Obituary: John Glad (1941-2015)

Abstract

John Glad, who died on 4th December 2015 in Washington, DC, produced a series of seminal works in the field of Russian studies. Glad even acted as an interpreter for both Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. However, he also sat on the editorial board of the Mankind Quarterly and produced two significant books on the subject of eugenics.Glad became interested in this controversial topic in 1975. He attended a reception for genetics researchers the University of Iowa to find out more about it and was astonished that the assembled scholars seemed ignorant of it or least feigned ignorance of it, when speaking in the presence of colleagues. In 1979, by then the University of Maryland, Glad was summoned to his Dean's office for an inquisition about his views on race. It was irrelevant, Glad recalled, that he was part of a scheme that took African-American children around museums. Word had simply 'got round' despite his never having published on the subject. As Glad put it, 'An ideological coup d'etat had taken place both in popular culture and in academia since my undergraduate days, and the new rulers were ferreting out even potential dissenters. In effect, ideology was dictating the resolution of scientific questions' (Glad, 2011).Consequently, Glad resolved to research the topic of eugenics himself. The first product of this research, Future Human Evolution (2006), argues that civilization has severely relaxed natural selection meaning that the future of humanity will not be the descendants of those who have survived the rigors of natural selection. It will be those whose ancestors had the most children. And they had them in a context in which there is almost no selection against genetic illness and in which, because large families tend to be by accident, fertility is predicted by low intelligence. Glad argued that the welfare state only augmented this problem but, to his credit, he did not oppose social welfare. He rather suggested that at the very least, it would behoove us to increase family-planning services to the poor (p. 56). Situating eugenics as part of a broader environmental movement, Glad prosecuted his case in an extremely readable style, noting that the elite are in denial about the true meaning of Darwin's theory: that humans are animals. They accept that other organisms can evolve in a few generations, but not humans. Other organisms have genetic sub-species, but not humans.Glad's book carefully dealt with thorny philosophical questions: What kind of society do we want? Do we want one that is intelligent, altruistic, law-abiding and healthy? If we do, he argued, we have to artificially create it through medical and government intervention, the assumption being that a society can only be as good as the people who create it. The book looked the history of eugenics, discussed the ethical and philosophical issues involved, argued that the Nazis were primarily racialists who were not interested in universal eugenics, and suggested that eventually we should move beyond humanity to a 'machine brain.' Future Human Evolution has been translated into 12 languages the time of writing, including Urdu and Hebrew. Glad's related book, Jewish Eugenics (2011), which was dedicated to victims of the Holocaust, arose from his observation of the high status of Jews in Washington, DC. The book analyzes the significant Jewish participation in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. It also takes note of the eugenic aspects of Jewish customs throughout history and examines their consequences in terms of the heights of Jewish achievement in much of recent history.Though fascinated by Jewish and Russian culture, John Glad was actually neither of these. Glad was born in Gary, Indiana (a steel mill town and birthplace of the Jackson 5) on 31st December 1941. His family were immigrants from Croatia where the word 'glad' means 'hunger.' As such, he would later introduce himself to Russian colleagues as 'Ivan Hunger. …