annoys us, or that we simply disagree with. All these stifle debate and stop people from engaging with rival or opposing views. And no matter what, you will have to come across such beliefs in the worldit is part of life to disagree and get a bit annoyed. And the benefit of engaging with irritating content is that we engage with other viewpoints. But also that we learn about other viewpoints: what they are, why people believe them, and how we might convince others to change their mind. These are key reasons we should engage with prejudicial content.

Consider content which discusses Nazi propaganda. Nazi propaganda is certainly prejudicial. But should such content be made non-mandatory? Absolutely not. How can one learn about what happened without understanding what the Nazis believed? How can one appreciate the dangers of something similar happening againand how to stop itwithout understanding what the Nazis were saying? And how can one convince the very few contemporary Nazi sympathisers they are wrong without engaging with their prejudiced views? One cannot. Engaging with prejudicial views is as essential to a university education as engaging with positions one dislikes or disagrees with.

But there are times when Nazi propaganda, or prejudicial content more generally, should be made non-mandatory. For instance, when it commonly evokes feelings of trauma or severe distress in people. But this content should not be made non-mandatory because it is prejudicial, but because it is triggering.

That is my proposal for how the SU should have gone about this. Content should be made non-mandatory if it is genuinely psychologically triggering. This goes neatly together with my other proposal: we should introduce trigger warnings for triggering content, not prejudicial content. And, bonus: this makes it super clear which content is/is not mandatory: the content with TWs is non-mandatory.

If we made all content which irritates people non-mandatory; or content we dislike, annoys us, or that we simply disagree with. All these stifle debate and stop people from engaging with rival or opposing views. And no matter what, you will have to come across such beliefs in the worldit is part of life to disagree and get a bit annoyed.

But that is not what the SU proposed. Their proposal only mentioned TWs once and did not attempt to define them. Sure, its really hard to define when trigger warnings should be introducedyou have to account for what counts as feelings of trauma. Moreover, you have to consider how commonly a stimulus must cause such feelings in people to require a trigger warning. But the SU didnt even try, nor did they outsource the definition to an appropriate body that has done the job for them. Guy Boysens article comes to mind.

(c.f. Evidence-based answers to questions about trigger warnings for clinically-based distress: A review for teachers).

Trigger warnings should be reserved for content, which is genuinely triggering, not just prejudicial. One could introduce content warnings (CWs) for that. But that is another debate. Equivocating prejudicial and triggering content trivialises TWs. So many people as it completely misunderstands the entire concept of triggers. Therefore, the last thing we should do is completely misrepresent and trivialise them.

And this trivialisation of TWs can be found in the SU motion, which was marked with a TW for misogyny. The only word in the entire motion (and its appendix) which could be considered misogynistically triggering is misogyny (or derivatives) itself. And this obviously cannot be triggering because the very word appears in the trigger warning itself! Where they find misogynistically triggering content in the Councils motion/appendix, I do not know. Similarly of the TWs for transphobia and classism. The only trigger warnings which arguably do apply are ableism and eugenics because of the mention of the FHS Medical Law and Ethics reading list titles.

A recent article eloquently explained that reading could be triggering because it questions someones existence based on their identityincluding, for example, a disability. This is an extremely valid discussion, and it is not an open-and-shut case. It is not clear whether such content is triggering or should amount to hate speechbut I agree with the author that such content hinders rather than helps students learning. In short, as Kate Manne wrote, trigger warnings are not about feelings being highly unpleasant or prejudiced but about them temporarily render[ing] people unable to focus, regardless of their desire or determination to do so.

Trivialisation of TWs can be found in the SU motion, which was marked with a TW for misogyny. The only word in the entire motion (and its appendix) which could be considered misogynistically triggering is misogyny (or derivatives) itself. And this obviously cannot be triggering because the very word appears in the trigger warning itself!

In response, I think it would be easy to slightly broaden our definition to make content that questions someones existence based on their identity non-mandatory and include content warnings for them. And we can do this without making the far more problematic, broad-sweeping, and vague definition about prejudicial content.

But that is not what the SU did. So, what does their proposal entail?

Firstly, by being so utterly unclear, future interpretations about what content should be non-mandatory/display TWs could range from any mildly upsetting content to only incitement to hatred. But the latter is far too high a bar and does not rule out enough content. Hence, the SU motions sloppiness might enable future commentators to completely undermine the intention of the motion.

Yet more worrying is the mildly upsetting interpretation, under which virtually all content would be non-mandatory, and feature TWs. By their own demonstration, any content including the word misogynistic should have a TW, which is ludicrous. The reason for this is that the motion entirely fails to distinguish directly prejudicial from indirectly prejudicial content. Consider the difference between contemporary content arguing in favour of the holocaust and historical studies of the holocaust that quote historical content arguing in favour of the holocaust. The former I call directly prejudicialand indeed, directly counts as hate speech. The latter is indirectly prejudicial: it is not itself prejudicial, or hate speech, but it features content that is.

