2025 Annual Conference
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The MacMillan Center at Yale University
26th Annual Conference
Universities and the Histories of Race, Science, and Medicine
Thursday, February 27—Saturday, March 1, 2025
Luce Hall Auditorium
Yale University | 34 Hillhouse Avenue | New Haven, CT 06511
Register to attend in Person: https://tinyurl.com/GLCConference2025
Register to attend Friday Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/GLCConferenceFriday
Register to attend Saturday Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/GLCConferenceSaturday
Building on the work of the Yale and Slavery Research Project, this conference will engage critical histories of universities and legacies of scientific racism. During the 1920s and 1930s, Yale faculty and administrators made foundational contributions to the American eugenics movement, primarily through the American Eugenics Society, then headquartered in New Haven. The legacies of this work continue to shape universities and their surrounding communities today. This interdisciplinary conference will explore broadly the ways that ideas of racial difference have been embedded within academic knowledge production and in its applications and harms to wider publics. The program highlights historical processes and contemporary concerns, as well as ongoing resistance and advocacy efforts. Free and open to the public, the conference aims to reach a diverse audience of faculty, students, teachers, and the community at large.
Thursday, February 27, 2025, 6:30pm—8:00pm
Screening of the documentary Belly of the Beast and discussion with Erika Cohn (Director) and Kelli Dillon (Co-Chairperson for the Empowerment Congress Southeast Neighborhood Council)
ABOUT THE FILM: When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near impossible battle against California’s Department of Corrections. Filmed over seven years with extraordinary access and intimate accounts from currently and formerly incarcerated people, BELLY OF THE BEAST exposes modern-day eugenics and reproductive injustice in California prisons.
The pastoral farmlands surrounding the Central California Women’s Facility, the world’s largest women’s prison, help conceal the reproductive and human rights violations transpiring inside its walls. A courageous woman who was involuntarily sterilized at the facility teams up with a radical lawyer to stop these violations. They spearhead investigations that uncover a series of statewide crimes, primarily targeting women of color, from inadequate access to healthcare to sexual assault to illegal sterilization. Together, with a team of tenacious heroines, both in and out of prison, they take to the courtroom to fight for reparations. Invoking the weight of the historic stain and legacy of eugenics, BELLY OF THE BEAST presents a decade long, infuriating contemporary legal drama.
Friday, February 28, 2025, Luce Hall Auditorium
8:15am—9:00am REGISTRATION & COFFEE (Luce Common Room)
9:00am—9:30 am INTRODUCTION & WELCOME
- David Blight (Sterling Professor of History, Yale University and Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition)
- Osagie Obosogie (Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; Professor of Bioethics)
9:30am—11:00am PANEL I: Early History of Ideas of Scientific Racism
This panel explores the ways that the race concept shaped scientific knowledge production in the 18th and 19th centuries, and why that history is important to understanding contemporary racial inequities.
Speakers:
- Evelynn Hammonds (Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science, Professor of African and African American Studies & Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, T. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard)
- Natalie Lira (Associate Professor, Department of Latina/Latino Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
- Rana Hogarth (Associate Professor, Department of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania)
11:00am—11:15am COFFEE BREAK (Luce Hall Common Room)
11:15am—12:45pm PANEL II: Eugenics and Its Afterlives at Yale
This panel explores the contributions of Yale faculty and administrators to the American eugenics movement and impact of eugenics on diverse fields today, from clinical medicine to K-12 teaching.
Moderator: Daniel HoSang (Professor of American Studies, Political Science and Yale School of Medicine’s History of Medicine Section; Faculty Advisor, Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale)
Speakers:
- Mayah Monthrope, Yale ’25 and Tara Bhat, Yale ’25 (Researchers, Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale)
- Dr Alana Slavin (Psychiatry Resident Physician, Yale Health): “The Afterlives of Eugenics in Psychiatry and Clinical Medicine”
- Marco Cenabre (English Language Arts Lead Teacher, New Haven Public Schools): “Anti-Eugenic Approaches to Public Education”
Discussant:
- Ayah Nuriddin (Assistant Professor, History of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine)
12:45pm—2:00pm LUNCH (Luce Hall Common Room)
2:00pm—3:30pm PANEL III: Histories of Science, Racism and Colonialism in Museums
This panel explores the roles of museums and universities in the production of scientific racism and colonialism and the ways that curators, artists, journalists, scholars and others are contesting such legacies today.
Speakers:
- Nicole Dungca (Reporter for the Investigative Unit of The Washington Post)
- Alexi Baker (History of Science and Technology Collection Manager, Yale Peabody Museum)
- Elayne Ayers (Lecturer in History of Science & Medicine, Yale University)
Saturday, March 1, 2025, Luce Hall Auditorium
8:30am—9:00am REGISTRATION & COFFEE (Luce Hall Common Room)
9:00am—10:30am PANEL IV: Anti-Racism and Race Science in the 20th Century
This panel explores the ways that scientific racism and eugenics transformed since the end of World War II and the ways that an emerging discourse of anti-racism facilitated and interrupted this transformation.
Moderators: Joanna Radin (Associate Professor of History of Medicine, Department of History, Yale University) and Ayah Nuriddin (Assistant Professor, History of Medicine, Yale School of Medicine)
Speakers:
- Jenny Reardon (Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz)
- Jon Philips (Historian, Center for History of Physics, College Park, Maryland)
- Nayanika Ghosh (PhD Candidate, Department of History of Science, Harvard University)
- Sebastián Gil-Riaño (Associate Professor, Department of History & Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania)
10:30am—11:00am COFFEE BREAK (Luce Hall Common Room)
11:00am—12:30pm PANEL V: Contemporary Impacts of Medical and Scientific Racism
This panel explores the impact of scientific and medical racism on contemporary clinical care and research with a particular focus on Yale and New Haven, and how those legacies are being addressed by faculty and community-based advocates today.
12:30pm—2:00pm LUNCH (Luce Hall Common Room)
2:00pm—3:30pm CONCLUDING ROUNDTABLE
Leading scholars reflect on the legacies of scientific racism and eugenics in the contemporary era and the ways scholars and others are working to educate the public about these histories and dangers.
David Blight in conversation with:
- Terence Keel (Professor, Department of African American Studies, UCLA and the UCLA Institute for Society & Genetics)
- Brandon Ogbunu (Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University)
- Carolyn Roberts (Assistant Professor, History of Science & History of Medicine and Department of African American Studies, Yale University)