 Good morning and welcome to the second day of the meaning of eugenics, historical and present day discussions of eugenics and scientific racism. I'm Christopher Donahue, the NHGRI historian. Yesterday we had a frank and meaningful discussion of the complexities of eugenics and its depravity in the context of institutionalization and in the context of institutionalization and sterilization. A frank accounting of some of its grievous harms. Yesterday was also about how eugenics and scientific racism and its practices cease if all of us reject the central premises of eugenics that individuals need to be so-called fixed or cured to conform to narrow prejudice standards of function in quotes and fitness in quotes. And I think one issue which emerged yesterday, which I think is incredibly important in this context, is why does genetics have such an appeal? And I think this is because genetics and a discussion of genes and heritability presumes that if an individual is fixed or cured, then a society's ills are solved. And I think this moves us away from thinking of ourselves as having a communal responsibility and the universal ethics of care, of autonomy and of personhood, which really is an affirmation of the right of difference, which really needs to be embraced. As Julia Watts-Belser writes, eugenics envisions, and here I quote, liberation through the denial of bodily and sensory difference. As Maurice Torda, the co-convener of this conference pointed out, the key to ending eugenics and scientific racism is rehumanization and resisting dehumanization. And I think that affirming difference and denying narrow utopian accounts of ability and of difference is an essential part of this. The task of today's lectures and today's presentations is to re-engage with these complex and often frankly disturbing histories of eugenics and its practices. But throughout the second day of today's part of today's talks, we will also give our audiences a number of resources in order to deepen their understanding and to engage and emerge with these complex histories in a way that allows them to confront eugenics and scientific racism. I will now ask Maurice to make some concluding remarks to open the second day of this conference. Over to you, Maurice. Thank you, Chris. And good morning, everyone. It is a real pleasure to share with you today's panels and to say a few words by welcoming you to our symposium. Yesterday was extraordinarily rich in terms of the information we shared, the debates we had, and the only enemy we faced was the enemy that we all face in our lives, which is the short time we had at our disposal. We only wish we could have explored some of the themes and the question asked a bit longer. Today starts with a big announcement and I would like to alert everyone to the fact that today is International Disability Day. And this is a very important day and an important issue and we discuss the history of eugenics and the legacies of eugenics and we cannot but forcefully declare our understanding and sympathy for those who had suffered from eugenic practices and from eugenic thinking throughout the 20th century. As we pointed out yesterday, eugenics were constantly alarmed by the presence of people with physical and learning disabilities. Racial and social and cultural boundaries were erected between those who are considered to be eugenically valuable individuals and those who are demodernized. And these boundaries, as we heard yesterday, were repeatedly reinforced from slavery onwards in the case of the United States, for example, through racist legislation, medical institutionalization and state-sanctioned policies of segregation and annihilation in some cases. In the 20th century, we pointed out eugenic beliefs supported the murder of millions of people belonging to religious ethnic and sexual minorities and those living with disabilities. And it motivated the institutional confinement and sterilization of those in a threat to society, which continues to this day. And of course, we need to mention, albeit very briefly, and we'll hear about it later in one of the presentations that on the 14th of July 1933, as some of you know very well, Nazi Germany enacted the law for the prevention of hereditary disease offering, mandating the forced realization of individual with physical and mental disabilities. And thousands of children and adults with disabilities were murdered during the T4 euthanasia program. We also discussed yesterday how eugenicists followed dominant social and political practices and that eugenics should not be separated from the culture it inhabits. The questions eugenicists asked and answered about an ideal society, as well as the interpretation they extracted from their research and scientific experiments were clearly shaped by cultural attitudes, cultural needs and political possibilities. Also, we heard yesterday that eugenicists advertised themselves as guardians of society's moral behavior, promoting sexual control, cleanliness, the well-being of future generations, and the ideal of married life. Their ideas incorporated both nature, which is to say good ancestry, and nurture, good environment. For instance, choosing your spouse once he was advocated by the eugenicists, and they popularized this message to wider audiences through posters, films, articles in the daily press, fairs, and exhibitions. Idealized versions of white masculinity and femininity were commonly used to depict ideas of marriage, racial vitality, and motherhood, accompanied by accessible language. We also pointed out that the development of eugenics did not end with the Second World War. Eugenic practices continued in some cases uninterruptedly into the post-war period, when the political project of crafting a new world freed from the clutches of fascism and narcissism dovetail perfectly with the eugenic project of population control, family planning, and elimination of genetic disabilities. We also pointed out that there have been broad changes in how eugenics is theorized, promoted, and practised, since the time of Francis Colton and Charles Davenport and Alfred Plurks, the big founders of eugenic movements in Britain and America and Germany. For these individuals, for example, eugenics has closely connected government interventions, such as encouraging racially worthy people to reproduce and segregate disabled people. But state-led eugenic programs became less and less acceptable to promote after 1945. So it was discussed yesterday, forms of eugenics we have today are framed within a different rhetoric, a rhetoric of individual choice, for example. So legacies of eugenics and will continue to debate and explore some of them today continue to affect current politics and culture, promoting discrimination, inequality, and divisions in society. Skillfully and worryingly, I think, during the last decade, eugenics manoeuvred its way back into a positional authority by assorting itself with a host of human concerns from designer babies to genetic screening for disability from environmentalism and ecology to the rise of ethnic nationalism and white supremacy. So we are today looking forward to an amazing program and I hope you will join me in participating, raising questions and challenging the scholarship we are producing and challenging the views that are associated with this scholarship. So that we have a very fruitful, enriching and strong and solid and wonderful conversation. Thank you.