A Conference on UT Campus for ‘Pro-Natalists’ Draws Ire

By Alex Lamb

Photography By Alex Lamb

Reporting Texas

 

 

In April 2024, state and local police cracked down on University of Texas students protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza, following calls for intervention by university administrators.

As with protests on other college campuses, university and political leaders accused the pro-Palestinian protesters of antisemitism.

Almost a year later, one of the same groups involved in those protests, the Austin Chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, took part in another protest — this time to oppose the presence of alleged neo-Nazis and eugenicists at a conference held on the UT campus.

“We’re here for common sense,” said SDS spokesperson Arshia Papari. “Nazis are not good folks to have around, and the university should understand that.”

The activists highlighted what they called a disconnect between the treatment of two groups accused of connections to antisemitic views, questioning  why the $10,000-a-ticket gathering known as the Natal Conference was allowed to be held at the university-owned AT&T Conference Center on the UT campus. The event featured speakers advocating for increased birth rates, known as natalists, and many speakers with well-documented histories of making antisemitic comments and supporting white supremacy.

Natalism is a belief system that advocates for increasing population. Some natalists advocate for increasing only the birth rates of certain populations; others call for more children worldwide.

Critics allege that natalism is a rebranding of the eugenics movement, which the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes as a pseudoscience that took root in the 19th century and sought to solve societal problems through “racial hygiene,” leading to the genocidal actions of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich in Germany.

The Austin conference was organized by Kevin Dolan, an activist in DezNat, the far-right Deseret Nationalism movement. He told the Jolly Heretic podcast in 2023 that “the pro-natalist and the eugenic positions are very much not in opposition. They’re very much aligned.”

This is the second time Dolan has held the conference in Austin; the first was in December 2023 at the Line Hotel downtown.

The Natal Conference’s website, natalism.org, states boldly at the top, “The future belongs to those who show up.”

The New York Times reported that about 200 people attended the conference and described them as a mix of “star demographers, policy wonks and right-wing Twitter celebrities” along with women sharing the joys and frustrations of motherhood. (Reporting Texas was unable to gain access to the conference due to heavy security and the $10,000 ticket price.)

As the conference kicked off that Friday evening, about a dozen members of the Austin chapter of SDS gathered to protest in front of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, a state-owned facility in the Capitol complex, as attendees of the weekend event walked in for a pre-conference private dinner. The conference began the next day across the street in the UT-owned hotel and conference center.

“Why is the university allowing this to be something they attach their name to?” SDS spokesperson Papari asked. “They can’t deny that they are allowing this to proceed on university grounds and with the university’s support.”

Reporting Texas asked UT administrators and conference center leaders about permitting the conference to use a university facility and how that decision lines up with past university statements and policies regarding antisemitism.

University and conference center leaders declined multiple interview requests and instead issued this statement:

“In conformance with the law, the AT&T Hotel & Conference Center leases space to non-University groups for their events without regard to their viewpoint consistent with the First Amendment,” the university said in its statement.

The University Handbook of Operating Procedures’ Nondiscrimination Policy, which applies to visitors to campus in addition to students, faculty and staff, states UT “is committed to providing an educational and working environment for students, faculty, and staff that is free from discrimination and harassment” based on race, religion, national origin or ethnicity, among other factors.

“This policy applies to conduct that occurs on campus,” the handbook states. “Any person found in violation of this Policy is subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination or expulsion, or losing affiliate status.”

The handbook rules governing the use of AT&T Center say first priority for reservations goes to “university programs and activities that further or relate to the university’s academic, educational, cultural, outreach, recreational, and athletic programs.” Lower priority is given to reservations for “individuals, groups, associations, or corporations that are not affiliated with UT System…so long as the reservation and use fits the needs of the university.”

Claire Zagorski, a graduate research assistant and doctoral student in translational science at UT, recently questioned UT’s adherence to its own policies in an opinion page article in the Austin American-Statesman headlined, “Natal Conference and eugenics don’t belong at UT Austin.”

“If they’re going to judge and try to silence one expression of free speech then they can’t really use that excuse if they want to allow a eugenics conference on campus,” Zagorski told Reporting Texas.

