Addressing eugenics legacies at Yale University – the role of collaborative student led projects

Tuesday 13 May 2025, 10:20-11:10 (in-person)

In the 1920s and 1930s, Yale University was home to the American Eugenics Society. Yale faculty and administrators made sustained, coordinated contributions to the American Eugenics movement for many decades. This history, and its ongoing legacies, remained relatively hidden from public view until 2021, when a group of students and faculty launched the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale (AECY).

The group has conducted extensive research in the archives to document the far-reaching impact of eugenics at Yale, published more than a dozen working papers about individual figures and fields, and conducted nearly 100 workshops and seminars for medical residents, K-12 teachers, incarcerated students, faculty and graduate students in the sciences, and other groups on the history and ongoing legacies of this eugenics.

The students will be joined by Los Angeles-based educator Stacy Cordova Diaz, whose great-aunt was sterilized without consent as a teenager by the state of California in the 1930s. Cordova Diaz will share the historical repair work she has led working with other survivors of state-sponsored sterilization.   

Why should you attend?

A small group from Yale University's AECY are visiting UCL in May 2025. This is an opportunity for UCL staff and students to meet with the inspiring students who have helped Yale address the famous Ivy League institution's eugenics legacy in creative and positive ways.
There are refreshments served from 10:00 to 10:20 and an opportunity to network and ask your questions before and after the event.
The event is in-person only and places are strictly limited.

The event is organised by UCL’s Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP), a programme of education activity to help address UCL's harmful historical links to eugenics.