The Jena Declaration and the decency not to use the term "race"

Excerpts: From the beginning, the idea of human races and their existence has been linked to an evaluation of these supposed races. Indeed, the notion that different groups of people differ in value preceded supposedly scientific work on the subject. The primarily biological justification for defining groups of humans as races – for example based on the colour of their skin or eyes, or the shape of their skulls – has led to the persecution, enslavement and slaughter of millions of people. Even today, the term ‘race’ is still frequently used in connection with human groups. However, there is no biological basis for races, and there has never been one. The concept of race is the result of racism, not its prerequisite.

On 9 August 2019, we marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Ernst Haeckel, former professor in Jena, dubbed the ‘German Darwin’ and probably the best-known German zoologist and evolutionary biologist. With his supposedly scientific classification of human ‘races’ into a ‘family tree’, Ernst Haeckel, the founder of phylogenetics, made a fateful contribution to a form of racism that was seemingly based on science. The position of human groups in his tree of life was based on arbitrarily selected characteristics such as skin colour or hair structure, presented from a phylogenetic point of view. This resulted in these people being viewed in a particular sequence, which implied that some groups had higher or lower status on biological grounds than others.

(...) Despite, or maybe precisely because of the close connection between racism and the supposed existence of races, it is the duty of science and thus also of a scientific society such as the German Zoological Society to evaluate the possibility of human races being a reality. The question is whether races in general, and races of humans in particular, are a biological reality, or whether they are pure constructs of the human mind. For the influential taxonomist Ernst Mayr, the existence of human races was a ‘biological fact’ (Mayr 2002), at least before the colonial age. The justification for his view is still reflected in the common concept that human races correspond to ‘geographical types’ that we also find in other species and that are based on many criteria. An alternative to geographical types of humans that correspond to races did not seem possible to Mayr, although he came out clearly against any kind of racism.

For geographical races (or subspecies), Mayr generally emphasised the necessary ‘taxonomic difference’ between geographically separated populations of a species. This places the concept of ‘race’ somewhere between the concept of population (which due to its existence as a reproductive community, actually corresponds to an individual in the philosophy of science) and that of species. Today, this taxonomic difference is predominantly determined through genetic distances. However, determining which taxonomic difference or genetic differentiation would be sufficient to distinguish races or subspecies is completely arbitrary and thus also makes the concept of races/subspecies in biology purely a construct of the human mind. This does not mean that there is no genetic differentiation along a geographical gradient. However, the taxonomic evaluation of this differentiation (as race or subspecies, or not) is arbitrary. This is even more strongly the case for humans, where the greatest genetic differences are found within a population and not between populations. (...)

The division of people into races was and is first and foremost a social and political classification, followed and supported by an anthropological construct based on arbitrarily chosen characteristics such as hair and skin colour. This construct served – and still serves – to justify open and latent racism using supposed natural circumstances and thus to create a moral justification. (...)

The linking of features such as skin colour with characteristics or even supposedly genetically fixed personality traits and behaviours, as was done in the heyday of anthropological racism, has now been soundly refuted. To use such arguments today as seemingly scientific is both wrong and malicious. There is also no scientifically proven connection between intelligence and geographical origin, but there is a clear connection with social background. Here too, racism in the form of exclusion and discrimination creates supposed races.

However, racism continues to exist among people. In the 20th century, racial research, racial science and racial hygiene or eugenics, as seemingly scientific disciplines, were only some of the excesses of racist thinking and action.

Simply removing the word ‘race’ from our daily language will not prevent racism and intolerance. A feature of current forms of racism is precisely the tendency in far-right and xenophobic circles to avoid the term ‘race’. Racist thinking is perpetuated through terms such as selection, maintaining purity or ethnopluralism. However, the term ethnopluralism is nothing more than a new formulation of the ideas of apartheid. Designating ‘the Africans’ as a supposed threat to Europe and attributing certain biological characteristics are also in the direct tradition of the worst racism of our past. So, let us ensure that people are never again discriminated against on specious biological grounds and remind ourselves and others that it is racism that has created races and that zoology/anthropology has played an inglorious part in producing supposedly biological justifications. Today and in the future, not using the term race should be part of scientific decency.

