Alina, Introduction

Between 1909 and 1979, California forcibly sterilized more than 20,000 people it deemed racially inferior. It was the most effective program in the country, accounting for nearly a third of all the forced sterilization conducted in the United States. The California laws allowed health and government officials to review cases of persons who were committed to state institutions to deem if they should be sterilized, with or without their consent. Two-thirds of those sterilized had been committed to asylums for symptoms ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to hysteria. The remaining third of those forcibly sterilized were those deemed “feebleminded”—which meant anyone with an IQ of less than 70.

This paper will gauge the involvement of three key Stanford University figures: Paul Popenoe, a transfer student; Lewis Madison Terman, a professor of psychology; and David Starr Jordan, the first president and chancellor of the University. All three men were members of the Human Betterment Foundation, a society established in 1928 in order to “investigate the possibilities for race betterment by eugenic sterilization and to publish the results.” All of them made unique contributions to enable the possibility of sterilization.  

David Starr Jordan, Lewis Terman, and Paul Popenoe were not evil scientists plotting world domination in the high towers of Stanford University. As the name indicates, they—along with other proponents of forced sterilization—believed that they were improving human society. The forced sterilization program was predicted on the notion of eugenics, that human traits, including intelligence, were hereditary. By sterilizing certain members of the population, they thought that they were improving society and removing the genes that caused mental illness and “idiocy”. This was better, they argued, than the other solutions to the genetic problem, which included segregation or death before puberty for “defective children”.

But while eugenics justified a forced sterilization campaign on the one hand, it also motivated programs that by today’s standards we would judge as overwhelmingly positive: a belief in pacifism, in equality of marriage partners, and counseling services.

Clearly, these men believed in eugenics—Lewis Terman writes to a friend that he has received word about a study in a nursery school where children can be taught in order to improve intelligence, and dismisses it as “severely flawed”. They truly believed that intelligence, work ethic and other traits were hereditary. But does the belief in a flawed ideology excuse the harmful consequences of the forced sterilization program? And do the positive beliefs in pacifism and equality in marriage remain positive when justified by a flawed ideology?  

The forced sterilization program was not without controversies and opposition, even at the height of the program. After WWII, and the horrors that resulted from the eugenic ideology, eugenics lost its position as an acceptable theory and the forced sterilization program slowly died away. But until 2014, vestiges of the program remained in place as many woman who gave birth in prisons were sterilized.

Recently, Jordan Middle School (named after David Starr Jordan) has been embroiled in a controversy about renaming the school because of the former Stanford president’s support of sterilization. But rather than condemning the past, the involvement of our founders in the program should force us to question our own complicity in accepted beliefs and assumptions today. What are our flawed beliefs and policies that will future generations will condemn us for accepting? While today we reject eugenist notion about the heredity of intelligence, we clearly do base many of our policies on the assumption that those who are more intelligent, fit, beautiful, or other characteristics are better and more desirable than those who are not. Is the sterilization program disturbing because we reject the notion of valuing individuals based on their characteristics and contributions to society, or is it because the program reflects our current beliefs in their extreme form?