About

Dr. Evelynn M. Hammonds is the Dean of Harvard College and the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies. Her academic work focuses on the intersection of race and science, particularly how biologists, anthropologists, and physicians have historically engaged with questions of racial classifications, race differences, and race mixing in the United States. She explores how these ideas evolved with the development of new scientific tools such as genetics and evolutionary theory. Dr. Hammonds has contributed to the field through her teaching, including courses like the Fall 2011 Freshman Seminar titled "The Concept of Race in Science and Medicine in the United States," which examines the changing scientific perspectives on race. Among her notable scholarly contributions is her book, "The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics," published by The MIT Press in 2009, which traces the historical and scientific discourse on race from early American history to contemporary genomics.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Biology
• Demography
• Psychology
• Social Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Public relations
• Engineering ethics
• History
• Internet privacy
• Genealogy
• Engineering
• Communication
• Biotechnology
• Law
• Genetics
• Evolutionary biology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• John Collins Warren — <i>Journal</i> Founder, Institution Builder, and Racial Theorist

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2025-06-11 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• The Continued Significance of Obstetric Violence: A Response to Chervenak, McLeod-Sordjan, Pollet et al

  Health Equity · 2024-05-01 · 3 citations

  editorialOpen access

  This guest editorial offers a critical response to Chervenak, McLeod-Sordjan, Pollet et al.'s clinical opinion dismissing obstetric violence as both emotionally charged and damaging to provider-patient relationships. We assert that obstetric violence remains a significant and useful framework to name and challenge racist, misogynist, and harmful medical practices. We note that such harmful practices are embedded in systems and cannot be addressed merely by individual physicians or shifts in the provider-patient relationship. Throughout, we situate the term obstetric violence in historical and legal context and demonstrate its continuing relevance to contemporary reproductive health care.

  PublisherDOI

• Racism, Medicine, and NEJM since 1812 — The Historical Roots of Injustice in Medicine, Symposium 1

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2024-06-26 · 2 citations

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  PublisherDOI

• A discussion on the use of race in biomedical fields

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-01-10 · 1 citations

  editorialOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Understanding the biological basis of social anxiety disorder (SAD), one of the most disabling of the anxiety disorders, will allow for novel treatment strategies to be developed. Here, we show that gut microbiota may be such a target. Mice ...Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a crippling psychiatric disorder characterized by intense fear or anxiety in social situations and their avoidance. However, the underlying biology of SAD is unclear and better treatments are needed. Recently, the gut ...

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Letter from the President

  Isis · 2024-09-01

  letter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Explaining Health Inequities — The Enduring Legacy of Historical Biases

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2024-01-27 · 13 citations

  articleOpen access

  W hen the Journal was launched in 1812, claims had circu- lated for centuries about differences in anatomy, physiology, and disease susceptibility between different human populations. 1 Physicians' persistent belief that these differences are innate has long drawn attention away from other possible causes of health inequities. As the Journal explores its history and acknowledges its role in voicing and perpetuating racism and discrimination, it must examine how it grappled with the problem of difference.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• What it means to abandon race in science?

