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A couple of months ago, SoylentNews covered the debate on whether to rename historical buildings, monuments, and other landmarks, specifically centered on the case of Calhoun College at Yale.
YaleNews now reports that a decision has been made to rename the college after Grace Hopper, a computer scientist who also served as a Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy, and who was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year.
Yale President Peter Salovey announced today that the university would rename Calhoun College, one of 12 undergraduate residential colleges, to honor one of Yale's most distinguished graduates, Grace Murray Hopper '30 M.A., '34 Ph.D., by renaming the college for her.
Salovey made the decision with the university's board of trustees — the Yale Corporation — at its most recent meeting. "The decision to change a college's name is not one we take lightly, but 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," Salovey said. [...]
This decision overrides Salovey's announcement in April of last year that the name of Calhoun College would remain. "At that time, as now, I was committed to confronting, not erasing, our history. I was concerned about inviting a series of name changes that would obscure Yale's past," said Salovey. "These concerns remain paramount, but we have since established an enduring set of principles that address them. The principles establish a strong presumption against renaming buildings, ensure respect for our past, and enable thoughtful review of any future requests for change." [...]
In August, Salovey asked John Witt '94 B.A., '99 J.D., '00 Ph.D., the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law and professor of history, to chair a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming. [...] The Witt committee outlines four principles that should guide any consideration of renaming: (1) whether the namesake's principal legacy fundamentally conflicts with the university's mission; (2) whether that principal legacy was contested during the namesake's lifetime; (3) the reasons the university honored that person; and (4) whether the building so named plays a substantial role in forming community at Yale. In considering these principles, it became clear that Calhoun College presents an exceptionally strong case — perhaps uniquely strong — that allows it to overcome the powerful presumption against renaming articulated in the report, said the president.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday February 14 2017, @05:15PM
It sounds to me like this Calhoun dude took the approach that
you shouldn't do something unless you thought it was good. The others
were willing to compromise with evil. I'm not saying slavery is good.
I'm saying that his philosophy sounds more consistent.
That may be true. One response to my post could be to note that Jefferson and Washington and others were hypocritical. And I do agree, though there are further complexities to their specific situations too. (Even in the North as states gradually adopted abolition, it was rarely an immediate freeing of all slaves. Instead, a lot of laws gradually freed slaves by freeing only new children born to slaves or forcing former slaves to serve in "apprenticeship" roles for indeterminate amounts of time. It's often forgotten that there were still a handful of slaves in some northern states that weren't actually freed until the Civil War, even though slavery had officially been "abolished" in those states decades earlier.) So, Jefferson and Washington pretty much followed other thinkers in their "gradualism" approach to abolition.
What has gotten
us in more trouble over the course of history? People arguing in favor
of morally poor positions, or people willing to compromise their principles?
I understand the point you're making, but it's problematic in the specific case of Calhoun. Without the "positive good" theory of slavery, more Southern states might have gradually moved toward abolition in a gradual way like the North, or at least might have been open to alternative ways of dealing with slavery. The world was steadily moving toward abolition in the 1830s and 1840s and 1850s, with a lot of European nations officially adopting it. That's what forced the South to start having to defend its perspective more, rather than giving into the changing world around them. Instead, Calhoun's (and others') shift to pro-slavery rhetoric caused Southerners to "dig in their heels" about the "positive good" of slavery, leading to greater divisions. And ultimately those divisions blew up into the Civil War.