Susan Reverby, the Marion Butler McLean professor in the history of ideas and professor of women’s studies at Wellesley College, presents The Infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study: What More Should We Know? on Thursday, May 21, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch, 4801 Main St.

As Wellesley’s first faculty hire in women’s studies, Reverby has taught at the college since 1982. She currently focuses her research on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972), the longest running non-therapeutic research study in America’s history that involved the United States Public Health Service and nearly 600 African-American men in the counties surrounding Tuskegee, Alabama. The men thought they were being “treated,” not studied, for what they thought of as “bad blood.” The study has become a central metaphor for distrust of the health care system and the key example of unethical research.

Reverby was a member of the Legacy Committee on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study that successfully lobbied President Bill Clinton to offer a public apology to the surviving men and their heirs in 1997.

Reverby’s presentation is co-sponsored by the KU Endowment and the Department of the History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.