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posted by martyb on Sunday December 04 2016, @02:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the Watt's-in-a-name? dept.

Should Calhoun College (christened in honor of pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun) be renamed?

Yale adopts a new approach to decide whether university properties need new names. Some favor a rule of no renaming at all, some are worried about the excessive 'PC'.

On Friday, a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming, convened earlier this semester at Yale University, issued its final report. This group was not charged with deciding whether or not to rename Calhoun College, the residential unit christened in 1933 in honor of the influential pro-slavery politician John C. Calhoun, which has been a focus of renewed public controversy in the past year. Instead, the committee produced a framework for any and all future renaming decisions. The Yale Corporation has adopted the principles that the committee put forth, and the university's president, Peter Salovey, has appointed a smaller committee to reconsider the Calhoun case in light of this group's recommendations.

Full article

Procedure for Consideration of Renaming Requests


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:59PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:59PM (#436917) Journal

    They aren't necessarily advocating for the name change, they are discussing the naming policies to make sure they uphold the universities values.

    Yep -- I agree that the details are important here.

    It isn't reactionary, it is being well thought out with considerations for how it will impact the university long term.

    I'd put an emphasis on that last bit -- "how it will impact the university long term." While I have no doubt that those involved in preparing this "policy" have good intentions, ultimately the effect of such policies in controversial cases like this is simply to clothe any decisions in a bunch of verbose bureaucratic "justifications." All decisions are still likely to be highly politicized, and the biggest factor will always be about the long-term reputation of the university.

    The Slate article that's linked basically shows how this bureaucratic procedure and set of "questions" could still be used to produce various outcomes in the case of Calhoun, depending on how they answer the questions and weight the different elements.

    I'm NOT saying this procedure is a "bad" thing or that the questions they propose aren't important ones to ask (and can bring more nuance into such discussions). But one way of dealing with dissent and controversy is to "bury in bureaucracy" -- if a Yale President or whoever comes out and says, "We're going to keep/change the Calhoun name," then that president will likely bear the public criticism over the action, whichever way it goes. If, instead, the president can say, "We had a committee that deliberated on this issue, filed a 75-page report, and considered the questions established in our official procedure," then public criticism is bound to be lessened. Nobody will actually read the report, but they'll feel better that it's there. And even if the committee was well-chosen to slant toward a particular outcome and a particular way of applying the "procedure," the whole thing is conveniently wrapped in a larger bureaucratic aura of perceived objectivity.

    By the way, I'm not even necessarily against the Calhoun renaming. I think there should be caution in any historical renaming, and I think in most cases it's potentially better to recognize WHY the name came to be there rather than erasing it. But I also recognize the pragmatic issues at play in a case like this -- which mostly have to do with the politics of which Yale thinks will hurt more: ongoing student protests (if they don't change the name), or decreased alumni donations (if they do). Those considerations are likely to loom larger that just about anything else, whether the decision is made unilaterally by one college official or wrapped up in a multi-layered bureaucratic "procedure."

    My take on what's REALLY going on here: Yale President Salovey wanted to talk about the issue of racism, slavery, and its symbols in his freshman address in 2015, thinking it would be a good "current events" discussion relating to the Charleston shootings and subsequent removal of the Confederate flag from the SC statehouse. He himself brought up Calhoun's name in this address and its problematic status at Yale -- and my guess is that he maybe thought it would be an easy target for Yale to show like it was "doing something" in response to various charges that had been raised over the years about Yale (including how its founder was involved in the slave trade, a whole bunch of residential halls are named after slaveholders, etc.).

    Then he opened a bunch of forums for public comment, and I bet he was surprised by the alumni outrage and the potential impact it could have on things like donations (which are HUGE thing for college presidents -- unlike other college officials, college presidents' successes are often focused on fundraising). So, realizing that there could potentially be a large negative impact on Yale financially (and also realizing that this would likely "open a can of worms" that would lead to further protests for more renamings), he announced in April that they would NOT be changing the Calhoun name. That resulted in massive student protests, media outcry, and large numbers of faculty signing a petition for the reversal of that decision.

    Faced with a horrible public-relations disaster of his own making, President Salovey realized the ONLY way out of this conundrum was to "pass the buck" -- hence why we have an extended report [yale.edu] by this committee and a new bureaucratic procedure.

    Again, I'm NOT saying this is a bad outcome necessarily, but I think we arrived at this procedure mostly because the President of Yale made some serious miscalculations in how his actions and speeches would be perceived.

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