I imagine that the motion primarily meant to make content non-mandatory if it directly counts as criminal hate speech or is directly prejudicial. But there is no real reason why the embedded hate speech in indirectly hateful content would be less triggering than the hate speech indirectly hateful content. Quotations of Nazi propaganda are as capable of render[ing] people unable to focus and triggering feelings of trauma as the Nazi propaganda itself.

So, the motion would not only rule out all content that is directly prejudicial but all content that is indirectly prejudicialwhich includes virtually any work of history or literature. And this is unbelievably problematic. Is it wrong to make a lecture mandatory which, in a discussion of Martin Luther King Jr., considers the prejudice levelled against him and other people based on race by looking at quotations which are prejudicial? As far as I am concerned, no one can engage with the issue of the Civil Rights movement without considering the prejudicial beliefs and statements faced at the time. That is why it should be mandatory.

Consider the difference between contemporary content arguing in favour of the holocaust, and historical studies of the holocaust that quote historical content arguing in favour of the holocaust. The former I call directly prejudicialand indeed, directly counts as hate speech. The latter is indirectly prejudicial: it is not itself prejudicial, or hate speech, but it features content that is.

And if such a low bar is adopted, it would not even help. If we start adding TWs to the majority of items, students avoiding these TWs will feel like theyre stuck with two rubbish options. Either they could risk reading content marked with a TW because theyre overwhelmingly commonwhich is unfair on them. Or, they could stick with reading an insufficient part of the reading listwhich is not only unfair on them academically but also undermines academic engagement with a variety of viewsthe whole point of university. Similarly to making most of the content non-mandatory. And, as noted, it would massively trivialise TWs.

Most worrying of all is the ominous last line of the appendix. This states that prejudicial content should require trigger warnings at a bare minimum. In combination with the fact that it fails to define what counts as prejudicial content, this predicts extremely oppressive future policies. Do we ban all prejudicial content? Even indirectly prejudicial content? Do we ostracise or even kick out people promoting or discussing it?

The SU may have not intended for the potential consequences I have discussed, where completely benign items are made non-mandatory. Or where virtually nothing on the history syllabus is mandatory, and where virtually everything requires a trigger warning. But the devil truly is in the details because intention doth butter no parsnips when it comes to subsequent interpretation and actual consequences. When looking back on what has been passed on paper (or rather, over the internet), the original intentions and the context in which it was written will be irrelevant and lost to the winds of time. The scarily broad applications I have highlighted could be enforced.

I can hear people saying that being pedantic like this is not good enough reason to quash the motion. But we should judge the motion not on what it may or may not have intended, but on what it does. Scrutinising keywords and definitions is vital to determining what a policy achieves. Imagine a political policy which intends to help the least well-off in society but does notit is in fact to the detriment of the least well-off. Should we cheer on the political policy because of its good intentions, or criticise its actual consequences and shortcomings? I know where I stand.

The devil truly is in the details because intention doth butter no parsnips when it comes to subsequent interpretation and actual consequences. When looking back on what has been passed on paper the original intentions and the context in which it was written will be irrelevant and lost to the winds of time. The scarily broad applications I have highlighted could be enforced.

So, criticisms of the SU motion are valid. The intention behind it may or may not have been right, but there is no point criticising or praising their intentions since they are so unclear. And anyway, criticising what a motion does is not the same as criticising its intention. And what it does is bad. The motion trivialises TWs. It hinders intellectual engagement. It enables restrictions on academic free speech. So, I suppose, Dawkins was right.

Mental health, trigger warnings and the rights of minority students are so important. And they do have a tough battle. So, we owe it to students to deal with them properly. And this SU motion completely fails to do so.

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Long Read: The SU Motion failed us The Oxford Student - Oxford Student

As the racial, class and demographic implications of the coronavirus are in full view, eugenics dictates that the elderly, prisoners, people of color, immigrants and poor and working folks who are vulnerable and unable to work at home via Zoom are expendable.

Pandemics know no politics, and yet President Trump, Republican Party leaders and members of the GOP base have weaponized coronavirus for the culture wars, placing American capitalism over human lives and responding to this disease by presumably asserting a right to die without an oppressive lockdown, all for the sake of capital. It seems misplaced for these individuals, predominantly white conservatives, to demand that everyone return to work and reopen the economy, even as we have yet to reach the height of a deadly outbreak. White Christian nationalism is taking on the plague with potentially disastrous results.

Once again, white Christian nationalists prioritize profits over lives. This time, they worship an unholy triumvirate of the Golden Calf, White Jesus and Donald Trump.

As Democratic governors of the northeast, Midwest and West take COVID-19 seriously, take precautions and form consortia to protect their states in the absence of presidential leadership, the GOP has made coronavirus a political issue. Some Republican governors have taken a lax approach to the pandemic, and in some cases such as South Dakota have not only refused to issue a statewide lockdown despite the disease running rampant in meat processing plants and nursing home facilitiesbut have framed the resistance to stay at home orders as an issue of individual liberty. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick suggested that elders would gladly die to save the American economy, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina are allowing businesses to reopen in the middle of a pandemic, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reopened the beaches, and even considered reopening schools based on the false belief the virus does not affect children.