Jena Declaration

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photograph by Garry Winogrand (1965) via

Born this day ... Lee Lorch

"Because he believed in the principles of decency and justice, and the equality of men under God, Lee Lorch and his family have been hounded through four states from the North to the South like refugees in displaced camps. And in the process of punishing Lee Lorch for his views, three proud institutions of learning have been made to grovel in the dust and bow the knee to bigotry."
Ethel Payne



Lee Lorch (1915-2014) was a mathematician and civil rights activist. He obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University in Cincinnati in 1941.
After World War II, Lorch started teaching at the City College of New York "but was soon fired because of his civil rights work on behalf of African-Americans." Shortly after taking up his job at the City College of New York, he moved into Stuyvesant Town, a private residential development on the east side of Manhattan, owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance. Blacks were barred from living there as, according to the president of Metropolitan Life, "negroes and whites do not mix" and apart from that "it would be to the detriment of the city, too, because it would depress all surrounding property." Lee Lorch had all the credentials to move in, i.e., a "steady job, college, teacher and all that. And, not black." The lawsuit against Metropolitan that had been brought in by several people and organisations in 1947 had failed in the state courts as the insurance company was free to select tenants based on absurd criteria. Lorch was aware of the discrimination other faced and became a vice-chair of the tenants' committe that was founded to eliminate the housing discrimination. He also invited a black family (art student Hardine and Raphael Hendrix and their 6-year-old son Hardine Jr.) to live in his own flat where he was living with his wife (a longtime activist herself) and his young daughter.

"The Stuyvesant Town tenants committee, with 1,800 members, was made up of the families of veterans who believed that after fighting a war for justice overseas, they could not ignore injustice at home. "The courage and sharpshooting of a Negro machine gunner saved my life with a dozen other white G.I.'s (...). Can any one of us say he can't be my neighbor? I can't." Surveys of residents conducted by the tenants committee showed that two-thirds of Stuyvesant Town's 25,000 tenants opposed MetLife's exclusionary policy."  (Fox, 2010)

"I had become very aware of racism through the war; not just anti-Semitism, but the way the American army treated black soldiers. On the troop transport overseas, it was always the black company on board that had to clean the ship and do the dirty work, and I felt very uncomfortable with that." Lee Lorch, 2007

Metropolitan Life refused to accept the Lorches' rent check and started searching for ways to get them out. But Lorch had decided not to go quietly, that he would resist and that they had to throw him out by force.

"Nineteen of the families decided to fight to keep their apartments. (...) The city marshal ordered the targeted tenants to be out of their apartments by 9 o'clock on the morning of Jan. 17, 1952, and hired a moving company to drag their furniture onto the street. In response, the families barricaded their doors. They sent their children to stay with relatives and passed baskets of food from window to window with ropes."  (Fox, 2010)

In 1950, Metropolitan Life admitted three token black families but did not change its tenant housing policy. In 1959, only 47 black tenants lived in Stuyvesant Town.

Lorch did not pay the price for his activism only once. In 1949, he was forced to leave City College since he was "unquestionably a fine scholar and a promising teacher" but "an irritant and a potential troublemaker". The N.A.A.C.P. protested the decision ... but Lorch had to leave.
Lorch started teaching at Pennsylvania State University. When he arrived at the campus, he was immediately taken to the university's acting president whom he had to explain what had happened at Stuyvesant Town as the university had received phone calls from wealthy alumni who wanted to know why Lorch had been hired. He was denied reappointment because he had accommodated a black family which was "extreme, illegal and immoral, and damaging to the public relations of the college." Students, the American Association of University Professors, the American Mathematical Society, The New York Times, The Daily Worker, and Albert Einstein protested ... but Lorch had to leave.
In 1950, Lorch became one of two white professors at historically black Fisk University. He continued his activism, tried to enroll his daughter in an all-black school, refused to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee ... in 1955, Lorch had to leave Fisk University.
When the Little Rock Nine enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957, Lee Lorch - at that time an official with the Arkansas chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. and chair of the Mathematics Department at Philander Smith College in Little Rock - was working behind the scenes and accompanying the students to school and tutoring them. He was told his best contribution would be to terminate his affiliation with the Little Rock Branch of the N.A.A.C.P. Whites abused him for his desegregation activism, blacks kept their distance because of the "un-American" stance he was accused of. After threats and the school's funding at risk, Lorch resigned.
By 1959 it was official that no US-American college would have him, Lorch was blacklisted. The family moved to Canada where he taught at the University of Alberta and then at York University until he retired.
In 2010, Lee Lorch was asked if he would do anything differently. His reply: "More and better of the same."

