This is a joint project between students from the Eugenics & Its Afterlives Course taught in 2022 and those from the course taught in 2023. The guide was created by Kelly Long (MB&B ‘23), Gemma Yoo (E&EB ‘23), and Emme Magliato (E&EB ‘23), and continued by Tenzin Dhondup (HSHM ‘26), Modupe Karimi (HSHM ‘26), and Hanifah Ouro-Sama (MB&B ‘26).

Read their introduction to this project here:

As students in the sciences, we all saw how science and society are inseparable fields of study. We study the tools and technologies that allow us to make groundbreaking biological discoveries. Using these insights, scientists identify ways that these can be used to help make the world a better place. However, throughout history and through the present, science has also been used to justify and uphold societal inequality by making claims to rationality, objective data, and ultimate truth. As our understanding of science improves, we can understand disciplines like scientific racism or eugenics as pseudoscience or “bad science,” but without analyzing the interplay between science and society, we are still vulnerable to upholding systems of inequality as we continue to investigate new theories that may or may not stand the test of time. By teaching these histories, we can make more well-rounded and informed scientists, doctors, and students and encourage them to think critically about the broader implications of their work and the logic that underpins their research questions to begin with.

In this guide, we will be focusing specifically on how the fields of molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and evolution are deeply entangled with the history of eugenics and scientific racism. Eugenics refers to the belief that humanity can be improved through selective reproduction, and draws distinctions between the fit and unfit, those with good genes and those who pose a threat to the gene pool. Who qualifies as “unfit” changes as social systems of marginalization change, often drawing divisions along the lines of class, race, gender and sexuality, and physical and mental ability. The ideology of eugenics has also evolved as our understanding of basic biology, evolution, and genetics evolves, with many prominent scientists over the years using their scientific knowledge to reformulate how we conceive of and implement eugenics. To read more about eugenics, we recommend browsing this resource: https://eugenicsarchive.ca/ 

In this guide, we provide examples of ways that this teaching could be incorporated throughout biology courses, rather than leaving the history to humanities courses that students may or may not encounter. We hope this can serve as a resource and tool for professors to bring this important teaching to their students, especially at the introductory level.