What these course descriptions show
These are primary-source descriptions and links for university courses concerning race, science, gender, and justice. They show what particular courses propose to study; they do not by themselves establish what students were taught, what faculty agree on, or a university-wide ideology. Compare the historical content with Hereditarianism, Eugenics, Race, and IQ in the United States - A Chronological Timeline and the political framework with Critical Race Theory.
Harvard
FAS Registrar’s Office
Previous Course Offerings
https://registrar.fas.harvard.edu/archive/course-offerings?page=1
SOCIOL 1149 Sociology of Science, Technology, and the Body
CourseID: 215989
Faculty:
Next Term Offered:
Why have ancestry tests become popular in the twenty-first century and what do they tell
us about the relationships between race and capitalism? How has contemporary
knowledge about cancer and radiation relied upon systems of colonialism and racism?
What processes lead to revered organizations such as NASA to adopt clearly risky and
unsafe practices? This seminar uses a sociological approach to understanding science
and technology. The course focuses on social, cultural, and political dimensions
of knowledge production, scientific and medical practices, and the body. While
examining the roots of sociological science and technology studies (STS) in the
United States, we will consider the transnational dimensions of contemporary
science and technology issues and how they continue to evolve within a complicated
and highly connected global economy. The class will address key questions
about power along lines of race and ethnicity, nation, gender, sexuality, class, and ability
that underlie structures of science and technology, as well as how science and
technology shape the very meanings of these terms. We will study cases including
transnational surrogacy, Black activism around sickle-cell anemia, and the biopolitics of
medical triage in West Africa, among others. Students will also develop an expertise in
a course-related topic of their choice.
GENED 1146 Race and Justice
CourseID: 212856
Faculty:
Next Term Offered:
We all agree that racism is wrong. Yet beneath this abstract consensus we find deep
disagreements about what to do about it, and even about what racism is. We will
address these questions by thinking about some very specific issues, drawing on work in
philosophy, law, history, and the social sciences. Is racism best understood as a system
of beliefs or social structures? What makes racial discrimination wrongful? Should we
seek to discourage hate speech, and if so, should it be regulated by law or through
informal social norms? Is a just society colorblind? If so, how should we think about the
justice of desegregation, affirmative action and reparations for slavery, all of which aim
to use racial categorization to address racism? On the other hand, if a just society need
not be colorblind, is it wrong for police departments to use racial profiling where profiling
enables them to deploy resources more efficiently? All of these are important questions
for us to confront, for the very answers that seem obviously right to some us will seem
obviously wrong to others.
This course will require us to probe our convictions about some deeply held beliefs on
significant issues. Students will seek out the best arguments that can be marshaled on
behalf of their own moral and political views, identify the vulnerabilities of these
arguments, and seek to understand those who disagree by considering the strongest
arguments for the views they reject. Our understanding of our own values will deepen
and may shift in the process. We will emerge from this investigation with a clearer grasp
of what racism is, why it is wrong, and what a world without racism might look like.
HIST 1998 Scientific Racism: A History
CourseID: 216220
Faculty: Alejandro de la Fuente
Next Term Offered: 2021 Fall
This course focuses on the history of “race” as a category of difference and explores
why “race” has become a globally-accepted idiom to classify humans. It assesses the
prominent roles that science and scientists have played in the process of naturalizing
”race” and analyzes how “scientific” theories of race were developed and disseminated
globally in the modern period. We trace the formation of these ideas in the North
Atlantic, their diffusion to various areas of the world, and the manner in which cultural
and political elites adopted or challenged them. We will devote considerable time to the
emergence of eugenics, the science of racial improvement, in Europe, the Americas,
and Africa and study the process of institutionalization of this science in Nazi Germany
and elsewhere, including the United States. A final section of the course discusses the
impact of contemporary science on ideas of race. Students in this class will work with
texts and archival materials related to these scientists, some of whom were Harvard
faculty.
Harvard Library - Services and Tools
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https://library.harvard.edu/
Harvard Library - Scientific Racism
Since enslaved people were first brought to this country, promoters of anti-Black racism and white supremacy have co-opted the authority of science to justify racial inequality.
https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/scientific-racism
The Enduring Legacy of Slavery and Racism in the North | Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University
This panel of experts will examine the role and impact of slavery in the North and discuss the influence of Agassiz and how Black abolitionists responded to scientific racism.
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2020-enduring-legacy-slavery-virtual
Race and Justice (Gen Ed 1146)
What is racial justice, and through what justifiable means might it be achieved in the United States?
https://gened.fas.harvard.edu/classes/race-and-justice
GENED 1019: The Caribbean Crucible: Colonialism, Capitalism and Post-Colonial Misdevelopment In The Region
Professor Orlando Patterson Tues & Thurs, 12 pm - 1:15 pm
https://hunap.harvard.edu/classes/caribbean-crucible-colonialism-capitalism-and-post-colonial-misdevelopment-region
NYU
Timeline of Scientific Racism - Haunted Files | A/P/A | NYU
This timeline gives an overview of scientific racism throughout the world, placing the Eugenics Record Office within a broader historical framework extending from Enlightenment-Era Europe to present-day social thought.
https://apa.nyu.edu/hauntedfiles/about/timeline/
Stanford
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UER0QL-s3mwXfc9dS-BTsvfvHCnm3s2q/view