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David Starr Jordan
Photo: Internet Archive Book Images, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons16

David Starr Jordan

American ichthyologist, educator, and eugenicist (1851–1931)

David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was an American ichthyologist who served as the founding president of Stanford University from 1891 to 1913. He was previously the president of Indiana University from 1885 to 1891.2

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Jan 19, 1851, died Sep 19, 1931.1

About

Jordan was also a strong supporter of eugenics, and his published views expressed a fear of "race-degeneration", asserting that cattle and human beings are "governed by the same laws of selection". He was an antimilitarist since he believed that war killed off the best members of the gene pool, and he initially opposed American involvement in World War I.

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2

Companies

Early life and education

  • 1872Cornell University Master of Science3
  • Date not recordedCornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences3
  • Date not recordedIndiana University School of Medicine3
  • Date not recordedIndiana University3
  • Date not recordedIndiana University Bloomington3
  • Date not recordedButler University3

Jordan was born in Gainesville, New York, and grew up on a farm in upstate New York. His parents made an unorthodox decision to educate him at a local girls' high school. His middle name, Starr, does not appear in early census records, and was apparently self-selected; he had begun using it by the time that he was enrolled at Cornell. He said that it was in honour of his mother's devotion to the minister Thomas Starr King but also due to his admiration for the night sky which he expressed at a young age.

He was inspired by his teacher Louis Agassiz to pursue his studies in ichthyology. In the mid-19th century Agassiz was incomparably influential and trained "nearly all" of the leading naturalists in the United States. Simultaneously, according to historian Donald Yacovone, "His revulsion for African Americans and his insistence on their inherent inferiority knew no limits. The influence of [Agassiz's] damaging ideas cannot be overestimated." Jordan was part of the first freshman class of undergraduates at Cornell University, where he graduated in 1872 with a master's degree in botany.

In his autobiography, The Days of a Man, he wrote, "During the three years which followed [my entrance as a 'belated' freshman in March 1869], I completed all the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two year of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred on me at graduation in June 1872, the advanced degree of Master of Science instead of the conventional Bachelor's Degree... it was afterward voted not to grant any second degree within a year after the Bachelor had been received. I was placed, quite innocently, in the position of being the only graduate of Cornell to merge two degrees into one." His master's thesis was on the topic "The Wild Flowers of Wyoming County".

Jordan initially taught natural history courses at several small Midwestern colleges and secondary schools, including at Indianapolis High School.

In 1875, while in Indianapolis, Jordan obtained a Doctor of Medicine degree from Indiana Medical College. The Indiana Medical College in Indianapolis opened in 1869, but merged out of existence in 1878. Standards at the college were not particularly high. Jordan himself, reflecting on the experience noted that "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession." The following year, in 1876, Jordan taught comparative anatomy at the college.

Jordan also held an honorary PhD, awarded to him by Butler University in 1877.

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Indiana University president

In January 1885, Jordan began his tenure as president of Indiana University and became the nation's youngest university president at only 34 and the first Indiana University president who was not an ordained minister.

He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system; like Cornell's, it was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum.

It was through studying blind cave fish that the Indiana zoologist David Starr Jordan rose to prominence. A scientist of great charisma, he would lead IU before being chosen in 1891 as the first president of Stanford University. By my time at IU, however, Jordan was locally best known for quipping that every time he learned the name of a student he forgot the name of a fish.

Stanford University president

In March 1891, he was approached by Leland and Jane Stanford, who offered him the presidency of Leland Stanford Junior University, which was about to open in California. Andrew Dickson White, the co-founder and first president of Cornell University, who offered him the position, recommended Jordan to the Stanfords based on an educational philosophy fit with the Stanfords' vision of a nonsectarian co-educational school with a liberal arts curriculum. Jordan quickly accepted the offer, arrived at Stanford in June 1891, and immediately set about recruiting faculty for the university's planned September opening. Pressed for time, he drew heavily on his own acquaintances; most of the 15 founding professors came either from Cornell or Indiana University. That first year at Stanford, Jordan was instrumental in establishing the university's Hopkins Marine Station. He served Stanford as president until 1913 and then chancellor until his retirement in 1916. The university decided not to renew his three-year-term as chancellor in 1916. As the years went on, Jordan became increasingly alienated from the university.

