American Eugenics Movement and Its Afterlives: Salem State University

Photo of workshop participants, facilitators, and Salem State University workshop organizers.

In November, ARTLC steering committee members Daniel HoSang, A’Lexus Williams, and Marco Cenabre led a workshop on the history of eugenics and its afterlives for forty-five Boston Area teachers. The event was hosted by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University.

The workshop opened with a presentation by HoSang on New England’s central role in the American eugenics movement. Cenabre and Williams followed with a discussion of how eugenic logics continue to shape public education today. They examined how practices such as sorting, standardized testing, and labeling students as “different” reflect eugenic assumptions about intelligence and worth. In the afternoon, teachers met in small groups to explore the material more deeply and workshop anti-eugenic approaches in their own curricula and school contexts.

For more resources on anti-eugenics, visit the website of the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale.