Modern day discussions of genetic engineering, gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas9, and advancements in reproductive technologies have reintroduced ethical questions concerning eugenics. The selection of genetic traitsthrough intervention and selective breeding is widely denounced as discriminatory and in violation of human rights. However, beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through the 1950’s, the U.S adopted eugenics and forced the sterilization of over 64,000 individuals. The state of Virginia became known as a leader in promoting the practice of eugenic sterilization, which is attributed to the University of Virginia’s significant role in the eugenics movement.
Thomas Jefferson’s views on the inferiority of Black people “helped lay the groundwork for eugenics thought at the university, which was carried through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century by influential faculty” [1]. UVA officials and professors studied the improvement of humanity through controlled reproduction, all with an eye toward promoting “desirable” heritable characteristics and suppressing supposedly undesirable ones. Leaders in eugenics research at UVA believed that eugenics combined with legislation could eliminate mental illness, physical disabilities, moral delinquency, crime, and even physical illnesses. However, their research stemmed from the discriminatory belief that society would benefit from “a dramatic reduction in the cost of caring for the sick, poor, mentally ill and incarcerated” [2].
The University of Virginia’s first president and first professor of medicine, Edwin Alderman and Robley Dunglison, respectively, served as leaders who made the university the “southern center of the eugenics movement” [1] in the United States. Their significance to the university is represented by the university’s Dunglison house and previously named Alderman library, the names of which have recently sparked controversy among UVA students.
Robley Dunglison was recruited to UVA in 1825 as both a professor of anatomy and medicine. While only employed by the university for eight years, Dunglison played a crucial role in UVA’s later approaches to race science and eugenics. Dunglison employed comparative anatomy in an attempt to “quantify proposed racial differences between White and Black people” [1]. When Dunglison arrived at UVA, Jefferson designed a three-story building for his dissections that housed a skylit octagonal surgical theatre, which was inspired by Renaissance architecture. This major infrastructure was then used by Dunglison and future UVA professors for the dissection of cadavers, which were usually sourced from grave robbers who stole African American corpses. In Jefferson’s own words, he built the anatomical theater to “justify a general conclusion [which] requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents” [1]. In other words, these dissections were intended to prove the African American body inferior, which involved brutal experimentation on African American corpses.
Edwin Alderman became the university’s first president in 1904 and was a major promoter of emerging eugenics “science.” Alderman strived to make UVA the epicenter of eugenics research in the state, which he achieved by recruiting several prominent eugenics professors for positions across the university. Faculty recruited by Alderman collaborated not only internally, but also took positions throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, reinforcing a culture of scientific racism and discrimination. In training UVA students and high school and college teachers in eugenics racism, these men “contributed directly and indirectly to ethically contemptuous laws and policies designed to maintain a culture of white supremacy, and exclusionary white privilege” [3]. In the first half of the twentieth century, UVA had dominated higher education in the southern United States as a center of eugenic teaching and research. Alderman was quoted in an address delivered in 1903 stating:
“It is a solemn duty of the white man to see that the negro gets his chance in everything save social equality and political control. [...] Social equality and political control would mean deterioration of the advanced group, and the South is serving the Nation when it says it shall not be so.”
Alderman’s contributions to forced sterilization through eugenics in the state of Virginia has been widely denounced as it supports discriminatory, racist policy. Students have recently protested his devotion to maintaining a white supremacist social order, resulting in the renaming of UVA’s largest and most historic library. On March 29th, UVA’s Board of Visitor’s Buildings and Grounds Committee voted to rename Alderman library after UVA’s fourth president, Edgar Shannon. Shannon became president in 1959 and is credited with leading UVA students in tumultuous times with his protest of the war in Vietnam and advocacy for increasing Black and female enrollment. The board therefore renamed the library after Shannon as his leadership and perseverance led UVA to become the inclusive educational institution it is today.
The state of Virginia has become recognized as a major promoter of eugenic sterilization in the nineteenth century, which is attributed to the University of Virginia’s contributions to eugenics research. The ideals of Thomas Jefferson, unethical experimentation performed by Robley Dunglison, and recruitment of eugenics professionals by Edwin Alderman made UVA the center of nineteenth-century eugenics in the south. The contributions of Dunglison, Alderman, and additional UVA faculty to eugenics research were officially denounced in 2002, as Virginia become the first state to issue a formal statement of regret for past support of eugenics and involuntary sterilization.
1. Reynolds, Preston. “Eugenics at the University of Virginia.” Encyclopedia Virginia, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/eugenics-at-the-university-of-virginia/. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.
2. UVA and the History of Race: Eugenics, the Racial Integrity Act, Health Disparities.” Bunk, https://www.bunkhistory.org/resources/uva-and-the-history-of-race- eugenics-the-racial-integrity-act-health-disparities. Accessed 20 Feb. 2024.
3. UVA and the History of Race: Eugenics, the Racial Integrity Act, Health Disparities. 9 Jan. 2020, https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-and-history-race-eugenics-racial- integrity-act-health-disparities.