A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics in America

With film clips and discussion, this DEAI series workshop explores a dangerous idea that has threatened the American Dream from the beginning: the belief that some groups and individuals are inherently superior to others and more deserving of fundamental rights. View excerpts from the 2018 documentary “A Dangerous Idea,” which reveals how biologically determined politics has disenfranchised women and people of color and provided a rationale for state-sanctioned crimes committed against America’s most vulnerable citizens, and discuss the meaning, use, and misuse of gene science. With UC Berkeley bioethicist Osagie K. Obasogie, Marcy Darnovsky, executive director at the Center for Genetics and Society, and “A Dangerous Idea” filmmaker Stephanie Welch. Moderated by Milton Reynolds.

About the panelists

Osagie K. Obasogie, J.D., Ph.D., is the Haas Distinguished Chair and Professor of Bioethics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Joint Medical Program and School of Public Health and a senior fellow at the Center for Genetics and Society. Obasogie’s scholarly interests include Constitutional law, bioethics, sociology of law, and reproductive and genetic technologies. His writings have spanned both academic and public audiences. His first book, “Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind” was awarded the Herbert Jacob Book Prize by the Law and Society Association. His second book, “Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics,” co-edited with Marcy Darnovsky, is an anthology that examines the past, present, and future of bioethics. 

Marcy Darnovsky, Ph.D., is executive director at the Center for Genetics and Society (CGS), a Berkeley-based public interest organization focused on the social implications of human genetic and assisted reproductive technologies, including the legacies of eugenics that can distort their development and use. CGS serves as a thought leader and key resource for a network of scientists, scholars, health professionals, and civil society leaders working for reproductive, racial, and disability justice. Darnovsky speaks and writes widely about the social justice and human rights challenges of human biotechnologies and she is co-editor, with Osagie K. Obasogie, of “Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics.”