When Harvard Said No to Eugenics

Paul Lombardo of Georgia State Law School is one of my personal heroes, for everything he's done to promote the public memory of Buck v. Bell and his outstanding work on eugenics more generally.  And now I see that he has a new article out, "When Harvard Said No to Eugenics."  This combines -- get this -- eugenics and trusts and estates (and university curriculum, too).  It's the story of why Harvard rejected a testamentary gift from Philadelphia physician J. Ewing Mears and then the litigation in Philadelphia over what would happen to the gift.  There's a lot in there of interest, but one of the vignettes that I love the most is about a trust established in 1961 by psychologist that would give distributions to his sons based on their (and their wives) "E score," which I take it measured cognitive "fitness."  My gosh why haven't I heard this before -- that's deserves a spot somewhere in my trusts and estates course when I'm talking about bizarre dead hand control.

Anyway, it's a great article and well worth a look if your interests run to eugenics, trusts and estates, or university politics.

The illustration is a sign in Charlottesville, Virginia, which discusses Carrie Buck's case.

Update:  My friend Steven Garland at Wake Forest Law sent along this newspaper article about the eugenics trust established by Truman Lee Kelley's will.  (Kelley I now realize was an important psychologist; among other accomplishments, he was co-author of the Stanford Achievement Test.)  This is absolutely going into the trusts and estates course next spring.  From another article around this time, Professor Kelley's widow was quoted as saying, "We spend so much attention to our prize cattle, but we haven't paid too much attention to the human race."  More details are in this article, entitled "The Fitter, the Richer."

Comments

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

I saw Paul give this paper as a talk at a history of medicine meeting a few years ago -- to a packed house, of course. Some of the images in the paper were especially memorable, IMO . . .

[Kim Krawiec]

In an interesting intersection of our worlds, Al, Paul was at the Baby Markets roundtable I blogged about a few days ago (I'll refrain from linking, so as to avoid the spam filter). His insights on what modern day reproductive technologies do (and don't) have in common with historical eugenics efforts were invaluable.

[Al Brophy]

Very cool, Kim. Never know when our interests will overlap!