During the opening decades of the twentieth century, colleges across the United States taught courses on eugenics. At the University of Puget Sound (then known as the College of Puget Sound, or CPS), Biology professor James R. Slater taught a course on eugenics from 1920 to 1951.

The eugenics movement was pervasive in American culture and global in scope and reach. Driven by a range of anxieties and a strong commitment to science as the means of social reform, eugenics inevitably entailed people making value judgements about individuals and groups. The eugenics movement in the United States was used to justify anti-immigration, sterilization, and anti-miscegenation laws.

In the wake of national debates over who we commemorate and why, the Puget Sound community is asking: Given that biology professor James Slater taught a course on eugenics, should Puget Sound's Slate Museum of Natural History be renamed? Who do we commemorate and why? What is the threshold for renaming buildings and institutions as values and assumptions about the relationship between science and society change? How we can understand, assess and learn from the university's past?

The University of Puget Sound is committed to acknowledging, interrogating, and understanding this past. We asked experts on this history to provide historical context to both the eugenics movement and the politics and problems of historical memory and commemoration. The Archive Exhibit and Lectures on this site examine the following questions:

• What were the social, political, and cultural contexts within which eugenics became so pervasive?

• How did eugenics influence biology curricula and courses?

• What are the legacies of the eugenics movement in the Pacific Northwest (including disability rights, criminal justice, attitudes toward marginalized individuals and groups, etc.)?

• How has the history of eugenics been told and why?

• How, as an institution and as individuals, can we best wrestle with and learn from this history?