Renowned scholars such as Columbia anthropologist Franz Boas and his prestigious cast of students, including Margaret Mead, Otto Klineberg, Ruth Benedict, Ashley Montagu, and Melville Herskovits, had demonstrated scientific errors in eugenicists’ theories about inherited traits. Raised in a German Jewish home, Boas began teaching at Columbia University in 1896. Within three decades, he and his students had established anthropology as a respected discipline focused on studying culture instead of race.
