The College Fix

College removed governor’s name due to his alleged eugenics beliefs, but case argues Middlebury ‘was literally, a Eugenicist factory’ 

Middlebury College is facing accusations of a “hypocritical public relations smear campaign” due to its history of promoting eugenics and its decision to remove the name of the late Gov. John Mead from its chapel.

James Douglas, a former Vermont governor and the special administrator of Mead’s estate, recently submitted a brief in the ongoing litigation against the private institution.

The brief alleges the college “acted in bad faith” when it removed Mead’s name from the chapel in 2021. According to the college,  its decision was based on “Mead’s role in advancing eugenics policy in the early 20th century.”

However, “Middlebury College was literally, a Eugenicist factory, for over 50 years,” according to the brief, filed in November.

Douglas told The College Fix in a recent email that from “1895 to 1946, Middlebury taught courses in eugenics.”

The classes were required and included the discussion of persons classified as “defectives & degenerates,” he told The Fix.

Douglas said Middlebury also held a conference on eugenics in 1913 in which much of “its faculty spoke widely in favor of eugenics practices.”

His brief alleges the college is “engaged in [a] hypocritical public relations smear campaign to scapegoat Governor Mead” when Middlebury itself promoted eugenics in the early 20th century.

The brief states the college based its accusations on a single passage of Mead’s 1912 Farewell Address in which he advocated for vasectomies, a new operation at the time that he, a physician, believed would be safer than female sterilization procedures.

According to the lawsuit, the college used the speech to insinuate that Mead was a eugenicist and cited that as the reason for his name’s removal.

MORE: Middlebury College sued by former Vt. governor for canceling donor

However, according to the case, the college itself promoted eugenics for approximately 50 years.

“Reviewing the long history of Eugenics at Middlebury College from 1895 to 1946, brings one to the inescapable conclusion that it was Middlebury College itself which contributed to the philosophical and scientific basis for the Nazi program of Eugenics, not one speech in 1912 by Governor Mead,” it alleges.

It cites an 1895 sociology class that had a description that included “Race Characteristics, Heredity, Pauperism, Insanity, Crime and Punishment.” The 1908 updated catalog for that class included the phrase “defectives & degenerates.”

The brief states that in 1914, the journal “Hereditary” listed Middlebury as one of the colleges that taught eugenics. And by 1918, the term “eugenics” was in the official class catalogs.

Another class catalog shows that the college continued to teach eugenic classes in 1945-46, after the Holocaust.

The brief cites a 2021 article by Professor Daniel Silva for the “Middlebury Campus” that describes how eugenics was taught “across departments” in the early 20th century.

Middlebury also had trustees, donors, professors, and administrators who were “Eugenicists and Eugenics supporters,” according to Silva, who teaches Luso-Hispanic studies.

“It is, therefore, not a stretch to consider that Eugenicists and Eugenics sympathizers, were, to some degree, trained at Middlebury,” Silva wrote.

However, “the suggestion that Mead was engaged in a Eugenics ‘Campaign’ is pure speculation unsupported by any documentary evidence or sufficient scholarly research,” the brief states. “Mead’s only known comments relating to Eugenics are contained solely in his 1912 Farewell Address.”

The brief accuses the college of acting in “bad faith” by breaking the promise to keep Gov. Mead’s name on the chapel. According to the lawsuit, Mead gave the chapel to the college for the “purpose of honoring and memorializing” his ancestors.

Douglas told The College Fix the college “needs to keep its word” to the late Gov. Mead. He said the courts should get to decide when the university is no longer bound by Gov. Mead’s wishes, not the college.

The legal filing is the latest in what has been an ongoing case, with The College Fix having covered the initial lawsuit when it was filed 2023. Last year, Douglas won an initial legal victory when a judge ruled the lawsuit could proceed.

The College Fix emailed Middlebury media relations director John Reidel twice over the past month, asking about the college’s response to the lawsuit, but he did not respond.

MORE: Canceled donor’s estate can sue Middlebury College, judge rules

IMAGE: Coolidge Foundation; JohnMead/LibraryofCongress

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