Facing Yale’s Eugenic Legacies and Pushing for an Anti-eugenics Curriculum
This post, by Tenzin*, is about his experience as a senior at Naugatuck High School grappling with Yale’s history of eugenics, while situating himself as an incoming undergraduate student.
*Tenzin Dhondup ‘26 (he/him) is a first-year at Yale University studying the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health.
I’d just committed to Yale and felt overwhelmed with excitement to study at an institution I’d only dreamt of attending. In the spring of my senior year, though, my sociology class was invited to the “Anti-Eugenics Tour of Yale.”
This was the same year that I first heard of the American Eugenics Movement in my 12th-grade psychology class, where my teacher mentioned names like Lewis Terman and Robert Yerkes, praising their scientific accomplishments while also naming them ‘eugenicists.’ After researching what it meant to be a ‘eugenicist,’ I learned about how figures like Terman and Yerkes had weaponized pseudoscience and “intelligence tests” to justify the forced sterilization of so many people—most of whom were poor, disabled, women, and people of color.
Demonstrators march outside at the Los Angeles County USC Medical Center in 1974 at a protest organized by "The Committee to Stop Forced Sterilization (credit: CNN)
However, I also learned that “intelligence tests” were just one piece of the scientific racism and “settled science” of eugenics that was used to justify the forced sterilization of over 60,000 people in 32 states during the 20th century.
I discovered that, more broadly, the American Eugenics Movement attributed the widening socioeconomic inequalities of the 20th century to heredity. The perceived rise in mental illness, crime, and “infiltration” of immigrants also fueled the American Eugenics Movement. The resulting tactics, including forced sterilization, interracial marriage bans, and racist immigration laws, violated the dignity, bodily autonomy, and humanity of tens of thousands of people—all under the pretenses of “public health” and the “greater good.”
State Criteria for Legal Eugenic Sterilization (credit: National Human Genome Institute)
On the “Anti-Eugenics Tour”, I was guided by a handful of Yale juniors and seniors. I felt utterly disoriented to learn that the same beautiful, gothic buildings I dreamt of also housed a center of the American Eugenics Movement.
I felt utterly disoriented to learn that the same beautiful, gothic buildings I dreamt of also housed a center of the American Eugenics Movement.
I felt disillusioned to realize that my dream school—Yale—was just another institution, exceedingly capable of harm and evil.
After the Anti-Eugenics Tour, I continued learning more about the American Eugenics Movement, and I grew more angry and confused. How could the American Eugenics Movement warrant only a quick aside in my psychology class? Why wasn’t this - one of America’s most profound and enduring atrocities - addressed in any course at my high school? And why was it up to me to teach myself this essential history?
And so, I felt moved to push for the inclusion of an anti-eugenics curriculum at Naugatuck High School. I advocated for an audience with the Social Studies department and created lesson plans to present.
My first lesson was a Primary Document Gallery that showed the pernicious ways eugenics manifested in every aspect of 20th-century American life. The slideshow included seemingly innocuous images, such as a sight from the 1940 Nebraska State Fair, where four toddlers stand awkwardly wearing giant sashes embossed with “Baby Contest.” The other primary documents were far more glaring, such as a sign that read "SOME PEOPLE ARE BORN TO BE A BURDEN ON THE REST", which was displayed at public events.