Trump ally Jerry Falwell Jr. opened Liberty University after Spring Break, and unsurprisingly, students exhibited symptoms of coronavirus infection. Trump wanted to fill the church pews with worshippers on Easter Sunday, and conservative judges in Wisconsin forced voters to walk through a plague to vote, rather than postpone the state primary election. More recently, protestersincluding some sporting guns, waving Confederate flags, blocking ambulances and holding antisemitic signshave participated in anti-quarantine protests. These Astroturf actions to open the country are affiliated with the Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation and billionaire Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoswho is also associated with the placement of kidnaped migrant children into Christian foster care. Trump adviser Stephen Moore compared the protestors engaged in acts of civil disobedienceapparently the right to infect others to Rosa Parks. This, as Vice President Pence defends Trumps tweets fanning the flames of dissent and encouraging acts of armed insurrection and terrorismby calling for the liberation of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia from stay-at-home orders.

While it is possible to chalk up some of this reactionary, irrational and toxic behavior to the peculiarities of the death cult that comprises the Trumpian basewith their unhinged pronouncements of fake news and Democratic hoax conspiracy theoriesfar more is at play here.

Red stateswhich include the former states of the Confederacy, the ideological successors to the Dixiecratshave a long legacy of disregarding human rights and the well-being of people, a legacy of slavery, segregation and lynching. These states, for all their pro-life rhetoric, have high rates of poverty and other negative health and socioeconomic outcomes. Racism and fundamentalism breed phony science and science denial, whether climate change denial and the belief Jesus rode on dinosaurs, or pseudoscience to justify slavery by claiming Blacks were inferior to whites, or that slaves suffered from a mental illness that made them run away.

Remember that white supremacyof which the Trump administration is an adherentalways ends in death. White Christian nationalists do not follow the theology of a Palestinian Jewish refugee of color who healed the sick and cared for the least among us. Rather, theirs is the religion of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus of fiction, the religion of the slave masterreminiscent of the redacted Slave Bible that omitted 90 percent of the Old Testament and half of the New Testamentincluding passages related to the liberation of the Israelites, rebellion and equalityand taught enslaved Africans to obey their masters.

For centuries, get back to work! has been the clarion call of white Christian capitalists who cared little about the health and welfare of human beings, and were concerned foremost with amassing wealth for a small group of white men.

In the name of Jesus, white Christians committed genocide against indigenous people, and kidnaped millions of Africans in the Transatlantic slave tradewith 40 Africans dying in the Middle Passage of infectious disease, malnourishment and brutality for every 100 who made it to the New World. White Christian slave masters who murdered their slaves and worked them to death were concerned with profit, not the lives of black people, as death was baked into the cake and part of the business model. This, as hundreds of thousands of poor white Christian men died for the Confederacy to preserve an economic system that rendered their labor superfluous, and filled the coffers of the Southern aristocracy.

Similarly, there was no concern for the health of black prison laborers of the Jim Crow convict lease systemwho were imprisoned under the Black Codes for bogus offenses such as vagrancy and rented out to plantations, corporations, mines and railroadsand the forced laborers who toiled in Ford and General Motors plants in Nazi Germany.

David A. LoveBlackCommentator

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Get Back to Work! The Clarion Call of White Christian Nationalists - LA Progressive

Illustration: Kelsey Wroten for The Intercept

One reason Trump has been invincible so far is that he not only embodies but also exploits a powerful American ambivalence: on one hand, the punitive authoritarian instinctthat supports long prison sentences and a strong military; on the other, the leave-me-alone libertarianism embodied in the Bill of Rights, a defense of individuals from the power of the state.

This ambivalence is not a red-blue split. It is internal to both. On the right, laissez-faire economics chafe against Christian cultural intolerance, isolationism against imperialism. On the left, the Stalinists are still at war with the anarchists, the nanny-statists with the hippies, and a taste for utopian direct democracy, as in the Occupy movement, strains against a hunger for big government.

The coronavirus crisis has brought this ambivalence to the fore. Mistrust of the government emanates from both right and left. In Lansing, Michigan, a heavily astroturfed movement of wing-nuts with automatic weapons storms the state Capitol in defense of the liberty to get haircuts, get infected, and infect others. In Los Angeles, the grassroots Stop LAPD Spying Coalition a network of organizers in low-income communities of color seeking to dismantle government-sanctioned spying and intelligence gathering, in all its multiple forms airs a webinar series to strategize resistance to expansion of the police state in the pandemic.

Such resistance can border on the self-destructive. Theres lively discussion among evangelicals about the pandemic as a left-wing Zionist hoax or, perhaps, a welcome early sign of the end times. But did God mean to decimate denominations of their pastors and sickentheirchurch choirs? Those clamoring to be freed from house arrest seem unconcerned with the motives of their would-be liberators. The damages of keeping the economy closed as it is could be worse than losing a few more people, mused Paychex founder and chair Tom Golisano, whose estimated net worth is $3.9 billion. You have to weigh the pros and cons a luxury Paychexs $11-an-hour data entry clerks will not have when the day comes to clock in.

