America’s role in ‘War Against The Weak’
focus of SMU Human Rights lecture April 8

DALLAS (SMU) — Investigative journalist Edwin Black will be at SMU April 8 to discuss the horrors of genetic discrimination and the quest to create a superior race as explored in his 2012 book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race at 7 p.m. in McCord Auditorium, Dallas Hall.

The event, free and open to the public, will sponsored by SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

“Edwin Black’s book is a sobering account of America’s connection to the Holocaust,” says Embrey Human Rights Director Rick Halperin. “Most Americans have little knowledge of what this country did before World War II to sterilize 41,000 people deemed ‘unfit’ – and to sterilize almost 30,000 afterward.

“The U.S. model was so successful between 1907 and 1927 that German law to sterilize children and mental patients during the first phase of the Holocaust was modeled on U.S. domestic laws and policies,” Halperin adds.

Black’s books include the New York Times-bestseller IBM & The Holocaust (2001), which last year made headlines when it was announced that actor Brad Pitt planned to produce it as a movie. Black also is the author of British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement (2011), The Farhud (2010), Nazi Nexus  (2009), The Plan (2008), Internal Combustion (2006), Banking on Baghdad (2004), The Transfer Agreement (1984 and 2009) and the novel Format C: (1999).

For more details about the event, contact saikman@smu.edu or 214-768-8347.

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