The Dangerous “Science” of Gregory Clark, as Read in <i>The New York Times</i>
By Matt Ruben,
Philadelphia Magazine
| 02. 26. 2014
Earlier this week, Sandy Hingston reported on a new study by California economics professor Gregory Clark, which claims genes, not social factors, are why it’s so hard to move up the socio-economic ladder these days. Intrigued, I read Clark’s own recent New York Times column explaining his work, and a shiver ran down my spine.
Every year, I teach a course at Bryn Mawr College that examines poverty and social mobility throughout history. And every year, my students are shocked by a 19th Century Englishman named Francis Galton.
Galton founded the pseudo-science of Eugenics. He used a bastardized version of his cousin Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection to argue what Clark argues: that genetics explains why elite families and groups remain on top from generation to generation, while the rest of us have a tougher time.
Galton, whose work was highly influential in Europe and America, noticed that the same last names kept appearing in lists of award-winners at his alma mater of Cambridge. Similarly, Clark and his colleagues found that centuries-old elite surnames continue to show up...
Related Articles
By Emma Belmonte, ChinaFile | 10.03.2025
On the popular Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, an account called “Georgia Notes” (@格鲁吉亚小纸条) offers tips and advice to Chinese nationals planning a trip to the Republic of Georgia. In one post...
By Daniel Hildebrand, The Humanist | 10.01.2025
When most people hear the word eugenics, they think of dusty history textbooks and black-and-white photographs: forced sterilizations in the early 20th century, pseudoscientific charts measuring skulls, the language of “fitness” used to justify violence and exclusion. It feels like...
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Maya Tekeli, The New York Times | 09.24.2025
For some Greenlanders, sorry isn’t enough.
The prime minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, made a special visit Wednesday to Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to apologize in person for a traumatic chapter in Greenlandic history, when Danish doctors forced birth control on...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...