Genetic research is part of an ugly history of racist ideologies that produce and legitimise unjust policies against minority ethnic groups – to deny children opportunity for education, erode public support for social policy, and proliferate racist and classist belief. In education, ‘racial geneism’ – the belief that genes shape the nature of ethnic group achievements and inequities (Gillborn, 2016) - has moved at an alarming rate from the fringes to the center of political and academic discourse promoted through politically influential educational networks (Gillborn et al, 2022).

In a recent paper The New Genetics of Intelligence (2018),Plomin – a Professor of Behavioural Genetics at Kings College London, who enjoys an international reputation for his research on twins and estimations of the biological basis for human attributes including intelligence - makes a case that parents will use direct-to-consumer DNA tests kits (such as 23andMe.com/AncestreyDNA.com) to predict a child’s mental abilities and make schooling choices - a concept Plomin calls ‘precision education’.  Dominic Cummings, formerly a special adviser in the Department for Education and described as at one point “the most powerful unelected political figure” in the UK (Collini, 2020), attacked policy-makers’ failure to embrace the ‘relevant science’ concerning ‘evolutionary influences’ on intelligence (Gillborn, 2016) and arranged for Plomin to visit the Department for Education “to explain the science of IQ and genetics to officials and Ministers” (Cummings, 2013:64).

In education, hereditarian analysis has been acknowledged for its ability to breed ‘fatalism, deficit-thinking and elitism’ (Gillborn, 2016). This presentation critically examines how discredited ideologies are re-emerging in institutions, publications and public debates; specifically examining recent claims about the genetic basis of intelligence. The paper is informed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the concept of policy translation. Critical Race Theory is a perspective that contends that race is a historically patterned, contextually specific and multifaceted social construction (Gillborn, 2016). As argued by Saini, proponents of eugenics and discredited ideologies aspire to maintain existing social hierarchies by arguing that the inequality that we see in the world is natural, and not the product of social and historical factors (Saini, 2019). Thus, any science that gives support to the argument that White people are intellectually superior to Black people (i.e. Gould, 1981; Herrnstein & Murray, 1996; Plomin [see BBC, 2015]), is not only deeply erroneous, but fundamentally dangerous in the education policy space.

The concept of policy translation is used here to describe the mobility of complex, uncertain and contested ideas in academic research from non-governmental sites of production to policy networks wherein they are presented as scientific breakthroughs with wide-ranging social and political consequences (McGimpsey et al, 2017). In these movements, ideas and knowledge are ‘mutated and transformed…[rather than] merely being transferred’,  (Stone, 2012:493) despite the increasingly direct relationships between experts and policy-makers that often result. The policy mobilities we describe also cross-national boundaries, with our focus here on education policy mobilities across UK and North American contexts.

Studies exploring policy mobilities often focus on either the relatively unpredictable outcomes of these processes (Stone, 2012) or offer accounts of the effects of policy mobilities as governed by the interests of capital, neoliberalism and class (Davies, 2012; Wilkins, 2022). This study is distinctive in its use of Critical Race Theory to identify and analyse processes of policy translation that are both mobilised by and reproductive of structural racism in education, working to embed racist ideology in education policy and institutions. CRT is used here to delve beneath the political and policy veneer to expose the racial inequity that is often disguised by a seemingly ‘neutral’ and ‘scientific’ façade (Bell, 1992; Gillborn, 2016).

This presentation critically examines recent claims about the genetic basis of intelligence, drawing upon documentation produced in domains of i) scientific knowledge production, ii) non-governmental policy actors, iii) government. We identify series of texts across these domains connected by their representation or citation of the same evidence regarding the relation of genetics and IQ, produced in the UK and US. This allows us to trace both the mobility and the change of ideas and knowledge in processes of policy translation. The paper utilises Critical Race Theory as theory and method, informing the analysis to which selected texts are subjected, and of the significance of the identified policy translations to race inequities. Applying the tenets of CRT in relation to policy mobilities is not only timely, but essential; especially given the resurgence of pseudoscientific discourses which seek to pathologise minoritized groups of people with biological theories of inferiority (Delgado, 1998). CRT offers an understanding of society as shaped by racism which is endemic, systematic and often unrecognised (Ladson-Billings, 2004; Tate, 1997; Taylor, Gillborn, and Ladson-Billings, 2009; Delgado and Stefancic, 2000). It offers a lens through which to consider the ‘business as usual’ (Delgado and Stefancic, 2000) operation of ‘race’ as a social construct which has discursive and material effects on individuals, institutions and in the translation of policies. We identify an ensemble of documents connected by shared ideas and evidence regarding the genetic basis of intelligence, and spanning the three domains identified above. These texts include interview transcripts with leading scientists, books and journal articles, media reports and headlines, and government and policymaker narratives. The analysis of texts includes the identification of i) specific ideas and evidential claims, ii) authorship, iii) citations and references. This data is used to trace the translation of genetic research on intelligence from scientific to policy domains. Analytically, translation here is understood to encompass both the mobility and distribution of discursive constructions, and their mutation as they are made productive in the construction of policy representations of the subjects of education, policy problems of education, and the legitimations of policy intervention in education. Together these perspectives build a clear and concerning case of policy translation of ideas and knowledge from research in hereditarian behavioural genetics to education policy.

Genetically sensitive schooling is one of the latest threats coming from hereditarian behavioural genetics, risking the re-inscription of racialised bio-determinism into education (see for example Murray & Herrnstein, 1994). Contributing to the project of scholarship aspired to by Critical Race Theory, this presentation exposes the threat posed by the damaging and racialised translation of emerging scientific ‘knowledges’ into educational policy texts and practices (McGimpsey et al., 2017), a field Plomin described as the “last bastion of anti-genetics” (Plomin, 2019). One means by which complex, uncertain scientific knowledge in the field of intelligence is translated in the production of crude, certain and racist policy takes place is scholarly brinkmanship. ‘Brinkmanship’ occurs during the process of inserting caveats in which scientists will highlight the probabilistic nature of their findings, but then follow such with deterministic claims; as in the case of Plomin, that DNA can predict school achievement at an individual level, or more incredibly, that private schooling makes no difference because high achievement is programmed genetically (see Plomin, 2019). As Kaufman (2019) explained: “What's frustrating is that there seems to be two different Plomins: (a) the careful, responsible scientist who did groundbreaking research in the field and provides the appropriate caveats, and (b) a publicly unleashed version of Plomin that says outrageous things that aren't even supported by his own research.” ‘Hereditarian’ science linking genetics to intelligence functions in the education policy debate as a ‘new knowledge’ that echoes past theories with alarming familiarity. And it raises distinctive challenges for thinking critically about policy: •How might political elites seek to translate the results of ‘educational genomics’ into policy proposals? •How might ‘the new genetics of intelligence’ be manipulated to fit political agendas and policymakers’ requirements? •How can social sciences safeguard marginalized children and young people in an era of ‘precision’ education?

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