Former governor appeals Middlebury Chapel lawsuit to Vermont Supreme Court

Former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas has appealed his lawsuit against Middlebury College to the Vermont Supreme Court — the latest development in a years-long legal dispute over the naming of the college’s Middlebury Chapel.

Douglas’ lawsuit, first filed in 2023, sought to reverse a decision to remove former Gov. John A. Mead’s name from the college’s chapel. Mead’s descendents supported Douglas’ appointment as a special administrator of Mead’s estate before he filed suit.

The building had for a century stood as the Mead Memorial Chapel, named after the former governor and longtime trustee of the college. But in 2021, the college, amid a statewide reckoning over Vermont’s history of eugenics, decided to rename the building, Middlebury Chapel.

Douglas argued this was a breach of contract and of good faith. Mead, who helped the college pay for the chapel’s construction, included in his offer that the chapel bear the Mead name in perpetuity, Douglas said in court documents.

Vermont Superior Court Robert Mello in April granted Middlebury College summary judgement, dismissing Douglas’ claims and resolving the case without a trial.

But Douglas, in his appeal to the Supreme Court, argues that the Superior Court erred when it concluded that there were no naming terms laid out in the contract between the college and Mead. The court, Douglas said in legal documents, instead “imposed its interpretation of a ‘reasonable time’ for the name to remain on the chapel — which it decreed was 100 years.”

The former governor is asking the court to remand the case back to Superior Court to consider whether there was a clear contract with an enforceable promise — that is, “whether the Mead name would remain on the chapel as a memorial, for as long as the building existed,” Douglas said in court filings.

“The structure that John Mead built was both a Memorial and a Chapel, and memorials have no end-date; they are always meant to be for as long as the memorial stands,” Douglas wrote in an email.

An attorney representing the college did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment, and a media relations employee with the college did not return a request for comment. The college previously argued in Superior Court that no clear request to keep the name in perpetuity can be found in available documents.

“John Abner Mead had the gratification of seeing his wishes for construction of a prominent chapel on Middlebury’s campus brought to fruition — and, indeed, that chapel bore his name in recognition of the gift for over a century thereafter,” the college wrote in a Superior Court filing. “But, as Mead did not expressly condition his gift on the use of his name, Middlebury was not legally bound to preserve the appellation ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ name in perpetuity.”

The legal case serves as a reminder of Vermont’s history with eugenics in the early 20th century. In his appeal, Douglas makes the argument that Middlebury College itself was much more influential in that movement than Mead.

But the matter has also drawn the attention of other colleges and universities who argue the case has broader implications to consider regarding colleges’ and nonprofits’ obligations to donors who contribute gifts.

Ten colleges from four nearby states — including Tufts University, Amherst College and Wellesley College — have filed an amicus brief with the court in support of Middlebury College.

These types of institutions, lawyers wrote in legal documents, handle tens of thousands of donations, some made generations ago. The handling of these gifts are settled under common law, “which generally prohibit donor standing to pursue claims with respect to a completed gift,” they wrote.

A departure from that practice, the colleges argue, “would upend the current system,” they wrote in the brief.

“It would result in significantly increased litigation for the courts as well as unnecessary administrative and legal costs for institutions like Middlebury and the colleges, requiring them to expend funds that would otherwise support their charitable purposes,” they wrote.

‘The altar of public relations’

The state Superior Court noted in its decision to dismiss the case that “no explicit reference to perpetuity” existed at the time. Douglas argues in his appeal that none was necessary.

“Why would anyone have foreseen the need to have a ‘perpetual clause’ dictating the behavior of a college whose leaders were his dear friends?” Douglas said in court documents. “Even the judge allowed for the fact that there could have been a contract — he just decided that if there was one, it had expired. We believe that a jury should make that determination.”

The Supreme Court has yet to schedule a hearing on the matter.

The college, in its removal of Mead’s name, pointed to a farewell speech that Mead made to Vermont’s General Assembly in 1912 where he espoused eugenicist ideas.

Mead told lawmakers in his speech that a “class of individuals in whose mental or nervous construction there is something lacking” were “increasing out of all proportion to the normal growth of the population.”

He continued that “most of the insane, the epileptics, the imbeciles, the idiots, the sexual perverts, together with many of the confirmed inebriates, prostitutes, tramps and criminals” in state’s jails, asylums and poor farms were “the results of these intermarriages or the natural offspring of defective parents.”

Mead encouraged lawmakers in Vermont to consider “how best to restrain this defective class and how best to restrict the propagation of defective children,” he said.

Douglas has said previously that Mead’s speech ultimately did not have a significant impact on Vermont’s eugenic sterilization policies, which were instituted after Mead’s death in 1920.

In his appeal, Douglas said that Mead, in his 1912 address, was “speaking as a physician,” that he “cautiously referenced vasectomy as a safer alternative to other sterilization practices,” and was “motivated by medical concern for women’s health rather than ideological adherence to eugenics.”

Douglas instead pointed to the college’s own history with eugenics, and wrote in his appeal that the college “sought to distance itself from Vermont’s eugenics history by scapegoating Mead while concealing its own extensive role.”

The college for more than 50 years, he said, “promoted eugenics through teaching, scholarship, and advocacy — even after the Holocaust revealed the catastrophic consequences of eugenic theory.”

Douglas in his appeal likened the college’s removal of the Mead name from the chapel to a “hypocritical public relations smear campaign to scapegoat” Mead.

The college “sacrificed Governor Mead on the altar of public relations,” Douglas wrote, and “used him as a subterfuge to conceal the fact that Middlebury College was literally, a Eugenicist Factory, for over 50 years.”

The college had courses in sociology, biology and zoology that emphasized race, heredity and biological problems, Douglas wrote, and the college was one of 44 institutions listed in the 1914 Journal Heredity as teaching eugenics.

In an email, Douglas said the institutions arguing in support of Middlebury College “want to maintain their aversion to allowing unpopular views on their campuses & to ensure the right to cancel their own generous alumni donors.”

“If I were to present a substantial gift to a college, I’d be concerned that, at some point in the future, its leaders would discover some obscure statement of mine that justifies the same shabby treatment that was visited on Gov. Mead,” he wrote.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.