New Haven, Conn.
The report from the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming opened the door for Yale to revisit a controversial decision earlier this year not to rename a residential building, Calhoun College, that commemorates a prominent 19th Century advocate of slavery and white supremacy.
John Calhoun, a Yale graduate, was a U.S. senator from South Carolina and a vice president who provided powerful political support for the preservation and expansion of slavery in antebellum America. His name was given to Calhoun College in 1931 to honor an alumnus whom Yale then termed a “statesman.”
But the Yale of the early 20th century, a bastion of white male privilege, was very different from the racially diverse and coeducational Yale of today. The transformation of the university helped fuel discussion about the Calhoun name, a conversation that gained momentum following the June 2015 massacre of African American parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C. The shooting, which authorities call a hate crime, helped prompt South Carolina to take down a Confederate flag that had flown on the grounds of the state Capitol and prompted a review of Confederate imagery and racially charged symbols at schools and public institutions across the country.
After lengthy deliberation, Yale President Peter Salovey announced in April that the university would stick with the name of Calhoun College, saying at the time that he did not want to obscure Yale’s association with the legacy of slavery.
On Friday, Salovey announced that the university will move swiftly to review that decision. He appointed three advisers — two professors and an alumnus who lived at Calhoun College — to review the Calhoun case in light of the new report. Salovey said in a message to the community that he expects the Yale Corporation, which governs the university, would make a final decision early next year.
“Questions of naming and commemoration raise difficult but important discussions,” Salovey said. “These are complicated intellectual and moral issues faced by universities and other institutions around the world. From the outset, I have sought for Yale to bring its scholarly resources to bear on this subject of national and international import. My hope is that the principles announced today will prove useful not only to our community but to others as well.”
The Yale committee on renaming, chaired by law and history professor John Fabian Witt, included graduates, students, faculty and administrators. Its report was unanimous.
The committee’s report surveyed not only the debate at Yale, which has lasted more than a year, but also naming questions at other prominent universities, including Georgetown. The Catholic university in the District last year renamed two buildings that had once commemorated early 19th century school leaders who orchestrated the sale of 272 Jesuit-owned slaves.
Jonathan Holloway, dean of Yale’s undergraduate college and a professor of African American studies, history and American studies, served on the committee. Holloway, who is African American, previously was a master of Calhoun College. That title, carrying its own echoes of slavery, was recently changed. The leaders of the residential colleges at Yale are now called “heads.”
Holloway, in a conference call with reporters, said that he had heard conflicting views from black graduates who lived at Calhoun College. Some said the name must change. But another told him “you’ve got to keep the name,” Holloway said.
“It’s really quite complicated, this issue,” Holloway said. Above all, he said, schools like Yale must not try to hide from future generations would be considered “dirty laundry.”
“That would be bad history,” Holloway said.