Attending an Anti-Eugenics Planning Meeting
This post, by Sarah* and Alejandro**, is about sharing out the work of the Collective at the 9/23/22 Anti-Eugenics Planning Meeting (affiliated with Small Beginnings).
*Sarah Laufenberg ‘23 (she/her) is a senior at Yale studying the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health.
**Alejandro Ortega ‘22.5 (he/him) is a senior at Yale studying Ethnicity Race & Migration.
On September 23, 2022, several of us who have been working within the Anti-Eugenics Collective accompanied Professor HoSang to a planning meeting for the Global Anti-Eugenics Forum 2023. This meeting brought together anti-Eugenics scholars from the UK and US to plan a series of larger public facing conferences and events next year.
Discussion
There were a few questions which our discussions first centered around:
What does a Decade of Progress in Eugenic Resistance look like?
What role could an annual 'anti-eugenics week' play in that?
How can we go about incorporating this into the activities of the Fall 2023?
Anne Hendrikson of Collective Power for Reproductive Justice mentioned that a growing issue is the way that groups mobilizing against abortion access, contraception, and vaccines have laid claim to the term ‘anti-eugenics’ and how that might have implications for our work. Her particular example of this referenced this article in a right-wing women’s lifestyle-type magazine called Evie. We specifically discussed the concern that the language of “anti-eugenics” has been increasingly co opted by pro-life groups, specifically ones seeking to use links between the development of the birth control pill and eugenics as justification for curbing access to abortion and reproductive care. In relation to this, our group reflected on the importance of explicitly naming the political commitments that underlie our work.
On the topic of being precise with language, something that was also discussed was the legibility of the terms “eugenics” and “anti-eugenics” themselves. The idea that eugenics is temporally constrained to the American Eugenics Movement is still a prevailing idea, and many of us would like to shift that focus to interrogating ‘everyday eugenics’ and how it is hiding in plain sight, but not legible as something bad or problematic. Our hopes are to develop a working definition for eugenics that is not temporally constrained, seeing eugenics as a series of esoteric pseudoscientfic ventures that took place in the first half of the twentieth century. Rather, we are trying to nderstand eugenics as a guiding worldview within dominant institutions, not exclusively scientfiic, from much of the twentieth century, but also up until the present day.
Engagement at ‘Sites of Transgression’
Rob DeSalle opened the conversation on engagement at sites of transgression. DeSalle mentioned various efforts of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to recognize the ways in which it served as a venue for the propagation of eugenics ideas, particularly towards the beginning of the twentieth century. Our group then shared about ongoing and past work engaging with Yale’s complicated history with eugenics through the forms of classroom and out-of-classroom engagement (via the AECY website project, anti-eugenic student tours, capstone and thesis projects, and so on. Dave Micklos summarized Cold Spring Harbor’s engagement with their eugenic past through their Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement. The site has been up for a while and features virtual exhibits. Micklos expressed that he wishes to potentially re-engage with the work in general and the site, since it has mainly remained static and unchanged since being put up. Lastly, Charlene Galarneau spoke on the progress of Vermont post-secondary institutions in recognizing the ties between the namesakes of campus buildings and their ties to eugenics. Our engagement with the scholars and activists present at the conference allowed us address the interconnectedness of these sites of transgression, and imagine possibilities for writing histories that situate the development of sites in relation to each other.
Community and Political Advocacy and Memorialization
The next portion of the meeting touched upon community and politics– in the context of ongoing reproductions of eugenic logics. One speaker was Miroslava Chavez-Garcia, who spoke on her efforts to conceptualize alternative forms of memorialization that exist outside the state for those who faced forced sterilization, through the California Eugenic Legacies working group.
Final Thoughts
The Conference was an exceptional opportunity to engage directly with those who are experienced in considering and countering eugenic legacies, and we are eager to contribute to this space in a way that emphasizes accessibility and collaborative framing. Our conversations with those present at the meeting expanded our understanding of the ways in which anti-eugenics resistance has taken form outside of Yale, and inspired new visions for collaborations and dialogue across these sites of investigation. Going forward, our work is now thoughtful about our positioning amongst the varied approaches and methods taken up by our fellow scholars and activists narrating histories of anti-eugenics.
Special thanks to Benedict Ipgrave (Oxford Brookes University) of the Small Beginnings Project and Rob DeSalle (AMNH) for organizing and hosting us!
