Aggregated News
New York’s liberal intelligentsia doubtless gave knowing nods last week when Sen. Mary Landrieu noted, “The South hasn’t always been the friendliest place for African-Americans.”
After all, coastal progressives love to mock the ignorance and racism of other parts of the country.
Yet New York’s intellectuals have their own history of ignorance and racism. Indeed, that history is on view now at a new exhibit at New York University.
“Haunted Files: The Eugenics Records Office” recreates an organization once housed in Cold Spring Harbor. Opened in 1910, the office’s purpose was nothing less than the improvement of the human race. Its lead scientist (if you can call him that) was Harvard biologist Charles Davenport, assisted by Princeton alum Harry Laughlin.
With funding from the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and land donated by the Harriman family (whose money came from the railroads), the Eugenics Records Office had the financial backing of the most important and “forward thinking” folks of the time.
With file cabinets, typewriters, meticulously edited letters and baskets for sorting correspondence, the office recreated at NYU...
.jpg){kind=link}