On a Stop LAPD webinar, a presenter discusses the National Coronavirus Response: A Road Map to Reopening, published by the libertarian pro-business think tank American Enterprise Institute. The report stresses new technologies of testing and contact tracing, real-time data analysis, and the buildup of comprehensive COVID-19 surveillance systems. Representing communities subject to constant policing based on predictive algorithms of crime, facial recognition software, and police files of serology, fingerprints, and other personal biodata, Stop LAPD is wary of the whole approach. We dont need to police or surveil our way out of the pandemic, coordinator Hamid Khan tells me. The group isnt telling people not to get tested, but our perspective is data abolitionist cool it with the stats, just send the resources even if the data substantiates the racial and economic inequities that leave black and brown bodies vulnerable or the disproportionate rates of Covid-19 infection and death in these communities. Our folks in Skid Row dont need someone from the outside to tell them whats wrong with the conditions on the ground, Kahn says. Asked if its valuable for other people to know in order to act, he, like the coalition, is agnostic.

Different resisters are more or less justified in their fears. The webinars title, Power Not Paranoia, evinces the tension for marginalized communities between survival in the moment and self-preservation in the long run. But paranoid might not be the wrong word for the anti-lockdown crowd. There was one arrest at the Michigan state Capitol action. Were the armed intruders black or brown, its doubtful the police would have been so accommodating of their rights to free speech and assembly.

Trump has nearly achieved realization of Ronald Reagans adage that the nine most terrifying words are Im from the government, and Im here to help. Bereft of any benign function of an administrative state and suspect of a sinister police state, many citizens see no option but to take care of their own and take their chances. Rather than fight for government action, DIYers are sewing, 3-D printing, or raising money on GoFundMe for masks for hospital workers. Others are turning to violent self-defense against perceived government overreach. In Michigan, asecurity guard was fatally shot after allegedly ejecting a woman related to the shooter from a Family Dollar store for not wearing a mask.

Meanwhile, some of us are privately, anxiously contending with conflicting impulses rising from deep psyche: to chastise the neighbors for standing too close? To touch the hand of the checkout worker, not exactly accidentally, for a moment of contact? As I witness violations of our new social codes, and break them occasionally myself, my political-personal faith in a mutually supportive, mutually protective community begins to wobble. This isnt working! Wheres the police state when we need it? As if to teach me a lesson, a Lower East Side officer tackles, punches, and kneels on the head of a man for an alleged social distancing infraction. In Philadelphia, cops are videotaped dragging a passenger from a bus for not wearing a mask.

It is easy to write off social distancing opponents or anti-vaxxers as selfish Luddites, and those sticking with the program as rational promoters of public health. But either would be hasty. Because, as University of Michigan historian Alexandra Minna Stern points out, the definitions of publicand health are debatable.For example, the 1905 Supreme Court case that upheld the constitutionality of compulsory vaccination during a smallpox epidemic was reprised as precedent in 1927 to rule that the state of Virginia did not violate the due process rights of an institutionalized feeble-minded woman by performing an involuntary tubal ligation on her, to promote, as the law read, the health of the patient and the welfare of society. In other words, eugenics was constitutional. Vaccination rational, eugenics criminal? In both cases, the justices found that individual liberty implying bodily autonomy could be subordinated to the collective good.

To get through the pandemic, we need something between too much and not enough government. Somewhere in the middle lies solidarity: the recognition that an injury to one is an injury to all, and the less injured have a responsibility to the more injured. Fortunately, disasters inspire this spirit. But solidarity is not just banging pots and putting rainbows in our windows to thank the essential workers. Solidarity implies government policies of wealth redistribution and adequate public services and support to those who need it. With Republicans taking advantage of the pandemic to expand authoritarian power and liberate the economy for corporate plunder, America may never have needed its instinctive skepticism of government more. But we also must not let up demanding that the state promote the public good, even as we continue to debate the meaning of that term.

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The Pandemic Brings Out the Authoritarian and Libertarian in Us All - The Intercept

Georgia Public Broadcastings new series What You Need To Know: Coronavirus provides succinct, fact-based information to help you get through the coronavirus pandemic with your health and sanity intact.

In the fight against COVID-19, many countries have shut down businesses and schools, but thats not the case in Sweden. The countrys relaxed approach is supposed to minimize the damage to the economy. The other goal is to slow the pandemics spread through herd immunity when enough people become immune to a disease after recovering from it or getting vaccinated. GPBs Virginia Prescott talks with Emory University professor Felipe Lobelo about the risks of herd immunity.

So herd immunity or herd protection? This is ultimately aimed at slowing the spread of infectious diseases. Can you give us a brief sketch of what that actually means and how it works?

Herd immunity is also referred to as the golden ring of protection. So if you have enough people in a community that have been immunized or that have gotten the disease and now are immune, then the transmission of an infectious disease or an agent or a virus in this case is going to slow or even stop completely because, you know, the virus essentially runs out of hosts to infect. So that's what we're trying to achieve with this coronavirus and with any infectious disease.

