The intellectual foundations of eugenics were generated in British academia. LSE was founded by eugenicists. What is eugenics? Put simply, eugenics is applying the concept of selective breeding to humans. People with ‘desirable’ traits are encouraged to reproduce while people deemed undesirable are forcibly sterilised. The definition of desirable traits is a political project which evolved as a retroactive justification for colonialism and racial hierarchies. Desirable traits were and still are imagined around whiteness: intelligence, beauty, and ability as measured by Eurocentric standards. Eugenics has many ties with fascist projects, but its influence spans across the political spectrum, and LSE had a large role to play in its proliferation.
LSE was founded in 1895 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and Graham Wallas. All of the founders and many of their contemporaries championed eugenics.
George Bernard Shaw also christened our very own student newspaper in 1949, writing “Socialism will abolish classes: Beaver should organize the sets.” It’s hard to tell who was the most violently eugenicist of the bunch; Shaw once said the only way for us to achieve socialism was through the “selective breeding of man”, before adding that undesirables be dealt with by means of “lethal chamber”.
Sidney and Beatrice Webb, also known for hot takes like ‘Stalin did nothing wrong’, promulgated eugenics as well. For all her work on the creation of the welfare state, Beatrice thought eugenics was “the most important question of all”. For the Webbs, eugenics was the only means of making sure the British welfare state was not overrun by “the offspring of the less thrifty, the less intellectual, the less farseeing races or classes – the unskilled casual labourers of our greater cities, the races of Eastern or Southern Europe, the negroes, the Chinese.” Ironically, their champion Stalin abhorred eugenics, denouncing it as “bourgeois”, “fascist” ideology.
William Beveridge, appointed by the Fabians as LSE’s Director from 1919 to 1937, was also a prominent member of the Eugenics Society. In his time as Director, he attempted to create a department of Social Biology but was thwarted when an anti-eugenicist was appointed as its chair. Beveridge declared that disabled men should suffer “loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood.” His time as Director came to an end after years of bitter division between eugenicist and anti-eugenicist staff.
Eugenics has never completely died down; one shivers to remember the secret Eugenics conference at UCL a few years ago. LSE itself still hosts quasi-eugenicist professors like Satoshi Kanazawa, who has written papers which conclude that Sub-Saharan Africa’s developmental problems are caused by the low IQs of its population and that Black women are objectively less attractive. It has also platformed Eric Kaufmann, head of Politics at Birkbeck University, who has come under fire for espousing a modern, sanitised version of the Great Replacement theory to explain the rise of the far-right, which essentially blames minorities for their own oppression. He’s also amplified tweets which suggest that people of colour are less intelligent and uncivilised.
Today, eugenics seems to be taking root in the government. Andrew Sabisky, a former aide at 10 Downing Street, faced calls to be sacked over his beliefs that there are “very real racial differences in intelligence” and the threat of a “permanent underclass” being sustained by “unplanned pregnancies.” The situation also worsened after Number 10 refused to comment on whether Boris Johnson agrees with him or not. Sabisky left on his own volition but maintains that the only mishap was being ‘selectively quoted’ by the media. In response to these developments, prominent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins tweeted saying that there’s no reason to believe eugenics “wouldn’t work in practice,” since it works for domesticated plants and animals. After protracted backlash, he added that just because he thinks it would work does not mean he endorses the practice. Still, given the monstrosities that have occurred in domestic animals due to inbreeding and overbreeding, it is strange to describe this practice as ‘working’.
Many of these figures have been quick to weaponise free speech and academic freedom as a justification for their provocative work. Eric Kaufmann, hosted by LSE Undergraduate Political Review, recently gave a talk on academic freedom. The discussion was framed as a reaction to an academic “climate dominated by rhetoric, framing methods, and sentiment over fact.” Paradoxically, it is many of these same people that frame facts to fit their sentiment. They would do well to remember there is no genetic basis for race – IQ testing is fundamentally flawed – and disabled people care more about accessibility than “fixing” their disabilities. Likewise, members of the LSE community have a duty to acknowledge our university’s long-standing relationship with this violent, harmful rhetoric.