  Experimental Physiology · 2024-05-03 · 4 citations

  editorialOpen accessSenior author

  A February 2024 paper in the journal Nature—‘Genomic data in the All of Us Research Program’— has come under fire for a figure seen by some as reinforcing biological views of human races (Kozlov, 2024). The figure, titled ‘Genetic ancestry in All of Us’, uses six racial groups—Asian, Black or African American, Middle Eastern or North African, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, White, and More than one population—to represent, by race, the genetic diversity of the All of Us participant population (All of Us Research Program Genomics Investigators, 2024). We will not debate the accuracy of the figure here, or its role in reinforcing biologized notions of race considered by many anathema to the field. Nor is it worth relitigating the ongoing misuse of racial categories in scientific thought or how such categories create hierarchy where there is none, reinforcing crude notions of difference that very poorly reflect human genetic diversity in general or the relationship between that diversity and health-related traits (Vyas et al.,2020; Yudell et al., 2016). Instead, the figure stands as an example of how the use of race persists despite more than a century of scientific evidence illustrating its limitations and dangers (Graves, 2001; Hammonds & Herzig, 2009; Yudell, 2014). And it persists despite a 2023 U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) report, Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research: A New Framework for an Evolving Field (National Academies, 2023), which was supported by the National Institutes of Health in the United States, the institute that created and financially supports the All of Us Project. We do appreciate that the National Academies report and its recommendations are barely a year old. Science is a lumbering field. Science policy perhaps more so. Our hope, and the hope of others who had a hand in calling for and/or shaping the report, is that its recommendations would, over time, help reshape how geneticists operationalized population descriptors in their research. That a centerpiece of human genetic disease research at the NIH largely ignored the report's recommendations speaks to the ongoing challenges of redressing these failures in the field. The report itself tries to settle a longstanding challenge in scientific and health research: should racial terminology—terms like White, Black, Asian and Hispanic—be used to describe and measure human biological diversity in genetics and genomics research? (Borrell et al., 2021). The answer, according to the report itself, is a resounding no. In almost all cases, scientists should not be using race in genetics and genomics research (National Academies, 2023, p. 102). Why is this? Well, for two reasons. First, as the National Academies Committee explains, race has been shown to be a flawed proxy for one's genetic make-up and biology. ‘There is a pervasive misconception that humans can be grouped into discrete, innate biological categories’, the report states. This is because, ‘the fundamentally sociopolitical origins of these categories make them a poor fit for capturing human biological diversity and as analytical tools in human genomics research’ (National Academies, 2023, p. 7). And, second, the use of racial descriptors in genetics research has the dangerous side effect of promoting the mistaken belief that races reflect fundamental differences, both biological and social, between human groups. The report seeks to put such notions to rest, stating that the ‘use of these categories reinforces misconceptions about differences caused by social inequities. Current practices in human genetics, including the use of descriptors such as continental ancestry, also reinforce these views’ (National Academies, 2023, p. 7). While the Nature paper cited above suggests that progress is slow, the NASEM report lays out 12 recommendations for how to improve the study of human genetic diversity and not reinforce biologized racial concepts. The first set of recommendations (nos 1–5) focus on the limits of typological thinking in genetics and are among the report's most important. Typological thinking assumes that every individual is a perfect example of a specific type and this can represent a group. Recommendation 1 could not be clearer in rejecting race, stating plainly that ‘researchers should not use race as a proxy for human genetic variation’. The recommendation sends a message to researchers that race should not be used as a proxy and that researchers should not use such categories ‘whether self-identified or not’. Recommendations 2 and 3 build on this, telling researchers that ‘when grouping people in studies of human genetic variation, researchers should avoid typological thinking’ and that they ‘should be attentive to the connotations and impacts of the terminology they use to label groups’. Recommendation 4 focuses on the relationship between genetic information and other health determinants calling upon ‘researchers conducting human genetics studies should directly evaluate the environmental factors or exposures that are of potential relevance to their studies, rather than rely on population descriptors as proxies’. The recommendation also calls for more collaborative and community-based research, calling on genetic and genomic researchers to collaborate with ‘experts in the social sciences, epidemiology, environmental sciences, or other relevant disciplines to aid in these studies, whenever possible’ (National Academies, 2023, pp. 101–112). The second set of recommendations (6–8) focus on the selection and use of population identifiers in research, specifically on tailoring their use ‘to the type and purpose of the study’, on applying them ‘consistently to all participants’, and disclosing ‘the process by which they selected and assigned group labels and the rationale for any grouping of samples’ (National Academies, 2023, pp. 113–116). The final set of recommendations (9–13) focus on implementation and accountability, calling upon funders, institutions where research is conducted, and scientific journals to help facilitate implementation and to provide incentives for the types of interdisciplinary collaborations needed. NASEM also call on funders of science to ‘create new initiatives to advance the study and methods development of best practices for population descriptor usage in genetics and genomics research’ (National Academies, 2023, pp. 158–159). For geneticists and those working in related fields, on page 121 of the report, there is a useful table designed to support researchers as they make decisions about how and when to use different population descriptors, including race (National Academies, 2023, pp. 121). For those considering how to balance population level research with concerns about how to study health disparities that impact racial and ethnic groups differentially, the table acknowledges that race can be used as a population descriptor. But as the report makes abundantly clear, research should adhere to strict criteria when utilizing racial categories. For example, the committee concludes that ‘racial or ethnic phenotypic differences cannot be ascribed to genetic differences without evidence’, and that scientists should ‘avoid racial or ethnic labels because they are poor proxies for differences in environmental exposures’ and instead ‘replace or supplement descent-associated population descriptors with information about the relevant factors that mediate differences in environmental exposures, such as education, types of employment, housing quality, and access to health care, to name only a few’. However, the committee acknowledges that ‘when the goal is explicitly to study the effect of structural racism and discrimination, then racial and ethnic labels may be appropriate but need to be carefully described (e.g., self-identified or not) and justified’ (National Academies, 2023, pp. 130–131). These criteria can be a guidepost across an array of scientific, clinical and public health related fields regardless of whether genetics is a component of the research being done. Whether the report is ultimately successful in promoting this much-needed change in genetics and genomics research, however, will depend on several factors. First, the success of the report's recommendations will depend on the willingness of the National Institutes of Health and other federal funders of science to support the transition away from racial typologies in scientific study. This will require the NIH to use its budgetary and policy authority to create substantive and sustained change in how human populations are studied, described and recruited across an array of disciplines. Second, scientists must be willing partners in this space, following the guidelines for the use of race and population descriptors in the NASEM report, in reports and recommendations for other professional groups, and from a burgeoning literature in natural and social scientific fields involved in the study of human populations. Third and finally, there must be a commitment in the genetic and genomics community to collaborate with partners in public health and social sciences to integrate methods from these fields into the study of health disparities so we can truly move past racial typologies in science. As public health scientists and scholars whose work centers on the history and ethics of public health, we are both delighted and relieved that such significant changes have the imprimatur of the National Academies, and optimistic that the details of this report can help improve the scientific study of human diversity. Abandoning biological race concepts in scientific study will take time and dedication. And through efforts like that of the NASEM, these necessary changes can and will happen. Both authors have read and approved the final version of this manuscript and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All persons designated as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify for authorship are listed. The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest. None.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pangenomics: prioritize diversity in collaborations