You mentioned with immunization, it does rely on the assumption that once you have had a disease, whether by getting it or getting a vaccine, you develop an immunity. Is there any evidence that that is the case with coronavirus?

We don't know for certain yet, but we know from previous coronaviruses that you do develop some kind of immunity. We just don't know how long and how strong, you know, whether it's going to be three months, six months, 12 months. We sort of have pretty good indication that a vaccine or getting the disease will protect you. But we still need to have more data in order to definitively say if it's going to be six months, 12 months or longer.

So how about, if we're looking at the difference in the Swedish model, how about risk factors for coronavirus: obesity, diabetes, hypertension, smoking? How do the Swedish and American populations compare on those factors?

Right. So, you know, when you look at the mortality or the impact of a virus, you also need to look at the host that that virus is infesting. And in this case, in the United States, we have much higher risks of poor being, with much higher prevalence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, physical inactivity, bad diet compared to Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. And that may explain why in the U.S. we have to take stronger lockdown measures because we have a more vulnerable population.

The U.S. also has high rates of poverty and income inequality. How does this factor into the debate over herd immunity?

It's very important because we know the social determinants of health are drivers really of the outcomes not only of chronic diseases, but in this case infectious diseases. Because you start to see that vulnerable populations, populations of color, African Americans, Latinos are shouldering a much bigger burden of disease with coronavirus compared to white populations. And that is really partially explained by, you know, disparities in income, in education, in access to healthcare, you know, in the ability to self isolate, or stigma, work from home versus to being an essential worker. So all those factors, in addition to the biology of the virus, are driving the outcomes that we see.

So the results have been different in different countries. How is Sweden faring even compared to the Scandinavian countries which surround it? How is this model working?

Well, it's a mixed bag. We know that they have a higher total number of deaths and a higher mortality per capita compared to other Scandinavian countries.

Now, we also know that the percentage of the population that has been infected so far, it shouldn't appear to be higher. Maybe around 50% compared to 5% or less in most other countries.

So, you know, if this is a long process, they will slowly achieve herd immunity faster because the virus obviously is going faster through the population, but they're also paying a high toll in terms of mortality, particularly around elderly population. More than 80% of their deaths come from nursing homes.

But that is part of the argument for herd immunity. And critics of this strategy have also compared it to eugenics. Basically, you're depending on the younger, stronger population continuing to survive and in the crudest terms, you know, picking off the elderly and the less strong. What do you think of that criticism?

It's a very valid criticism. I mean, the reason we have public health and mitigation strategies is precisely to protect everyone. And, you know, we do know that the elderly are more vulnerable, but we also know that these virus can affect and does affect younger people and people that maybe don't have preexisting conditions.

Even we're starting to see cases in kids that develop of vasculitis or inflammation of their blood vessels or their heart. So, you know, we really don't know exactly how these virus kills necessarily.

So this idea that we can write off a whole segment of the population to keep the economy going is just a false alternative. We do have the public health and tools in order to mitigate a disaster like this.

But you mentioned that the Sweden is seeing a higher per capita death rate than its neighboring countries. This is a population of just above 10 million for the entire country. So were that to scale up, were the U.S. to adopt this kind of model, what kind of numbers do you think we'd be seeing?

Well, we know if had do we know nothing in the United States, early models predicted up to 2 million deaths due to coronavirus over the next 12 months. And we have now data showing that a big lockdown, a big hammer in order to suppress the virus, hopefully will bring that down to around 150,000 deaths, so like the latest estimate for the next few months.

So had we taken a middle approach, which is where Sweden is doing, which is just doing mitigation strategies but not for suppression, we'd probably be somewhere in between 150 and 2 million deaths. It's very hard to know because you know, these disparities, because our country is very diverse, because people by seeing what's happening in other countries are taking their own measures even before the governor's lockdown. So it's really impossible to tell like somewhere in between.

You could argue that Georgia has taken a somewhere in between strategy so far with Gov. Brian Kemp trying to open up the economy, opening up a lot of businesses. Do you think our health care system, especially here in Georgia and across the U.S., can handle that kind of the kind of numbers? Obviously not as the world not the country wide numbers that you mentioned of 2 million. But of what is to come?

Every aspect of health care and public health is local, so it's hard to make a prediction about how the state will fare. If we look at the state, we've been relatively doing okay in terms of the percentage of ICU beds, for example, that are being used statewide. But when you drill down into particular communities like Albany or like some areas of northeast Georgia, we do see an overrun in the health capacity of health care systems because outbreaks are localized and they don't all happen at the same time. So it's hard to know how this is going to affect the way the health care system in Georgia is fully going to cope.

I think it's going to cope in some areas, but unfortunately, in areas where there's more vulnerable populations, their likelihood to seethey will have likelihood to see outbreaks and more excess mortality unfortunately, because we're not taking all the public health measures that we need to take. It's not just the suppression, it is also improving our public health capacity to early detect, isolate and find the contacts of people that develop the disease. In an essence, we're not beaten, we're not able to do that anymore.

