Education for the Race: The History of Euthenics and Eugenics at Vassar College

Abstract

What happened to higher education when eugenics swept the nation? This paper answers this question through a case study of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, one of the first women’s colleges in the United States. It reveals how Vassar’s unique euthenics program, established in 1924, advanced eugenic political goals that were deliberately supported by administrators, faculty, students, alumnae, and prominent eugenicist figures such as Margaret Sanger and Charles Davenport. This paper explores the important role of academia between the late-19th and mid-20th centuries, demonstrating how the College was used to legitimize eugenics as a field of study and to train eugenics researchers. While examining student exploitation and objectification, along with pronatalist and antinatalist rhetoric, this paper contextualizes eugenics at Vassar within the broader Hudson Valley and national eugenics movements. Archival materials, including College newspaper columns and articles from the Eugenics Review, Journal of Heredity, Birth Control Review, and others, are closely analyzed to provide a primary-source-driven analysis of Vassar’s eugenic history. Finally, the romanticization of Vassar’s past is challenged with a call for increased institutional accountability.