Conference: Historical Memory: A Puget Sound Symposium on American Movements that Advocated Applying Selective Breeding Science to Humans

University Of Puget Sound, Tacoma WA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a symposium on American movements that have advocated for the controversial and often grossly abusive practice of applying selective breeding science to human rather than animal populations. Such movements have been susceptible to gross abuses such as those that occurred during WW2. The focus of the symposium is on one such movement. It is to be held on March 28, 2020 at the University of Puget Sound. The symposium is inspired by a recent discovery by one of the university’s students that the namesake of its Slater Museum of Natural History Museum, James R. Slater, taught a course that focused positively on the selective breeding of humans from 1920-1951. The symposium organizers have invited some of the foremost historians in this issue to Puget Sound to facilitate the development of an historical perspective on the controversial movement with particular attention to the biology curricula of liberal arts colleges. The symposium has tremendous potential for specific beneficial societal outcomes through providing a venue for thoughtful, historically-informed discussions of difficult histories and issues that are very timely. The organizers will share the results of the symposium via an educational website and museum exhibit; the symposium discussions will provide a foundation for the creation of a both a physical and online exhibit on the history of American movements that have advocated selective breeding of humans in biology curricula at the local, national and international level to be hosted by the Slater Museum of Natural History. The symposium, "American Movements that Advocated Applying Selective Breeding Science to Humans," will advance knowledge by bringing together established scholars, up-and-coming scholars, and a new generation of undergraduate biology students keen to draw on history in their efforts to ensure attention to social justice as they pursue lives in science. The symposium will serve to provide a venue for complex, difficult conversations regarding the history of selective breeding of humans and American biology, the problems of historical memory, and who is commemorated in the history of American science and why. Within the history of science, the history of the selective breeding of humans has been a highly productive field over the past few generations. The symposium will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines, including historians and biologists, to examine the history of selective breeding of humans as well as more general problems concerning commemoration and historical memory on college campuses. The potential of these interdisciplinary conversations to create new insights and connections is large. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.