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What You Need To Know: Is Herd Immunity Too Risky? - Georgia Public Broadcasting

MICHAEL Gove has come under fire after his journalist wife Sarah Vine tweeted two pictures of their bookcases, showing a bookby David Irving, the Holocaust denier, andThe Bell Curve,which controversially claims that ethnicity can play a part in determining IQ.

Delving deeper into Mr Goves reading material, critics were appalled to discover that he also has biographies of Mussolini, Stalin and other leaders sharing shelf space with the memoirs of Baroness Thatcher.

Alastair Campbell duly tweeted: Having Hitler, Rommel and Napoleon next to Maggie is not a good look. Unfazed, Ms Vine replied: Dont be so absurd. They are books. You should try them sometime you can learn a lot from them. You will note there is also a Peter Mandelson.

Owen Jones, the Labour activist, demanded: Why does [sic] Michael Gove and his wife own a copy of a book by David Irving, one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers on earth? He was backed by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, who said the former Labour leader would have been vilified for owning the same reading material.

The editor of theJewish Chronicle,Stephen Pollard, called the Twitter spat The Great Twitter Bookshelf Derangement and remarked of the criticism: The implication was clear that there is something very dodgy about reading a book by a man like Irving. In other words, if you read it, you clearly have some sort of sympathy with the views. Blimey. If thats how it works, I am beyond redemption. As well as two books by Irving, Ive got a book by the actual Adolf Hitler on my shelves, not to mention Mao and heres where it gets really bad I also have speeches by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.

He insisted that Michael Gove, a member of the Holocaust Commission, set up in 2014 to explore ways in which Britain can have a permanent memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations, had probably done more for Holocaust education and the Jewish community in Britain than any senior politician other than Gordon Brown. Its obvious to anyone why he would have read the work of a Holocaust denier.

Gove did not comment but his wife said: To defeat prejudice you have to understand it.

This seems eminently sensible, although it might cause some concern that the former Secretary of State for Education under David Camerons Conservative-Liberal coalition owns a copy of Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murrays 1994 bookThe Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which caused controversy because, as theTelegraphnoted, it argued that IQ is largely inherited and that certain ethnic groups have poorer socio-economic prospects because they are less intelligent. And yet although Mr Gove has his critics on both Left and Right, including in the field of education, he seems not to have displayed any signs of eugenicist tendencies. Indeed, as someone who was adopted as a baby from a mother of humble background, surely he is a living refutation of the eugenics argument that backs nature against nurture.

Attending state primary and independent secondary schools, he ended up at Oxford, and in his post as Education Secretary he took a deep interest in social mobility (or lack thereof under the previous Labour administration) and the role of education; he was keen to reintroduce classic authors into school lessons and rigour to examinations. For this he was accused of elitism by the Left, for whom he became a hate figure, despite the fact that their insistence on equality of outcomes and a one-size-fits-all approach led to a great many children who did not have academic leanings being perceived as having failed, thus playing into the hands of the eugenics lobby that they condemned.

Stephen Pollard notes Mr Goves support for Holocaust education, and an interest in Jewish affairs must include an interest in the Holocaust and its architect, Adolf Hitler. As a student of Jewish-Christian relations I also have a number of books about Hitler, includingMein Kampf, and the Holocaust; and as a researcher into the role of the Sexual Revolution in facilitating eugenics and population control, who has moreover suffered from a hereditary condition and chronic ill health for a number of years, my bookshelves would no doubt lead the academic detectives to deduce that I am a hypochondriac anti-Semitic Darwinian sex maniac. Having consulted the books for research purposes, there is the dilemma of how to dispose of them: one would not want them to fall into the wrong hands. Burning them is clearly out of the question.

I will not be tweeting pictures of my library any time soon, but Mr Goves life and political career are public knowledge, and with so many enemies on both sides of the House, as well as outside of it, any Nazi or eugenics involvements he may have had could scarcely remain secret. In short, regardless of his bookcases, Mr Gove is an open book, while actual eugenics and anti-Semitism in the shape of abortion advocacy and anti-Israel sentiment have flourished quite openly on the Left, most notoriously under anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn. No need to seek for hidden sympathies in his case, and yet Left-wing vilification is hard to find, while his defenders are many. Which just goes to show that youcanjudge a book by its cover.

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The strange case of Michael Gove's bookshelf - The Conservative Woman

April 22, 2020 | :

Stanford University said on Monday it will review requests to rename a building that has ties to eugenics, reported the Stanford Daily.

The building in question is Jordan Hall, which was named in 1917 for Stanfords founding president David Starr Jordan, a leader of the eugenics movement. The movement promoted the belief that selective breeding, by excluding or including certain races, can improve the human race.

Stanford will form a committee toreview requests submitted by the psychology department, which is housed in Jordan Hall, and the Stanford Eugenics History Project to rename the building. The committee will also review requests to remove the statue of Louis Agassiz, who mentored Jordan but has no ties to the university. The statue is located outside Jordan Hall.