"It's hard to imagine now, but there was no civil rights legislation back then. You could be fired without explanation. But how could you do anything else, in all good conscience?" Lee Lorch

Decades later, several colleges - among them two that had fired him - and associations gave Lee Lorch honorary degrees and other awards (via and via).

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- Fox, A. (2010). Battle in Black and White. In Rosenblum, C. (ed.) More New York Stories. The Best of the City Section of The New York Times, New York & London: New York University Press, 246-253
- photographs via and via

Princeton's First Female Students

"For much of its history, Princeton University had the reputation of being an 'old-boys' school.' Starting in the fall of 1969, Princeton became co-educational, and eight women transfer students graduated in June 1970, with slightly greater numbers graduating in the two subsequent years. Women who matriculated as freshmen in 1969 graduated in the Class of 1973, the first undergraduate class that included women for all four undergraduate years. However, the first steps towards co-education came as early as 1887, with the founding of Evelyn College. From its inception, this women's institution was associated with Princeton University, and it was hoped that the link would be similar to the Radcliffe and Harvard University relationship. Unfortunately, Evelyn College closed in 1897, due to financial problems and a lack of support from Princeton."



"For the next half-century, women instead made their presence known in unofficial positions. Wives and daughters of Princeton faculty and administrators succeeded in exerting significant influence on campus life as advocates for students as well as assistants in research."



"Women were also important forces in the academic world. Margaret Farrand Thorp, wife of English professor, Willard Thorp, often assisted with her husband's research while simultaneously producing her own independent work. Fittingly, she wrote a book entitled Female Persuasion: Six Strong-Minded Women, which was published in 1949. Speaking of her lot as a female at Princeton, Thorp once quipped, 'We who practice the pleasant profession of faculty wife are often amused by Princeton University's apparent hostility to the feminine sex. Hostility is probably too strong a word. The situation is, rather, that for the University, the feminine sex does not exist'".



Female scholars were overlooked until 1942 when a female visiting research associate came to the physics department; in 1943 five more women arrived, and in 1948 the first woman was awarded "faculty status with the rank of Associate Professor". At the same time, female students began to gradually filter into Princeton's university system. After years of sitting in on classes informally, wives and daughters of Princeton faculty and administrators could finally officially enrol in courses. During WWII, 23 women were allowed to take a government-sponsored course in photogrammetry, in 1947, three female members of the library staff enrolled in a class on Russian. In 1961, the first woman was enrolled as a full-time degree candidate. Her letter of acceptance, by the way, started with "Dear Sir". In 1962, eight more women enrolled in graduate programmes and in 1964, the first woman received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton. In 1963, the first full-time undergraduate female students were admitted - full-time students who were not eligible for a Princeton degree.



In its report from January 1969, the committee noted that “the presence of talented young women at Princeton would enhance the total educational experience and contribute to a better balanced social and intellectual life,” as well as “sustain Princeton's ability to attract outstanding students". In September 1969, finally, the first coeducational class started and 101 female fresh"man" and 70 female transfer students joined Princeton (via Princeton University Library).



photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via and via

Welcome.TU.code

The Vienna University of Technology was founded in 1815, has more than 26.000 students, and is ranked as one of the best universities (via). Both its real excellence and its mission "technology for the people" (via) are put into practice by the Faculty of Informatics' project Welcome.TU.code. The initiative was launched by researchers, teachers and students to offer computer workshops for young asylum seekers, particularly unaccompanied minor refugees (via).



The workshops keep the teenagers busy who at the same time can acquire computer skills which again are required for a great many jobs. In addition, computer basics are necessary as the internet is often the only medium to stay in touch with the family left behind (via). According to Prof. Hannes Werthner, Head of the Electronic Commerce Group, Institute for Software Technology and Interactive Systems, and Kathrin Conrad, student at the Faculty of Informatics, this project aims to produce positive signals, to welcome these young people in Austria and to set an example by showing that different approaches to integration are possible. This summer, more than 50 teenagers mainly from Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia take part in five workshops (via). The workshops are led by psychologically trained students who teach in more than ten languages (via).

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photograph via
For more photographs of women in mini skirts at huge computers see