November 7, 1997

If universities forget, cultures do too

The editorial decision, albeit understandable, to couple Derek Sayer's beautifully crafted letter next to the article in the recent Folio on the fall of MacEachran in the psychology department removes from his argument much of its pith. The central image of Sayer's allegory is that the hat of one fallen minister appears to be all that remains of his being purged in a repressive regime. Purged he may have been, but his legacy appears to continue, for the hat is on the head of the tyrant Klement Gottwald. Sayer then suggests that "uncritical endorsement of fashionable wisdom. . . propounded from the pulpits of universities" survives beneath the cover of "critical thinking." The point of Dr. Sayer's comments reach well beyond his example. Although he is not the first person at this university I have heard sneer at our motto that implies that teaching has something to do with truth, a motto that now seems to have been covered over by the rather vulgar pun, "research makes sense," his sneering deserves support. Speaking only for the humanities, a term which has like the motto, not to speak of Dr. Sayer's oxymoronic "social sciences," fallen into a zone of ill repute, it is fairly evident, even to those who would not so much as touch The Alberta Report, that "critical thinking" in universities is generally acceptable only under certain conditions. The larger irony, however, of relating MacEachran's field of eugenics to contemporary university teaching should not be allowed slip beneath the cover of Dr. Sayer's remarks, for what else is our "fashionable wisdom" but a contemporary form of social engineering? Minds are equally capable of sterilization. Prevented from reaching for "quaecumque vera," our students too will be asked to forget, and once universities forget, the culture it is called upon to nourish forgets too, no longer able to remove its hat in homage to the passage of greater wisdom.

E.D. Blodgett
Comparative Literature

Letter writer missed the facts

Derek Sayer (Folio, Oct. 24) has accused the Department of Psychology of attempting to "airbrush" away the image and memory of John M. MacEachran, but he has the essential facts wrong. A photo of MacEachran posing with several former chairs of our department remains in the room that once bore his name. A committee duly appointed in early September is examining ways to educate our students about our history and MacEachran's career. I have published an article in an international journal (Genetica, 1997, Vol. 99: 185-198) to inform the scientific community about the Leilani Muir case and MacEachran's role as the long-serving chair of the Alberta Eugenics Board.

How could Sayer make such a serious factual error? After the Folio article by Michael Robb appeared on September 26, Sayer did not seek further information from either our acting chair or me, the author of the motions to rename the conference room and lecture series, nor did he come over to see the room with his own eyes. As far as I can discover, he did no investigation at all. Instead, he read into that article things it did not contain, and on this basis he denounced our action as "contemptible" and suggested we suffer from a "disease."

The original U of A press release (March 12, 1975) announcing the lecture series in MacEachran's name stated that he "was instrumental in the mental health movement in Alberta," and this phrase was repeated for 22 years in the lectures published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Metaphorically speaking, this was indeed an "airbrushing" that sought to expunge unsightly blemishes from our department's history. For most of us, we began to learn the fuller truth during the Leilani Muir trial starting in June of 1995, and clearly this bit of history needed to be revised because it was incomplete on a crucial topic.

Leilani Muir herself addressed a department colloquium in September of 1995 and told us of her travails. The decision in the Muir trial was handed down in January, 1996, and not long thereafter I began writing the article for Genetica and circulated the manuscript among colleagues. In April of 1997 I submitted the motions to Gene Lechelt, who decided not to bring them to council during his final weeks as chair. The lengthy Saturday Night article by Heather Pringle on eugenics in Alberta and MacEachran's role appeared in July, and then our acting chair, Gay Bisanz, put the motions on the agenda and made background material available to members of the department council. On September 3, we engaged in a lengthy and thoughtful discussion about our past and then voted. Perhaps we could be accused of waiting too long to act on this matter but certainly not of being too hasty or immoderate.

Sayer claims MacEachran's "only sin" was to be "secure in the authority of his knowledge." No doubt he felt secure, but his subjective state is not at issue. The crucial point is that MacEachran lacked the training and expertise to judge anybody's likelihood of transmitting a mental defect to progeny or even to assess mental deficiency. He was qualified to teach philosophy, but as chair of the Eugenics Board, he was a political appointee guided by ideology. (He was appointed by the 1928 Act of the Legislative Assembly, not by the U of A Senate.)

Let us not forget that MacEachran bore major responsibility for the suffering of more than 2,000 terrified and defenceless children who were forcibly marched into a crude surgical room and maimed for no good reason. The words of Madame Justice Joanne Veit

are clear:" The circumstances of Ms. Muir's sterilization were so high-handed and so contemptuous of the statutory authority to effect sterilization, and were undertaken in an atmosphere that so little respected Ms. Muir's human dignity that the community's, and the court's sense of decency is offended." (Dominion Law Reports, 1996, Vol. 132, pp. 695-762)

I fully concur with this condemnation of MacEachran, the Eugenics Board and the government that knowingly caused this tragedy. Given that MacEachran never achieved eminence as a social scientist in his own lifetime, there is simply no good reason why the Department of Psychology should continue to honor him. This is no denial of history. There are much better ways to keep the memory of past events alive than having the perpetrator of such cruel deeds preside in perpetuity over the most solemn occasions in our department.

Doug Wahlsten
Department of Psychology

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