West Chester to strip the name of a professor who supported eugenics from its science building

A century ago, Samuel Christian Schmucker was thought to be a beloved professor at what was then West Chester Normal School, now West Chester University, and in the 1960s, the university in recognition placed his name on its science building.

But a West Chester student doing research for a history paper began to uncover another side of the science teacher.

As a proponent of eugenics, Schmucker advocated for the lifelong institutionalization and ultimate eradication of those who had intellectual disabilities, whom he called “the feeble-minded,” according to the university. He also espoused white-supremacist ideas, it said.

» READ MORE: West Chester University opens campus convenience store staffed by students with autism

Now, after a campaign by students and a professor and a committee that spent months delving further into Schmucker’s work, the university’s Council of Trustees on Thursday voted unanimously to remove the late teacher’s name from the building, noting that he does not represent West Chester’s values. The decision followed a recommendation from the Namesake Committee, comprising students, professors, staff, and community members, a decision that was endorsed by President Christopher Fiorentino.

The “surfacing of Samuel Christian Schmucker’s legacy is a testament to the real-world, collaborative, and impactful work being done between students and faculty at WCU,” the committee wrote. “In the end, there is no conclusion to be drawn except that the name of the Schmucker building must be changed. The harm caused by Schmucker through his advocacy for a dangerous pseudo-science still reverberates on our campus today.”

Under West Chester’s policies, the council can remove a name if a donor fails to make payment or if the council determines that “a continuing association with the donor or other namesake of the facility or program, will adversely impact the reputation, image, mission, or integrity of the university.”

In Schmucker’s case, there was no donation made.

The university also is planning to hold a program this fall, explaining the history of eugenics, to be taught by faculty who already teach the topic, said Tracey Ray Robinson, West Chester’s chief diversity and inclusion officer.

West Chester in recent years has championed its campus as a place for all students. It’s one of 19 universities in Pennsylvania that has a program for students with intellectual disabilities, and in 2019, it became the first university in the country to open a convenience store on campus to provide workplace training for autistic students. It also in 2021 announced it would partner with Delaware County Community College through a national organization to close achievement gaps among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic student groups by 2030.

» READ MORE: Bryn Mawr College to remove former president’s name from library after legacy of antisemitism and white supremacy

“There are students on this campus that in another era would have been targets of eugenics,” Fiorentino said. “What message do we want to send to them?”

He said if the university didn’t remove Schmucker’s name, it could be seen as “a tacit stand in support of eugenics, which we can’t support.

“It’s a bogus pseudoscience that has been totally debunked and has no place on a modern university campus.”

The science building, which was built in the 1960s and currently houses West Chester’s biology, chemistry, geology, and astronomy departments and planetarium, won’t immediately be renamed, and for now likely will be known as the science center, Fiorentino said.

» READ MORE: Princeton strips Woodrow Wilson’s name from school, citing his racist past

West Chester’s move follows similar steps at other universities locally and nationally to reckon with their problematic pasts viewed through a modern lens. Stanford University in 2020 decided to rename campus spaces named after its founding president, David Starr Jordan, a leading proponent of eugenics, and better educate the university about his full history.

Closer to home, Princeton University that same year stripped the name of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from its public and international affairs school and a residential college. The move followed years of protest by students, who decried Wilson’s prominence on campus, given his racist views and policies, including keeping Black students from enrolling at Princeton when he headed it.

And Bryn Mawr College earlier this year removed the name of its second president, M. Carey Thomas, from its library in recognition of her unwillingness to admit Black students or hire Jewish faculty.

» READ MORE: ‘The choice should be there.’ More colleges enroll students with intellectual disabilities

“I am just happy that the university and really all of its stakeholders found that change to be necessary,” said Aaron Stoyack, a 2022 West Chester graduate whose research spawned a deeper look into Schmucker’s past. “It was a change that really aligns with our values.”

Stoyack, 23, a history major from Glenmoore, said he was researching another former West Chester professor, Henry Goddard, who was a known eugenicist when he found that one of Goddard’s good friends was Schmucker, who had taught at West Chester until 1923. That prompted him to read one of Schmucker’s books.

“Within a couple minutes, not even, I was able to clearly see that this man had some very intolerant ideas,” said Stoyack, who now works as a park ranger in Virginia. “I knew that it was an injustice, and I was surprised that no one really knew about this.”

(Fiorentino, who has been at the university for 40 years, said he vaguely remembers something coming up in the past about Schmucker’s ties but no organized campaign to get his name off the building until now.)

Stoyack raised the matter with his history professor, Brent Ruswick, who has taught at West Chester for a decade.

“I said I would support Aaron and other students however they wanted to handle it,” Ruswick said.

The two of them began reading more closely Schmucker’s books, where Schmucker talked about “feeble-mindedness,” a “taint from which society has the right and the duty of freeing itself, so far as in its power lies.”

Schmucker also justified the forced sterilization of criminals and in one of his books wrote at length about “the genetic superiority of Europeans, and Western Europeans in particular,” according to the West Chester committee report.

Another student of Ruswick’s, Sam Romeiser, 28, a history major from East Goshen, subsequently found more concerning information about Schmucker in a 1914 Colorado newspaper article. He talks about mandatory institutionalization for life for those with perceived or alleged intellectual disabilities, with those who live there working to offset their costs, Ruswick said.

“The blight of feeblemindedness is hanging over humanity,” Schmucker said, according to the article. “We must segregate them with profitable labor if possible, for life, and not for a few years.”

Romeiser said: “It’s crazy that anyone could even think this way.”

It was an extreme view even among eugenics proponents of his time, Ruswick said, which emerged as another reason for the West Chester committee’s recommendation.

The newspaper article is what really pushed Ruswick to raise the matter with West Chester’s administration, he said. He also edited for accuracy a letter that students wrote to the student newspaper, The Quad, urging the administration to take action.

This week, he said he was glad it had.

“I’m really proud of what it says about my history department and my university,” he said. “It shows that history matters and that we want to fund and support a vibrant humanities education.”

All but one member of the West Chester community advocated for the removal of Schmucker’s name, the committee report said.

The committee argued that Schmucker’s “positions on eugenics cannot be excused by the ‘man of his times’ defense as his positions were considered extreme even in his own time.”

Ruswick told the committee that removing Schmucker’s name should not be regarded as erasing history.

“Far from canceling history, our students are recovering and creating history, and doing so in a manner that epitomizes our university’s highest values,” he said. “This ought to be a moment of pride and celebration for our students and the humanities education offered by our history department.”