By Scott Graber
It is Friday morning and I’m sitting in the largely deserted lobby of the Middlebury Inn in Middlebury, Vt.
The lobby is quiet — there is one other person huddled over his laptop — and I’ve got my complimentary coffee and the hotel’s WiFi password. In the olden days I would be writing on a legal pad, trying to come up with a column; or looking at the map and planning the ride home.
Susan and I are in Middlebury because it is a quaint New England town (actually a small city) that comes with a 100-yard wide waterfall right in the middle of its artisanal, used-bookstore, candle- and cheese-boutiqued downtown. While not as tall as Niagara Falls in nearby New York, the rushing, swirling, foaming water brings families downtown who eat flatbread and drink Australian Chardonnay while they watch from a nearby hill.
Middlebury, Vt., is also the home to Middlebury College that has, for many years, educated Vermont’s elite. While not one of the Ivies, Middlebury is thought to be one of America’s best schools when it comes to languages — especially Asian languages. But two years ago Middlebury found itself in the middle of a controversy when it tried to change the name of the Mead Memorial Chapel.
In 1912, John A Mead gave the school $74,000 with which to build a chapel that would serve as a centerpiece of this small college. Mead had also been Governor of Vermont and in that capacity sponsored a bill that would eventually result in the sterilization of 250 Vermonters thought to be mentally defective.
In 1912 it was believed (throughout the United States) that there was a class of “mental defectives” who lacked the intellectual capacity to function in society and they should not be allowed to replicate themselves.
Mead was an advocate of this “science,” called Eugenics, and, indeed, the College itself would teach this theory to students for some years.
The notion of genetic inequality, and selective breeding goes back to Plato. It was the common belief that certain groups had better genes than others and this supported the concept of “nobility” and the hereditary right to rule. All of which was put into a scientific context by Sir Francis Galton in the 1800s.
In the late 1800s there was a resident population of French Canadians who did most of the heavy lifting in New England. These immigrants, their wives and families, worked the textile mills that were the mainstay of almost every town in the Northeast. They also worked in the “Marble Works” (in downtown Middlebury) cutting and finishing the marble blocks with the help from the Otter Creek Falls.
In 1912, some Vermonters believed that French Canadians were in a biological category just south of the white immigrants who had come earlier, mostly from England.
In 2020, John Mead and his connection with Eugenics, and sterilization, resurfaced and Middlebury College decided now was time for his name to be taken off the Mead Memorial Chapel. Mead, much like Woodrow Wilson who had become an embarrassment to Princeton University, was summarily assigned to anonymity and “canceled” by the college. Another former Governor, James Douglas, said “Not so fast.”
James Douglas filed suit arguing that Mead’s heirs had acquired a “perpetual naming right” that had been abrogated by the Trustees and faculty of the Vermont college. Thereafter Middlebury made its motion to dismiss but that motion was denied by the Court.
Like many controversies in our fractured Republic, it is hard to frame this particular argument in the context of an enforceable legal right like “implied contract” and prove all of the elements that come with that theory.
But sometimes a lawsuit is all that is available if one wants a binding resolution.
In the meantime we are learning that “gene editing” is a reality and CRISPR can be employed to cut-out parts of the DNA sequence — to stave off, say, Sickle Cell Anemia. But it is costly ($3.1 million), controversial and has raised concerns about the making of “designer babies.”
The Chapel is a beautifully proportioned building that sits atop a hill looking down upon huge green lawn that has groupings of Adirondack chairs. It seems to me that classes might be taught about the rules we are going to follow as CRISPR technology improves. (Apparently China has already done gene “editing” on three infants.)
Perhaps Middlebury could use part of its $1.5 billion endowment to fund the John Mead Chair for Gene-Editing Studies.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
