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Monday, 31 March 2025

What Is Stanford’s Relationship with Eugenics?

Stanford University has deep historical ties to eugenics, particularly through its early leadership and influence in shaping American scientific racism.

Key Figures and Institutions:

David Starr Jordan (Stanford’s first president): A vocal eugenicist who promoted forced sterilization and the idea that "racial purity" was necessary for societal progress.
Lewis Terman (Stanford psychologist, creator of the Stanford-Binet IQ test): Advocated for using intelligence testing to classify people into "desirable" and "undesirable" groups, influencing policies of forced sterilization in California.
Stanford's Role in the Eugenics Movement: The university played a crucial part in California’s forced sterilization programs, which were some of the most aggressive in the U.S. (influencing Nazi Germany's policies).

Eugenics at Stanford Today?

The university has officially acknowledged and distanced itself from its eugenicist past.
However, Silicon Valley and Stanford remain connected to ideas about human enhancement, intelligence, and genetic optimization (e.g., transhumanism, biohacking, embryo selection). These can sometimes echo older eugenicist frameworks under new disguises.

Let’s take a deeper dive into eugenics at Stanford today, not just as a legacy but as something that continues to shape institutions, ideologies, and research agendas, often in more subtle or “sanitized” forms.

1. Historical Foundations and Lingering Ideologies

David Starr Jordan

Stanford’s founding president was a key figure in the American eugenics movement. He promoted ideas of "racial hygiene," social Darwinism, and the elimination of "unfit" populations through policies like sterilization. His scientific clout helped normalize these ideas in California and beyond.

Stanford's naming practices reflected this: Jordan Hall was only renamed in 2020, following pressure from students and activists.

Lewis Terman and the Stanford-Binet IQ Test

Terman was instrumental in adapting Binet’s IQ test in a way that aligned with eugenicist goals. He believed intelligence was hereditary and argued that low-IQ individuals should be sterilized or prevented from reproducing. His work fueled policies like California’s sterilization laws, which lasted into the 1970s.

2. Contemporary Eugenic Echoes: The "Soft Techno-Eugenics" of Silicon Valley

Stanford today is deeply embedded in techno-utopianism and transhumanism, which may not call themselves eugenics—but often operate in its logic:

Biotech & Genomics

Stanford-affiliated labs and startups are heavily involved in gene editing (CRISPR), genetic counseling, and reproductive technologies.
These often focus on optimizing embryos, eliminating so-called undesirable traits, or enhancing cognitive and physical potential.
While framed as "choice" or "health," these logics reproduce the eugenic binary of fit/unfit, often leaving disability and neurodiversity out of the moral imagination.

AI and Intelligence

Stanford’s AI research intersects with long-termist and rationalist circles that emphasize “intelligence optimization”—treating intelligence as a measurable, heritable, and morally significant trait.
This underpins bias in AI systems, where “smartness” is coded and ranked in ways that reflect racial, socioeconomic, and cognitive hierarchies.

Funding and Institutional Ties

Stanford is closely linked to Effective Altruism, OpenAI, and other organizations with overlapping interests in AI risk, human enhancement, and long-termist ethics.
These are often bankrolled by elite wealth (e.g., Sequoia Capital, Thiel Foundation) that seeks to shape the human future—in ways that echo the eugenic ambition to design “better” humans.

3. Campus Climate and Epistemic Hegemony

Stanford promotes a meritocratic mythology: the idea that the most intelligent, capable, or “entrepreneurial” rise to the top.

This culture pathologizes disability, stigmatizes mental illness, and excludes non-normative bodies and minds.
Eugenics persists not as policy, but as ideological sediment: in assumptions about success, optimization, and who deserves to reproduce, lead, or be remembered.

4. Resistance and Reclamation

Students, faculty, and disability activists at Stanford are pushing back:

Courses and exhibitions have begun to address the university's eugenic past.
Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory are challenging dominant logics around intelligence and ability.
But this work is often underfunded, marginalized, or treated as niche—while techno-solutionism receives institutional and venture capital support.

Would you like to look at:

Specific research labs or centers at Stanford that reflect this?
Connections between Stanford and global eugenic policy?
Contemporary student organizing on these issues?

This web runs deep.