Yale drops college name tied to slavery advocate
Yale University will rename one of its residential colleges, replacing the name of an alumnus remembered for his role in the Confederacy and advocacy of slavery with that of an alumna who was a pioneering mathematician and computer scientist who helped transform the way people use technology.
The decision to rename Calhoun College reverses one made last spring, when Yale President Peter Salovey said he did not want to erase history, but confront it and learn from it.
Colleges across the country — as well as other institutions, cities and legislative bodies — have wrestled with similar questions, as they consider monuments to the past in the context of modern life. Racial tensions and protests have intensified those debates in many places.
Salovey said Saturday that he still believes in the importance of confronting history rather than erasing it. But a committee led by a historian crafted a set of principles for considering renaming — starting with a strong presumption against it, but establishing a means for evaluating the idea in exceptional circumstances, such as when the principal legacy of the person is fundamentally at odds with the values of the institution.
That was true of Calhoun, Salovey said, “a white supremacist, an ardent defender of slavery as ‘a positive good,’ someone whose views hardened over the course of his life, who died essentially criticizing the Declaration of Independence and its emphasis on all men being created equal . ... I think we can make this change without effacing history. We’re not removing evidence of John C. Calhoun from our campus.”
By the beginning of the next academic year, the name of alumna Grace Hopper will be added to the building, and the residential college will be known by that name.
The legacy of Calhoun, who graduated from Yale in 1804 and 1822 and served as a U.S. vice president, secretary of state, secretary of war and senator, becoming an influential champion of slavery, had been debated at the school over the years. But those discussions turned to urgent pleas in 2015 after a white man who revered the Confederacy shot and killed nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, S.C.
That led South Carolina lawmakers to take down the Confederate flag that had long flown at the state Capitol, and efforts at Yale and elsewhere to stop honoring the name of Calhoun.
That fall, protests over racial issues erupted on campus, and Salovey promised changes, including a more diverse faculty and a new center for studies of race and ethnicity.
But university leaders resisted demands to drop the Calhoun name.
Last spring, Salovey wrote in a letter to the campus community that deleting the name “might allow us to feel complacent or, even, self-congratulatory ... Retaining the name forces us to learn anew and confront one of the most disturbing aspects of Yale’s and our nation’s past. I believe this is our obligation as an educational institution.”
But in August, he asked a committee to establish principles to guide university leaders when considering renaming.
They concluded with four things to think about: Whether the principal legacy of the person is fundamentally at odds with the university’s mission; whether that legacy was debated during the person’s life; why the person was honored by the university; and whether the building has an important role in creating community on campus.
“This principal legacy of Calhoun ... conflicts fundamentally with the values Yale has long championed,” Salovey wrote in a letter to the campus community Saturday. “Unlike other namesakes on our campus, he distinguished himself not in spite of these views but because of them."