1995 University of Maryland conference on crime and genetics

In 1992, UMD professor David Wasserman set out to organize a meeting to discuss the potential genetic bases for criminal behavior. The originally planned conference was entitled "Genetic Factors in Crime: Findings, Uses and Implications", and was scheduled to be held on the University of Maryland's College Park campus on October 9, 1992.[1][2] It was to be funded by a $78,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).[3]

When the planned conference became known to the public, it faced swift backlash and condemnation from civil rights activists, as well as from Peter Breggin, a prominent critic of psychiatry. Breggin's claim that the conference was racist had attracted the attention of the Congressional Black Caucus, which subsequently joined Breggin in protesting the conference,[4] as did the Association of Black Psychologists and the NAACP's Baltimore chapter.[5] Wasserman responded to the conference's critics by saying that the conference would aim to critically examine, not promote, research linking genes to crime, but this did not satisfy its critics.[6] The backlash to Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration then-director Frederick K. Goodwin's controversial statement earlier that year, which compared inner cities in the United States to "jungles", inspired further opposition.[7] Breggin had publicly linked the planned conference both to Goodwin's remarks and to an anti-violence initiative that had recently been proposed by then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Wade Sullivan.[6]

In July 1992, the NIH's National Center for Human Genome Research revoked the $78,000 grant that it had already given in response to the opposition, effectively cancelling it. That September, the NIH announced that it would be postponing the conference indefinitely, putting an end to the organizers' attempts to convince the NIH to reinstate the grant.[7][8][9] In defending their decision to revoke the conference grant, it also cited a brochure promoting the conference and claimed that the brochure implied, falsely, that the NIH itself believed that there was a definitive link between genetics and crime.[10] John W. Diggs, the NIH's then-deputy director for outside research, told the New York Times that the brochure suggested as scientific facts the link between genetics and crime and the potential for genetic tests to identify people predisposed to criminal behavior. Diggs further said that these statements "inflamed public opinion" and deviated significantly from the scope of the original grant proposal.[2]

The University of Maryland responded to the cancellation by claiming that the NIH's withdrawal of the grant was a violation of the University's academic freedom[2] and appealed the NIH's decision to cancel the conference. The appeal succeeded, and NIH funded the conference again, this time with a $133,000 grant.[11] The NIH's new grant was awarded after Wasserman broadened the scope of topics to be covered in the conference, as well as allowing for more discussion on the desirability and potential implications of the research. This broader scope was reflected in the conference's new name, "The Meaning and Significance of Research on Genetics and Criminal Behavior", and also persuaded some critics of the original 1992 conference to attend the new one.[1] After the change in scope, the conference ended up focusing "...far more on the significance of the research into the biology of violent behavior than it did on the research itself", as Natalie Angier noted.[12] Despite the changed scope, however, Goodwin criticized the 1995 conference for being designed to attract controversy, rather than to address the topic from a scientific perspective.[7]