Eugenics: The Well-Born Science · Episode 5 of 9 · 38 min
The University Presidents Who Led American Eugenics
American eugenics was the establishment, not the fringe. The presidents of Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, the head of the American Museum of Natural History, a Yale economist and Alexander Graham Bell lent it prestige, while county-fair Fitter Families contests made racial pseudoscience wholesome. The episode argues that science is a method, not a priesthood, and its authority can be captured.
Who's who
- David Starr Jordan+1 more episodeStanford's founding president; chaired the first U.S. eugenics committee
- Charles W. Eliot+2 more episodesHarvard president who urged each nation to keep its stock pure
- Woodrow Wilson+9 more episodesPrinceton president and New Jersey governor who signed a 1911 sterilization law
- Nicholas Murray Butler+1 more episodeColumbia president representing the elite milieu
- Henry Fairfield Osborn+1 more episodeAmerican Museum of Natural History president and eugenics society co-founder
- Irving FisherYale economist and first American Eugenics Society president
- Alexander Graham Bell+1 more episodeTelephone inventor and honorary president of the society
- Madison Grant+3 more episodesAuthor of The Passing of the Great Race
Where it happens
- American Museum of Natural History, New YorkHosted the 1921 Second International Eugenics Congress
- Stanford University, California+8 more episodesJordan's university
- Princeton, New Jersey+2 more episodesWilson's university and later state
Timeline
- 1906Jordan chairs the American Breeders' Association eugenics committee
- 1912Eliot serves as vice president of First International Eugenics Congress
- 1914Eugenics-laden textbook A Civic Biology published
- 1921Osborn hosts the Second International Eugenics Congress
- 1925Scopes trial spotlights A Civic Biology
- 1926American Eugenics Society founded
Still debated
How deeply eugenics shaped Wilson's thinking is debated, and Butler's personal activity is thinly documented. Historians also disagree on how much each figure acted from idealism versus bigotry, and eugenics drew support across the political spectrum.
← PreviousThe Racist Origins of IQ TestingNext →The Lie That Sterilized 60,000 Americans: Buck v. Bell
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