Pitt chancellor: Remove Parran name
Former dean linked to Tuskegee experiments
University of Pittsburgh chancellor Patrick Gallagher is recommending to school trustees that a hall honoring a now-deceased U.S. health figure and Pitt dean be renamed due to his role in the infamous Tuskegee experiments on unsuspecting African-American men.
The chancellor’s statement Monday follows the report of a special campus committee formed earlier this year. Its 15 faculty, staff and student members examined whether Pitt should remove Thomas Parran Jr.’s name from a complex housing the university’s Graduate School of Public Health, in light of what now is known about the experiments.
The committee was announced in February amid growing concern on campus and beyond that a building known as Parran Hall is incompatible with an institution that is a national leader in training health care professionals.
The nine-story structure is easily recognizable on Fifth Avenue on the Oakland campus. It has a giant outdoor sculpture of a skeletal man affixed to one of its halls, celebrating the human pursuit of knowledge.
A petition demanding a name change began circulating during the spring semester.
It stated that as U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Parran “presided over the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments, in which treatment for syphilis was withheld from African-American men in Alabama long after penicillin was proven effective.”
Donald Burke, dean of the university’s Graduate School of Public Health, asked Pitt in January to consider the change as well, due to Dr. Parran’s apparent connection to both the Tuskegee study and a second collection of research known as the Guatemala experiments.
In addition to a new name, the committee recommended that Pitt and the public health school continue to teach about the infamous
studies “so that some benefit may be gained in honor of those who have suffered from the past conduct within the Tuskegee study (19321972) and Guatemala experiments (1946-1948).”
Dr. Parran was U.S. surgeon general from 1936 to 1948 and later founded the public health school at Pitt. He became its first dean and helped secure major funding.
The school’s website of late has not mentioned him. But it stated that the school was created in 1948 with a $13.6 million grant from the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust. The school enrolled its first students in 1950 as the 13th school of publichealth in the nation.
Pitt trustees voted in 1969 to place Dr. Parran’s name on the complex. Mr. Gallagher, in his statement Monday, said his recommendation to remove it is based on a procedural review, the committee’s work and the facts of the case.
“I determined that there was a clear basis for reversal,” Mr. Gallagher said in a memo to trustees. “To name a permanent university asset, such as a building, for a person on an honorific basis is intended to be one of the highest, most visible and permanent recognitions the university can bestow.”
The issue, he explained, turned on the amount of information available at the time the trustees made their decision nearly half a century ago and the secret nature of the experiments that were conducted decades before that.
“This information, I believe, would have impacted the board’s consideration of the proposal to name the building,” Mr. Gallagher stated. “In my view, there is a reasonable likelihood that if the board knew of Dr. Parran’s involvement in the two studies at issue here, which took place before he was dean, one could easily conclude that the decision to permanently honor Dr. Parran wouldnot have taken place.”
“Both studies conducted human trials on vulnerable populations without informed consent. These actions are fundamentally at odds with the university’s core values,” the chancellor added. “As the extent of Dr. Parran’s role in these studies has come to light after the board’s decision to name the property after him in 1969, it is appropriate to revoke this naming decision and to remove any perception of celebrating a name associated with these unfortunate human trials.”
The committee said it may not be possible to determine precisely the extent of Dr. Parran’s involvement in approving, funding and overseeing the experiments. But his tenure overlapping the implementation of the studies gave him some responsibility, members concluded.
The effects, the committee said, persist even today through mistrust by many African-Americans of health providers and reluctance to participate in research studies, to the detriment of their health.
“The power of symbols is not in what they are intended to convey, but in the messages that are received,” stated the nine-page report. “For many in our community and beyond, the received message is that the University of Pittsburgh is celebrating a name associated with some of modern history’s most grievous racialized abuses in the research on human subjects.”
Pitt’s board is scheduled to meet Friday. It is unclear whether a resolution to rename the building will be on the agenda.
Dr. Burke was unavailable for comment Monday, according to his office, which referred an inquiry to the chancellor’s office.
The committee’s work was done under the direction of Pitt’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
The Graduate Student Organizing Committee, working to build a union of grad student employees at Pitt, organized the petition that gathered 1,300 signatures. The group applauded Monday’s news.
“For the black community, the name change shows us that Pitt is making efforts to truly become an inclusive university for us all,” said India Hunter, a graduate student in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences in the Graduate School of Public Health.