Biography:

Dr. William received his PhD, along with the Harriman Certificate in East Central European Studies, from Columbia University in 2005. He is currently an assistant professor of history at the City University of New York, and affiliate faculty member at the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies at Columbia. He has previously presented his research on the Lysenko affair at Warsaw University, the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University of Ohio, the University of Utrecht, the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin, and the Goethe Institute in RigaHe has also been invited to give talks at Warsaw University, the Academy of Medicine in Krakow, and the Center for the Cold War at New York University. His dissertation, The New Biology: Lysenkoism in Poland, was published in 2006 by VDM Verlag, and he is currently organizing an international workshop on Lysenkoism which will be held December 4-5, 2009 at Columbia University and the City University of New York. His current project is a book on response to Lysenko in the U.S. and Great Britain.

Abstract:

Trofim D. Lysenko and the Cold War Struggle for Darwins Legacy

In 1948 Soviet agronomist T.D. Lysenko banned genetics in the Soviet Union and its allies, claiming that Darwinism in the West had been corrupted by the false interpretations of Spencer and Malthus. Western genetics, according to Lysenko, had served to rationalize imperialism and colonization, and had been a useful tool in Hitlers hands to promote his monstrous, racist theory. Lysenkos anti-genetics campaign provoked a variety of responses in Western Europe and the United States, ranging from support, to condemnation, to concerted efforts to denounce Lysenko and portray him as a charlatan. Within this process a number of themes emerged, including the comparison between Lysenkoism and opposition to Darwinism by Protestant Fundamentalists in the U.S.; the guilt geneticists felt for having allowed genetics to become too-closely associated with eugenics during the interwar period; and the question of whether state support of science must inevitably lead to interference in scientific research. My paper will address the third major issue of the conference, Social and Cultural Impacts, while covering five of the seventeen sub-areas: 11. History and reception of Darwinism; 12. Evolution and religion; 13. Ethics in light of evolutionary approaches; 14. Debates in Science Education; 15. What is science. My presentation would be based upon my research on the response to Lysenkoism in the U.S. and Poland, as well as an international workshop I am organizing at Columbia University and the City University of New York, to be held December 4-5, 2009.