Exhibition “We Are Not Alone”: Legacies of Eugenics at Kresge Student Lounge

The FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, the Centre for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, the Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, and the Harvard Department of the History of Science are co-sponsoring a showing of the exhibition “We Are Not Alone”: Legacies of Eugenics at the student lounge on the second floor of the Kresge building. The exhibition is also part of a series of events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which will be celebrated on December 10, 2023. Entrance is free but a Harvard ID is needed to enter the building.

Engaging with, and contributing to, a global anti-eugenic movement of reckoning with the past, the exhibition “We Are Not Alone”: Legacies of Eugenics reveals the shifting and fluid meanings that characterised ideas of human betterment in different national and international contexts. It offers a historically informed account of our eugenic past, present, and future, balancing various elements of continuity and discontinuity, of idiosyncrasy and similarity. Continued education about and engagement with eugenics, as well as its public condemnation, are essential components of our efforts to understand a hidden and tenebrous past, while at the same time, continuing work towards a fair and just society.

This exhibition was part of the FXB Roma Program’s 11th annual Roma Conference in April 2023 and was on view at Countway Library throughout the summer of 2023.

Watch the video below for an overview of the themes and works explored in the exhibition by its curator, Professor Marius Turda, PhD: