Jordan was also a strong supporter of eugenics, and his published views expressed a fear of "race-degeneration", asserting that cattle and human beings are "governed by the same laws of selection".

[4] His middle name, Starr, does not appear in early census records, and was apparently self-selected; he had begun using it by the time that he was enrolled at Cornell.

[9] Jordan himself, reflecting on the experience noted that "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession.

[16] He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system; like Cornell's, it was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum.

Jordan quickly accepted the offer,[4] arrived at Stanford in June 1891, and immediately set about recruiting faculty for the university's planned September opening.

"[28] As one commentator put it, "Though he found meager evidence to support his preconceptions, he still confidently asserted that 'always and everywhere, war means the reversal of natural selection.

[3] Soon after it was first delivered, the essay was published by the American Unitarian Association (copyright 1902) under the main title of "The Blood of the Nation" and a subtitle of "A Study of the Decay of Races Through the Survival of the Unfit."

[29] An expanded version of the essay was delivered in Philadelphia at the 200th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth in 1906 and printed by the American Philosophical Society.

The following year, an expanded version of the original essay with an embossed cover was published by Beacon Press in Boston under the new main title "The Human Harvest" and the same subtitle.

Jordan's eugenic and anti-war views may have been in part shaped by the death of his brother in 1862 from a 'camp fever,' likely typhoid, immediately after enlisting to fight in the American civil war.

[31] In 1910, the original and slimmer version of the essay was again published by the American Unitarian Association in a "less expensive form to insure the widest possible distribution.

Jordan then sailed to Hawaii, hired a physician to investigate the case, and declared she had in fact died of heart failure, a condition whose symptoms bear no relationship to those that were actually observed.

[36] Since Mrs. Stanford had a difficult relationship with him and reportedly planned to remove him from his position at the university, he might also have had a personal motive to eliminate suspicions that might have swirled around an unsolved crime.

[47][48] His later work, The Higher Foolishness, inspired the philosopher Martin Gardner to write his treatise on scientific skepticism, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.

[47] However, Gardner noted that "the book is infuriating because although Jordan mentions the titles of dozens of crank works, from which he quotes extensively, he seldom tells you the names of the authors.

"[47] Jordan married Susan Bowen (1845–1885), a biologist and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, whom he met at Louis Agassiz's Penikese Island Summer School of Science, in her hometown of Peru, Massachusetts, on March 10, 1875.

[54] On September 19, 1931, Jordan died at his home on the Stanford University campus after suffering a series of strokes over two years.

[55] In July 2020, the president of the Sierra Club denounced Jordan and its other early leaders for being "vocal advocates for white supremacy and its pseudo-scientific arm, eugenics."

In October 2020 the Stanford Board of Trustees voted unanimously, on the recommendation of an advisory committee, to remove Jordan's name from all four facilities.

The advisory committee also recommended that the renaming of Jordan Way, a street on the medical campus, "may take place during the course of ongoing construction and planning.

[80][81][82] In October 2020 the Indiana University Board of Trustees voted overwhelmingly to remove Jordan's name from the biology building as well as a parking garage and a "river" (actually a small creek) that runs through the center of the campus.

[83][84][85] In August 2021, staff members of the Biology Department sent a petition to the new IU President Pamela Whitten urging the university leadership to rename the Biology Building in honor of James P. Holland, an African-American IU alumnus, award-winning former faculty member and endocrinologist who died in 1998.

[89] In April 2021, the Mayor of Bloomington created a seven-member task force to investigate possible replacement names for Jordan Avenue.

[92][93] As of October 2024[update], Indiana University South Bend campus has a scholarship named in honor of Jordan that enables its students to study outside of the United States for a short period.