{"id":5922,"date":"2023-09-28T18:26:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-28T18:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5922"},"modified":"2023-09-28T19:14:56","modified_gmt":"2023-09-28T19:14:56","slug":"what-to-do-about-progressive-icon-and-eugenicist-charles-van-hise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=5922","title":{"rendered":"What to do about progressive icon and eugenicist Charles Van Hise"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/what-to-do-about-progressive-icon-and-eugenicist-charles-van-hise\/<\/a><\/p>\n

UW-Madison finally grappling with how to tell the real story of its odious one-time leader<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

For years, I\u2019ve wondered when and how the University of Wisconsin-Madison would deal with the odious history of its one-time president, the progressive icon with a building named after him on the campus, Charles Van Hise.<\/p>\n

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\"Official<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Van Hise was a eugenicist who wanted to rid the \u201crace\u201d of \u201cdefectives\u201d so that future humans could have a \u201cgodlike destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman defectives should no longer be allowed to propagate the race,\u201d he wrote in an essay<\/a>, \u201cThe Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States,\u201d published in 1910. \u201cWe should reach at least as high a plane with reference to human beings as with the defective animals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years after Van Hise\u2019s views were widely publicized, some at UW-Madison are apparently pondering whether to put up a plaque acknowledging the truth.<\/p>\n

As Princeton\u2019s Thomas Leonard, author of \u201cIlliberal Reformers,\u201d wrote in a piece for us here at the Badger Institute in 2016<\/a>, Van Hise advocated for everything from involuntary sterilization to segregation in asylums or other institutions.<\/p>\n

The UW-Madison president, according to Leonard, told a group of Philadelphians visiting Madison in 1913 that \u201cwe know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInspired by the slogan \u2018sterilization or racial disaster,\u2019 Wisconsin passed a forcible sterilization law in 1913, with the support of the University of Wisconsin\u2019s most influential scholars, among them President Charles Van Hise and Edward A. Ross,\u201d Leonard wrote.<\/p>\n

Ross was an overt racist who, along with Van Hise, also pushed a so-called marriage statute. Together, according to a history posted<\/a> on UW-Madison\u2019s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences \/ School of Medicine and Public Health page, the laws authorized \u201c<\/strong>involuntary sterilization of inmates of mental and penal institutions, and (required) verification that both parties to a marriage were not \u2018epileptic, insane, or idiotic,\u2019 nor carrying venereal disease \u2014 syphilis was assumed to be a disease of \u2018degeneracy\u2019 carried by the poor, foreign immigrants, African Americans, and otherwise marginalized people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wisconsin sterilized around 1,823 \u201cwayward, criminal, or defective\u201d individuals from 1913 until 1963,\u00a0 79% of whom were women, according to the same source.<\/p>\n

Van Hise died in 1918 after a minor surgery, and Van Hise Hall was built shortly after the last Wisconsinites were forcibly sterilized by the state in the late 1960s. Like many of his progressive colleagues, he was anti-individualistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach should desire only what is right, and right must be defined as that which is best for the future of the race. In short, the period in which individualism was patriotism in this country has passed by; and the time has come when individualism must become subordinate to responsibility to the many,\u201d he wrote in his \u201cConservation of Natural Resources\u201d essay.<\/p>\n

Referring to the Civil War, he wrote, \u201cIn the days of \u201961 to \u201965, a million men laid aside their personal desires, and surrendered their individualism for the good of the nation. Now, it is demanded that every citizen shall surrender his individualism not for four years, but for life \u2014 that he shall think not only of himself and his family, but of his neighbors and especially of the unnumbered generations that are to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear what any plaque might say or whether one even will be installed. But The Daily Cardinal reported last February<\/a> that a university Shared Governance Committee on Disability Access & Inclusion (CDAI) planned to propose placing a plaque in Van Hise Hall.<\/p>\n

The paper reported that the plaque would need to be approved by both the UW-Madison chancellor and the UW system\u2019s board of regents, among others.<\/p>\n

Questions submitted Tuesday to university staff and a member of the CDAI committee were not answered by our deadline, so it\u2019s unclear how far along they are in the process, what the plaque might say or how large it might be \u2014 though the answer to that last question seems obvious.<\/p>\n

It should be large enough to tell the whole story of Van Hise\u2019s abhorrent views and how the renowned progressive leader with utter faith in state government and its experts, but none at all in ordinary individual citizens, came to have them.<\/p>\n

The man who spent part of his life trying to eradicate the freedoms and desires and plans of others, ironically, arrogantly pushed to impose his own \u201cexpert\u201d opinions on the rest of Wisconsin \u2014 and he apparently was not one to take kindly to any dissent.<\/p>\n

The \u201cdemand for transformation of the ideals of the individual, who has felt himself free to do with what he has as he pleases, to social responsibility, will be as great a change of heart as has ever been demanded by seer or prophet,\u201d wrote Van Hise.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether Van Hise saw himself as such a seer or prophet \u2014 though it certainly seemed so.<\/p>\n

Van Hise went on in the same essay to promise that \u201cthe demand will be pressed in upon each man that he shall surrender his individualism as far as is necessary for the good of the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of the cautionary tale of how arrogant \u201cexperts\u201d can hypocritically push for collectivism or communalism as a way of thwarting the rights and freedoms of others \u2014 even to the extent of trying to literally eradicate them from the earth \u2014 that quote should be on the big plaque too.<\/p>\n

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The post What to do about progressive icon and eugenicist Charles Van Hise<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/what-to-do-about-progressive-icon-and-eugenicist-charles-van-hise\/ UW-Madison finally grappling with how to tell the real…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5925,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5922\/revisions\/5925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}