While he was chancellor, he was elected president of the National Education Association. Jordan was a member in the Bohemian Club and the University Club in San Francisco. Jordan served as a director of the Sierra Club from 1892 to 1903. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1905.

David Starr Jordan House

In 1905, he was one of the first professors to build a summer home at the northeast corner of Camino Real and 7th Avenue, on what became known as "Professors' Row" in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He was good friends with Stanford University professor of entomology Vernon Lyman Kellogg, who also lived in Carmel.

Stanford University

Stanford honored its former president in 1917 by renaming its zoology building, built in 1899, to Jordan Hall. Other campus features were named Jordan Quad, Jordan Modulars, and Jordan Way. In October 2020 the Stanford Board of Trustees voted unanimously, on the recommendation of an advisory committee, to remove Jordan's name from all four facilities. The former Jordan Hall was to be referred to as Building 420 until a permanent name could be selected sometime the following year. Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne was charged to rename Jordan Quad and Jordan Modulars; however, Tessier-Lavigne was not able to accomplish this task before he left Stanford in 2023. The advisory committee also recommended that the renaming of Jordan Way, a street on the medical campus, "may take place during the course of ongoing construction and planning."

Indiana University

When Indiana University built a new building for its biology department in 1956, the building was named in honor of Jordan, its former president and biology faculty member. In October 2020 the Indiana University Board of Trustees voted overwhelmingly to remove Jordan's name from the biology building as well as a parking garage and a "river" (actually a small creek) that runs through the center of the campus. Jordan's name was stripped from these places immediately after the trustee meeting had concluded, and they were given temporary, generic names to be used until permanent names could be selected the following year. Jordan Hall, the Jordan River and the Jordan Avenue Parking Garage became respectively the Biology Building, the Campus River, and the East Parking Garage. In August 2021, staff members of the Biology Department sent a petition to the new IU President Pamela Whitten urging the university leadership to rename the Biology Building in honor of James P. Holland, an African-American IU alumnus, award-winning former faculty member and endocrinologist who died in 1998.

Indiana President President Michael McRobbie requested the University Naming Committee to work with the city of Bloomington to find a name as a replacement for Jordan Avenue, a thoroughfare that is owned in part by IU and in part by the city. As of October 2020, there were calls in the Bloomington City Council for Jordan Avenue to be renamed. In April 2021, the Mayor of Bloomington created a seven-member task force to investigate possible replacement names for Jordan Avenue. In September 2021, the City of Bloomington Plan Commission announced that it approved the renaming of Jordan Avenue to Eagleson Avenue while IU is in the process of renaming its section of the street to Fuller Lane pending approval by the IU Renaming Committee and IU's board of trustees. The city planned to complete their street renaming by February 2022. Both new street names honor prominent African-American families who moved to Bloomington after being born into slavery. In December 2021, IU's board of trustees reconsidered their decision to rename the university's section of the street as Fuller Lane by adopting Eagleson Avenue as the new name for the university-owned section of Jordan Avenue.

As late as October 2024, the Indiana University South Bend campus had a scholarship named in honor of Jordan that enables its students to study outside of the United States for a short period.

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Career

Occupation: peace activist, autobiographer, scientific collector, ichthyologist, botanist, zoologist, naturalist, writer.6

Known for: Manual of the vertebrate animals of the northern United States, A guide to the study of fishes, Synopsis of the fishes of North America, A classification of fishes: including families and genera as far as known.7

In 1879, Jordan was accepted into the natural history faculty of Indiana University Bloomington, where he served as a professor of zoology. His teaching included his version of eugenics, which "sought to prevent the decay of the Anglo-Saxon/Nordic race by limiting racial mixing and by preventing the reproduction of those he deemed unfit."

