The secret history of Britain’s universities and eugenics

Every so often in Britain, eugenics is accused of making a comeback. Recently, the Black Lives Matter movement has drawn attention to the harmful lasting impact of Britain’s colonialist figures, shocking those who assumed that white supremacy had been left firmly in the past.

But for those campaigning against the legacy of eugenics in higher education, these revelations about the roots of racism were not as surprising. From their perspective, eugenicist views never really disappeared—they had just found a safe haven in some parts of British universities.

British universities have strong historical ties with eugenics. Sir Francis Galton, a prolific Victorian scientist known to be one of the pioneers of eugenics, set up a lab at University College London in 1904 and endowed the institution with his personal collection of work, along with funding for the country’s first Chair of Eugenics (the post was renamed, in the sixties, to “Professor of Human Genetics.”)  Until it was finally renamed after Black Lives Matter protests, students at UCL still attended lectures on bio-medical genetic issues at the Galton Lecture theatre.

In 2018, it was revealed that a secret eugenics conference, the London Conference of Intelligence, had been...