Yale Renames Calhoun College Over Slavery Ties College named for ardent supporter of slavery will instead honor computer scientist who was awarded posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom By Melissa Korn
https://www.wsj.com/articles/yale-renames-calhoun-college-over-slavery-ties-1486839600
Yale University will change the name of Calhoun College, a residential college named for an ardent supporter of slavery, and replace that moniker with one honoring computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper.
University trustees, known as the Yale Corporation, voted in favor of the renaming on Friday, reversing a decision last year to keep the name. Keeping the name had been defended as a way to confront rather than paper over the legacy of slavery.
The change will go into effect in time for the 2017-2018 academic year.
“John C. Calhoun’s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a ‘positive good’ fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s mission and values,” President Peter Salovey said in a message sent to the Yale community on Saturday. He said depictions in the college celebrating plantations and the Old South suggest that Calhoun was honored in part because of his support for slavery, not in spite of it.
Yale is among a number of colleges that have grappled with how to honor their histories without offending modern sensibilities. Vanderbilt University last year said it would pay $1.2 million to remove the word “Confederate” from a residence hall’s facade, while Princeton University said it would keep Woodrow Wilson’s name on its school of public and international affairs and a residential college, while increasing discussion of the former president’s support of segregation.
The naming of Yale’s Calhoun College, one of a dozen residential colleges across the campus, to which students are tied for their undergraduate experience, dates to 1931. Calhoun was a Yale graduate, former U.S. senator, secretary of war, secretary of state and vice president. Yale is adding two more residential colleges this year.
In announcing the name change, Mr. Salovey on Saturday called Ms. Hopper “a visionary in the world of technology” and trailblazer in historically male-dominated fields.
She received her master’s degree in mathematics from Yale in 1930 and her Ph.D. in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1934, then taught mathematics at Vassar College for a decade before enlisting in the U.S. Navy.
Ms. Hopper worked on early computer software and helped develop COBOL, a computer language that became ubiquitous by the 1970s. Ms. Hopper retired as a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy at age 79 and was awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by former President Barack Obama.
A task force composed of two Yale professors and a university alumnus recently recommended the name-change. Trustees chose from among names that had been submitted as alternatives to Calhoun, and as options for the naming of two new residential colleges on campus.
Comments are closed.
