Eugenics and Professor Coleman

I do hope I won’t be accused of political correctness, but I have some concerns about the estimable Professor Coleman in his travails with Star. Star are a partly publicly funded student body ,who waste everyone’s time and patience by playing at politics in the area of refugees. They are calling for the Professor to be sacked .With breathtaking mendacity they deny this , claiming they merely wish for a full debate about the appropriateness of his continued employment .It is entirely clear, they are trying to re-enact the academic witch hunts of the 60s . Their objection is ,of course, his membership of Migration Watch ,the magnificent truth telling organisation which has time and thrown a spanner into on the state lying machine. Migration watch has won its argument and few now dispute that the British were misled as to about the extent of immigration the chimerical benefits of it.
With the left always keen to shout , ’ racist’ it has been important that the moral probity and academic respectability of the organisation`s work has been beyond reproach and it is hugely to their credit that they are immunised to charges of disreputability, by the high quality of their methods, and the opposing scandalous spin of the state.
Nonetheless there is apolitical agenda ,and the presentation of calculations about the net worth of immigrants has at times been m, shall we say , eye-catching. This sort ex Cathedra pronouncement has had the left spitting blood .
“This is not the place to discuss the economic aspects of migration. But a word might be appropriate about the calculation that the net contribution by immigrants to average national income per head was equivalent to about a Mars bar a week. “
Naturally one flies to his side and the enthusiastic baying of the Socialist Worker is all the more reason to support him.

On the other hand his involvement with a Institute that is connected with eugenics does set of the legitimate alarm bells, and Professor Coleman is unconvincing and dis-ingenuous to affect not to understand concerns of this sort . In fact I found his impression of a bemused judge fairly irritating. The body in question is the Galton Institute
“The Galton Institute ( It says ) exists to promote the public understanding of human heredity and to facilitate informed debate about the ethical issues raised by advances in reproductive technology. It also publishes studies in the historical development of these topics. “
Dating back to the 1930s and beyond the Institute is the heir to fascist notions of breeding people like Prize Schnauzers and if the professor does not understand why a specialist in the demographics of immigration being connected with Eugenics is a problem then he needs to get out of the study a bit more.
It is true that the word Eugenics has somewhat evolved as to its application but there are unbroken links with the worst sort of pseudo scientific hatred

“Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.[1] The purported goals have variously been to create healthier, more intelligent people, save society's resources, and lessen human suffering.
Earlier proposed means of achieving these goals focused on selective breeding, while modern ones focus on prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering.”

This may well be innocent, it could be that the Professor in his busy life happens to take a kindly interest in reliving the suffering of parents who would have preferred an early abortion. Surely the Professor can see the ghosts that come screaming out of the crypt though at this connecton.

Migration Watch has been unimpeachably respectable and with his connection to the Galton Institute Professor Coleman has made a mistake . If , indeed he is innocent of the stain of fascist eugenic theorizing then he would be better to explain his involvement than to effect supercilious puzzlement .


Background to Galton and Eugenics
Eugenics (the name means "good in birth") originated with an English statistician named Francis Galton. Influenced by the evolutionary theories of his cousin Charles Darwin, and also by Gregor Mendel's genetic experiments with peas, Galton hoped to improve the human gene pool through "positive eugenics," that is, encouraging those he deemed to have the best genetic stock, i.e., people like him, to marry and procreate bountifully. This may sound to some innocuous at first blush, but, as history repeatedly has demonstrated, once we accept the pernicious premise that some people are "superior" to others -- the core principle of eugenic thinking -- we open the door to great evils.