It is good to see the university start to confront its history with eugenics right now, during a historical moment when the rejection of eugenics and scientific racism is of vital importance, said Ben Maldonado, a founder of the Stanford Eugenics History Project that seeks to unveil historical ties between Stanford and the American eugenics movement.

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Stanford U Will Review Requests to Rename Building With Ties to... - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Stanford will commission a committee to review requests submitted by the psychology department and the Stanford Eugenics History Project to rename Jordan Hall and remove a statue outside the building due to the namesakes ties to eugenics and polygenism, the University announced Monday.

Jordan Hall, which houses the psychology department, was named in 1917 for Stanfords founding president David Starr Jordan. In addition to serving as a University president and a marine biologist, Jordan was a public leader of the American eugenics movement, promoting the belief that selective breeding based on genetic characteristics such as race can improve the human species. Jordan served as chair of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association and was a member of the advisory council of the Eugenics Committee for the American Eugenics Society.

On Jan. 27, faculty members of the psychology department voted unanimously to request the renaming of the building and the removal of the statue of Louis Agassiz. Agassiz, who mentored Jordan but has no significant connection with the University, promoted polygenism, which posits the view that racial groups have distinct origins and are unequal.

These features of our building have been a topic of concern within the Department for some time, wrote Department Chair of Psychology and Lucie Stern Professor in the Social Sciences Anthony Wagner in a statement to The Daily. In Fall 2019, the Department initiated a process to review Stanfords and the Departments values, to consider the nature of David Starr Jordan and Louis Agassizs specific behaviors, and to discuss what impacts these features of our environment are presently having on our community.

In addition to considering the psychology departments requests, the University is also reviewing a student groups letter that urges the University to rename the building. The Stanford Eugenics History Project, a group founded by Ben Maldonado 20 who also writes the series Eugenics on the Farm for The Dailys Opinions section seeks to unveil historical ties between Stanford and the American eugenics movement.

It is good to see the University start to confront its history with eugenics right now, during a historical moment when the rejection of eugenics and scientific racism is of vital importance, Maldonado wrote to The Daily. I think that the facts are very clear regarding Jordans role in the eugenics movement and I hope the committee will see that as grounds for renaming.

According to the Stanford News announcement, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne said that he will appoint a committee to review and report back on the two requests, following principles adopted in 2018 for considering the renaming of campus features named for historical figures with complex legacies.

Tessier-Lavigne told the psychology department and the Stanford Eugenics History Project, however, that progress on the initiative will be on pause until the community returns to campus following the COVID-19 shelter-in-place.

I will ask the committee to engage robustly with the campus community on issues raised in the requests, which will not be possible to do at a distance, Tessier-Lavigne wrote in the Stanford News announcement.

The announcement also stated that during the review process, the committee would consider factors such as the harmful impact of a persons behavior, the centrality of the behavior to the persons life as a whole, the persons relation to university history, community identification with the named feature, the strength and clarity of the historical evidence, and possibilities for mitigation.

These principles, which include both the harm caused in retaining the name and the potential harms of renaming, are outlined in a University document titled Principles and Procedures for Renaming Buildings and Other Features at Stanford University, and have guided past University renaming decisions.

In 2018, Stanford chose to rename some campus features that honored California missionary Father Junipero Serra who has come under fire for his treatment of Native Americans including Serra House, which is an all-frosh dorm in Stern Hall, and the building housing the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Other features named for Serra, such as the Serra Street between Campus Drive East and El Camino Real, were retained.

Both groups involved in the renaming request expressed approval of the Universitys announcement.

We look forward to working with the committee appointed by President Tessier-Lavigne as they consider our request, Wagner wrote.

I knew the creation of the committee would be the next step, and I fully expect the committee to recognize Jordans harmful legacies, Maldonado added.

However, students said, this is just one piece of the process.

I hope that the committee will engage with the evidence we have documented judiciously and remember that this is about more than just a name it is about critically engaging with the legacies of eugenics, especially in elite spaces like Stanford, said Stanford Eugenics History Project member Linda Zhou 22. I believe, in light of the facts our project has presented, there is no excuse not to rename.

I also hope that, even before the committee and potential renaming, the University puts up some form of signage contextualizing Jordans life and actions, bringing attention to the way his widespread promotion of eugenics contributed to so much harm, Maldonado wrote. Of course, this all has to wait until campus life resumes, but I think an action like that would be a good first step.

Contact Sarina Deb at sdeb7 at stanford.edu.

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Stanford to review requests to rename Jordan Hall because of eugenic ties - The Stanford Daily

When the influenza virus first struck down a soldier in March 1918 on a military base in Kansas, much of the country was mesmerized by The Black Stork, a silent film advocating the elimination of children born with severe illnesses or disabilities. The eugenics movement the effort to improve the human gene pool by isolating and sterilizing those considered unfit to reproduce was in full swing. Today, in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, the dominant theme is saving lives, regardless of the economic cost. Yet a century ago, medical and scientific authorities, egged on by religious leaders, supported a violent form of social Darwinism.