Racial views and support for eugenics

In 1899, Jordan delivered an essay at Stanford on behalf of racial segregation and racial purity. In the essay, Jordan argued that "...a race of men or a herd of cattle are governed by the same laws of selection." Jordan expressed concern about "race degeneration" that would occur unless efforts were made to maintain "racial unity".

Eugenics-based argument against war

Jordan argued that peace was preferable to warfare because war removed the strongest men from the gene pool. He said, "Future war is impossible because the nations cannot afford it." As one commentator put it, "Though he found meager evidence to support his preconceptions, he still confidently asserted that 'always and everywhere, war means the reversal of natural selection.'"

Jordan was president of the World Peace Foundation from 1910 to 1914 and president of the World Peace Conference in 1915 and initially opposed American entry into World War I although he changed his position in 1917 after he became convinced that a German victory would threaten democracy.

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"The Blood of the Nation"

Soon after it was first delivered, the essay was published by the American Unitarian Association (copyright 1902) under the main title of "The Blood of the Nation" and a subtitle of "A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit." Multiple editions of that version followed over the next few years.

An expanded version of the essay was delivered in Philadelphia at the 200th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth in 1906 and printed by the American Philosophical Society. The following year, an expanded version of the original essay with an embossed cover was published by Beacon Press in Boston under the new main title "The Human Harvest" and the same subtitle. This new version was dedicated to Jordan's older brother Rufus, who had volunteered to fight in the American Civil War and, according to Jordan, was part of the "'Human Harvest' of 1862." Jordan's eugenic and anti-war views may have been in part shaped by the death of his brother in 1862 from a 'camp fever,' likely typhoid, immediately after enlisting to fight in the American Civil War.

In 1910, the original and slimmer version of the essay was again published by the American Unitarian Association in a "less expensive form to insure the widest possible distribution."

In 1915, Jordan published an "extended treatise on the same subject" titled War and Breed again through the Beacon Press in Boston. Here Jordan defines and begins to employ the relatively recent term "eugenics" and its opposite "dysgenics".

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Personal life

  • BornJan 19, 1851, Gainesville8 9
  • DiedSep 19, 1931, Stanford10 11
  • CitizenshipUnited States12 13
  • SpousesJessie Knight Jordan14; Susan Bowen Jordan14

Jordan married Susan Bowen (1845–1885), a biologist and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, whom he met at Louis Agassiz's Penikese Island Summer School of Science, in her hometown of Peru, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1875. She died at age 39, after 10 years of marriage, following a brief illness. Bowen was six years Jordan's senior. They had three children: the educator Edith Monica (1877–1965), Harold Bowen (1882–1959), and Thora (1884–1886).

Jordan later married Jessie Knight (1866–1952) in 1887. At the time of their marriage, two years after his first wife's death, Knight was 21 years old and Jordan was 36. They met while he was serving as president of Indiana University. He and his second wife had three children: Knight Starr (1888–1947), Barbara (1891–1900), and Eric Knight (1903–1926).

Two of his daughters, Thora and Barbara, died in childhood. His son Eric died in 1926 at age 22 in a traffic accident near Gilroy, California. Eric had participated in a paleontological expedition to the Revillagigedo Islands and was considering an academic career.

Jordan's papers are housed at Stanford University.

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Philanthropy

Human Betterment Foundation

After Jordan's death, the Human Betterment Foundation, a political eugenics-advocacy organization that advocated for compulsory sterilization legislation in the United States, published a newspaper advertisement claiming Jordan as one of its prominent members. The Foundation published Sterilization for Human Betterment, advocating for legislation that would compel sterilization of the disabled and violent felons, allow for anyone in the public to voluntarily seek medical sterilization, and legalize the use of contraception.

From Wikipedia’s article on David Starr Jordan (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Sources

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