“It’s kind of a cop out,” she said of the university’s statement. “I find it hypocritical that they’d say that and at the same time having treated our students the way that they have, in terms of protesting against what’s happening in Israel. It’s hard to reconcile those two things.”

“I think that refusing to touch upon things that are happening on our campus is disappointing and frustrating in the abdication of leadership,” said Zagorski.

In November 2023 in the wake of protests over Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza, then-UT President Jay Hartzell said, “I have zero tolerance for the antisemitic actions targeting our Jewish community.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has also gone on the record regarding his lack of tolerance for antisemitism at state universities.

“Antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish students have no place on Texas university campuses and will not be tolerated by my administration,” Abbott wrote in a March 2024 executive order as pro-Palestinian protests swept college campuses. The governor directed public universities to “review and update free speech policies to address the sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts on university campuses and establish appropriate punishments.

Meanwhile, the Texas Senate is considering legislation this spring that would expand the definition of antisemitism to officially include criticism of Israel and allow for the expulsion of students whose actions or speech can be found to have been motivated by antisemitism.

“They’re picking and choosing what they want to support,” said SDS spokesperson Papari. “And they’re always supporting the right-wing rather than their students or their community. They’re prioritizing the political ideologies of those who they report to.”

“When the governor, the president of the United States, the attorney general of the state of Texas tell you to crush protestors, you don’t care about the First Amendment,” Papari said, referring to the UT administration’s position. “But when it comes to that,” he said, pointing to the Natal conference gathering, “you have no problem saying you defend the First Amendment and will support it to the fullest extent.”

The natalism conference featured several people with ties to white supremacy.

Jack Posobiec, one of the top-billed speakers at the conference, tweeted in 2017 a photo of himself in front of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz with the caption, “The ADL would be wise to remember what happened the last time people made lists of undesirables.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights and hate monitoring group who maintains a public file on Posobiec, includes that tweet in its file on Posobiec.

“In my opinion, things like that are not a reflection of anything that the university should be interested in endorsing,” Zagorski said.

Also speaking at the conference was Jordan Lasker, who goes by the name Cremieux. He is a “long-time supporter of eugenics,” according to The Guardian, which has done extensive reporting on the Natal Conference. Elon Musk has retweeted Cremieux’s posts on several occasions. The Guardian reported recently that Lasker runs a Substack “featuring posts on the supposed relationships between race and IQ.”

Raw Egg Nationalist, another speaker using an alias, is identified by the British anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate as Charles Cornish-Dale, a former academic turned self-described “Right Wing Bodybuilder” who, according to the British group, “champions masculinity and condemns female influence on men.”

“Cornish-Dale’s own books and annuals of his magazine ‘Man’s World’ are published by Antelope Hill, a US-based neo-Nazi publisher that display’s his work alongside their own compendiums of speeches from Adolf Hitler and other Nazi figureheads,” Hope Not Hate reported last year.

Reporting Texas spoke to two conference speakers, Simone and Malcolm Collins, as they walked up to the Bullock museum for the pre-conference dinner. They said their stance is not ideologically driven.

“We need to find a way to increase the number of intentional kids even above historic levels,” Malcolm Collins said.

“So, somebody can say ‘I can’t afford kids because I can’t afford a house with a room for every kid.’ That’s a cultural preference. You can have kids with all of the kids in one room,” Collins said. “If you look at the Irish immigrants when they came here, there’s like five families sharing a house. It’s a cultural preference of our country—and a very indulgent one—that we need to have one room for every kid, that we need to have one house for every family. These are things that are not normative.”

Asked for comment on Posobiec’s threat to the ADL from Auschwitz, he said, “That’s pretty antisemitic if he did that. But I can’t control who speaks at this event.”

Zagorski says UT could exercise more control regarding its facility use.

“I’m willing to concede that we have to be careful with universities and deciding who can and can’t come,” said Zagorski, who in addition to being a PhD student at UT’s College of Pharmacy, is also completing a master of science in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has been a paramedic and a harm reductionist since 2013. “But I would expect that even if something were unpopular that it would be based on good academic inquiry, and that’s not something that we see with natalism. You can poke so many holes in it with evidence-based work, and that is not deterring them,” she said.