In the 1920s Harvard was a beehive of activity aimed at segregation and sterilization of those deemed mentally and socially defective, based principally on classist and racist assumptions about the poor and the those of different ethnic backgrounds. One of the Eugenics Movement rock stars, Charles Davenport, was a graduate of Harvard and instrumental in assuring the forced castration of a number of Massachusetts boys during that era.
Today the castrations of boys and involuntary sterilization for girls is a thing of the past. Instead, we have a new method now energetically embraced by the progressive and conservative elites from Harvard, UPenn, Yale, Stanford, and other former bastions of eugenics college instruction. This new method is based on cultural and psychological sterilization of the children of the urban poor, whose defective character traits and anti-oppressor behaviors are being effectively neutralized in the total compliance segregated corporate reform schools that carry the label No Excuses. The poster school chain for this neo-eugenics model is KIPP, and every stripe of billionaire and vulture philanthropist has given to this most recent solution to what was referred to as the "Negro problem" during the late 19th Century.
It is only fitting, then, that KIPP CEO and Harvard alum, Richard Barth, will be the Chief Marshall of the Harvard commencement exercises on May 29.
Here is an article from the Harvard Crimson from 2002 on Harvard's role in the social engineering debacle of eugenics. How long will it take for highly educated folks to realize that KIPP represents Eugenics, the Sequel:
Today the castrations of boys and involuntary sterilization for girls is a thing of the past. Instead, we have a new method now energetically embraced by the progressive and conservative elites from Harvard, UPenn, Yale, Stanford, and other former bastions of eugenics college instruction. This new method is based on cultural and psychological sterilization of the children of the urban poor, whose defective character traits and anti-oppressor behaviors are being effectively neutralized in the total compliance segregated corporate reform schools that carry the label No Excuses. The poster school chain for this neo-eugenics model is KIPP, and every stripe of billionaire and vulture philanthropist has given to this most recent solution to what was referred to as the "Negro problem" during the late 19th Century.
It is only fitting, then, that KIPP CEO and Harvard alum, Richard Barth, will be the Chief Marshall of the Harvard commencement exercises on May 29.
Here is an article from the Harvard Crimson from 2002 on Harvard's role in the social engineering debacle of eugenics. How long will it take for highly educated folks to realize that KIPP represents Eugenics, the Sequel:
A recent article revealing that Massachusetts
sterilized more than two dozen teenage boys in the 1920s has brought renewed
attention to the role Harvard faculty played in the eugenics movement of the
early 20th century.
It’s never been a secret that Harvard affiliates
supported sterilization and restricted immigration during the ’20s as a way to
help future generations achieve genetic perfection.
But the article in Boston Magazine showed for the
first time that sterilization took place in Massachusetts, where state
officials castrated teenage boys as part of a study in Shutesbury seeking to
“promote sterilization, segregation, selective breeding and immigration
restrictions.”
Sterilization laws existed in more than 30 states
in the early 20th century, but not Massachusetts.
That’s why the Shutesbury study—evidence that
Massachusetts was a “beehive of activity”—is significant, said Welling Savo,
the author of the article, who spent over six months researching the topic.
According to her article, about 26 patients—many
of them 14- and 15-year-old boys—were selected for sterilization because they
were epileptic, socially “defective” or showed signs of regular masturbation or
“solitary behavior.”
The article emphasized that Harvard was a major
center for eugenic thought at the time. The head of the University’s
anthropology department, Ernest Hooton, was a member of the American Eugenics
Society, which remained active until the 1970s. The society’s advisory board
included nine other Harvard faculty members and its vice president, Charles
Davenport, was a Harvard-trained biologist.
The Harvard connections are significant because
they indicate the legitimacy of the eugenic movement in the intellectual
community, Savo said.
“Davenport was the leader and figurehead of the
eugenics movement in the United States,” Savo said. “It was taught as part of
over 300 science courses around the country.”
Hooton believed that all social problems had
biological roots and that humans should be bred “for a better stock.” He called
for “a sit-down reproductive strike of the busy breeders among the morons,
criminals, and social ineffectuals of our population.”
Two of Davenport’s Harvard colleagues started the
Immigration Restriction League with fellow eugenicists. The League persuaded
Congress to impose literacy tests and other restrictions on immigration to weed
out people they believed to be inferior.
Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the history
of science, said members of the Harvard community were not exceptional in their
interest in eugenics in the 1920s, although the movement began fading soon
after.
“The interest in eugenics was widespread at the
time but the practice was less widespread,” he said. “Most biologists, and even
those benignly interested, consciously moved away from it when it was taken up
by the Nazis.”
Mendelsohn, who published an article in Harvard
Magazine in 2000 titled “The Eugenic Temptation,” said that scientists need to
learn from the past before moving too fast in modern genetic technology.
“While the current work in human genetic
engineering is not malign, there is little doubt that there is an interest in
using genetics to correct behavior,” he said. “We need a deep social discussion
of how to use genetic techniques.”
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