  Nature · 2023-07-25 · 3 citations

  letter
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• An Ethical Framework forResearch Using GeneticAncestry

  Perspectives in biology and medicine · 2023-01-01

  article
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• Wrestling with Social and Behavioral Genomics: Risks, Potential Benefits, and Ethical Responsibility

  The Hastings Center Report · 2023 · 66 citations

  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  In this consensus report by a diverse group of academics who conduct and/or are concerned about social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research, the authors recount the often-ugly history of scientific attempts to understand the genetic contributions to human behaviors and social outcomes. They then describe what the current science-including genomewide association studies and polygenic indexes-can and cannot tell us, as well as its risks and potential benefits. They conclude with a discussion of responsible behavior in the context of SBG research. SBG research that compares individuals within a group according to a "sensitive" phenotype requires extra attention to responsible conduct and to responsible communication about the research and its findings. SBG research (1) on sensitive phenotypes that (2) compares two or more groups defined by (a) race, (b) ethnicity, or (c) genetic ancestry (where genetic ancestry could easily be misunderstood as race or ethnicity) requires a compelling justification to be conducted, funded, or published. All authors agree that this justification at least requires a convincing argument that a study's design could yield scientifically valid results; some authors would additionally require the study to have a socially favorable risk-benefit profile.

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Frequent coauthors

• Benjamin M. Neale

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  107 shared

• Alicia R. Martin

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  104 shared

• Heidi L. Rehm

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  103 shared

• Daniel J. Benjamin

  University of California, Los Angeles

  103 shared

• Patrick Turley

  University of Southern California

  103 shared

• David Laibson

  Harvard University Press

  102 shared

• Louise Wilkins‐Haug

  Harvard University

  102 shared

• David Cesarini

  102 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Science and Technology Studies

  Harvard University

  1991

• M.A., Science and Technology Studies

  Harvard University

  1987

• B.A., Chemistry

  Brown University

  1983

Awards & honors

• 2010 YWCA Cambridge "Outstanding Woman" Award
• Fellow of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) (2008)
• honorary doctorate of humane letters from Spelman College