Soon after Charles Darwin published his evolutionary theory based on the survival of the fittest, anthropologists such as Francis Galton seized upon its social implications: Use the tools of science to improve the human species. What Nature does blindly, slowly, ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly and kindly, Galton told a London society in 1909. Galton coined the term eugenics good birth to promote his social vision. It must be introduced into the national conscience, he said, like a new religion.

Eugenics advocates proceeded with missionary zeal. A year after Galtons speech, Charles Davenport, a professor of zoology at the University of Chicago, with grant money from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, created a national Eugenics Record Office. The aim: to gather scientific data to support the eugenics agenda. Beginning in 1912, a series of international conferences was held in London and New York, creating a global venue for a burgeoning class of eugenicists and their supporters. They built ties to institutions such as Harvard, Princeton and Columbia universities and New Yorks Museum of Natural History. What began as a fringe, pseudo-scientific idea became mainstream thinking in premier scientific and academic institutions.

The 1918 influenza pandemic, despite killing the young and healthy as easily as the old and sick, did nothing to curb enthusiasm for eugenics. In Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu and How It Changed the World, Laura Spinney writes that one of the big lessons of the catastrophe was that it was no longer reasonable to blame individuals for catching an infectious disease. Thats not exactly right: The lesson for many scientific authorities was that the racial stock was in grave danger of degeneration.

In fact, it appears that the devastating effects of the influenza virus killing at least 50 million people worldwide in a matter of months stirred an apocalyptic gloom in educated circles. Book titles in the 1920s tell the story: The End of the World; Social Decay and Degeneration; The Need for Eugenic Reform; Racial Decay; Sterilization of the Unfit; and The Twilight of the White Races. Population planning was promoted by psychiatrist Carlos Paton Blacker, longtime general secretary of the Eugenics Society, who warned in a 1926 book, Birth Control and the State, of a biological crisis unprecedented in the history of life.

To many religious leaders, the science of eugenics was a progressive solution to a raft of social, moral and spiritual ills. Writing in the journal Eugenics, Harry F. Ward, a professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary in 1919, explained that eugenics, like Christian morality, was aimed at removing the causes that produce the weak. In a 1928 winning entry for a national eugenics sermon contest, Rev. Kenneth MacArthur intoned: If we take seriously the Christian purpose of realizing on earth the ideal divine society, we shall welcome every help which science affords. The Rev. W.R. Inge, a professor of divinity at Cambridge University and one of the best-known clergymen of his day, was a devout believer in eugenics. In books, essays, and a weekly newspaper column, Inge complained about humanitarian legislation that assisted these degenerates, who possess no qualities that confer a survival value. They posed a mortal threat to Western civilization, he argued, and should be quarantined and eliminated.

The scientific community used its immense cultural authority to persuade democratic lawmakers to get on board. The American Eugenics Society founded in 1922 and supported by Nobel Prize-winning scientists hoped to sterilize a tenth of the U.S. population. California led the way, using its 1909 sterilization law to target the unfit and feebleminded, i.e., the poor, the infirm and the criminal class. Today, in battling the coronavirus, California has scrambled to acquire more hospital ventilators and even considered the mass release of its inmate population. But in the aftermath of the influenza outbreak, groups such as the Human Betterment Foundation lobbied for the involuntary sterilization of thousands of California residents in state hospitals and prisons. Thirty-two other states adopted similar eugenic policies.

What turned the tide of opinion against eugenics? The racist barbarism of Nazi Germany the cries of the victims of Auschwitz revealed to the world the appalling logic of eugenics. Yet there were other voices as well: the conservative and traditionalist Christians who never were taken in by the promises of a human biological paradise. In 1922, the influential Catholic thinker G.K. Chesterton published Eugenics and Other Evils, the only book of its time unabashedly opposed to the movements claims and objectives. Indeed, Chesterton anticipated the totalitarian direction of the eugenic agenda, which he derided as terrorism by tenth-rate professors.

William Jennings Bryan, an evangelical Christian often caricatured for his opposition to the teaching of evolution in public schools in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial is also worth recalling. The textbook that Bryan denounced, A Civic Biology, openly promoted the ideology of eugenics. After reviewing case studies of families with significant numbers of feeble-minded and criminal persons, the books author rendered a judgment: They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites. In his closing argument in the trial, Bryan insisted that he was not opposed to science, but to science without the restraints of religious belief.

Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals, he explained. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene.

Perhaps civilization has learned that lesson, at least partially. The heroic efforts to rescue as many people as possible from the current pandemic regardless of their age, identity or physical condition is evidence that the teachings of Jesus, the Nazarene, have not been fully forgotten.

Joseph Loconte is an associate professor of history at the Kings College in New York City and the author of A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War. The trailer for his forthcoming documentary film based on the book can be found at hobbitwardrobe.com. Follow him on Twitter @JosephLoconte.

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Pandemics and the survival of the fittest | TheHill - The Hill