College That Celebrated Student Riot Is Being Sued for Canceling Benefactor as Eugenics ‘Mastermind’

A New England liberal arts college that celebrated a student riot that sent a professor to the emergency room then allegedly incentivized students to continue disrupting events, defamed one of its most famous sons to justify its unlawful removal of his family name from the campus chapel he paid to build, according to a lawsuit by his estate.

Though John Mead was a Civil War veteran, doctor, philanthropist and Vermont governor who promoted “clean energy,” women’s suffrage and the humane treatment of mental patients, Middlebury College falsely portrayed the alum as “the mastermind” of a eugenics movement that resulted in Vermont’s sterilization law long after his death.

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American Inventor Series: Margaret E. Knight, the ‘Lady Edison’

Margaret E. Knight, born in York, Maine in 1838, preferred a “jack-knife, a gimlet, and pieces of wood” to dolls as a young girl. Her amateur woodworking skills made her sleds the “envy of the town’s boys” while her kites were famous throughout the community, according to Henry Petroski’s account of the young inventor in The American Scholar.

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