Yale University To Drop Name Of Slavery Advocate From Calhoun College

John Lugo, of Unidad Latina en Accion of New Haven,
is Arrested During a Demonstration

Administrators at Yale University announced on Saturday that a college named for John Calhoun, a former US vice-president who was an ardent supporter of slavery, will be renamed after sustained protest and activism from students.

“This is a victory for the New Haven community,” Kica Matos, one of the leaders of the Change the Name Coalition and a fellow at Yale’s Stiles College, told the Guardian.

“We have fought hard for the university to rename Calhoun and finally they stepped up to do the right thing. No longer will John C Calhoun’s name disgrace the city and the university.”

The school is being renamed for Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist who also served as a rear admiral in the US navy. Like Calhoun, Hopper, who was posthumously awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama in November, is a Yale alumnus.

“This decision, especially in these fraught times, is a monumental step forward,” said Christopher Lapininga, a 2013 alumnus and member of the New Yale Colleges group.

University officials said on Saturday that the school will not remove symbols of Calhoun on campus, such as engravings and a statue that tops the landmark Harkness Tower. It also will not discourage alumni if they want to continue associating with the Calhoun name instead of that of Grace Hopper College.

In 2016, after sustained discussion and controversy, the Yale corporation decided to retain the name.

“The decision to change a college’s name is not one we take lightly,” the Yale president, Peter Salovey, said on Saturday. “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.”

Calhoun, a senator from South Carolina who was separately secretary of state, secretary of war and vice-president under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, was a champion of “states’ rights” in the years before the civil war.

In 1837 he argued, beyond the rhetoric of many 19th-century pro-slavery politicians, that slavery was neither a necessary evil nor a moral conundrum but a “positive good … indispensable to the peace and happiness” of both races.

“Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually,” Calhoun falsely stated from the Senate floor.

Chris Rabb, a 1992 Yale graduate, has spoken out against the name since his own days living at Calhoun College, when he successfully lobbied for the removal of a stained glass window depicting a black man in shackles kneeling before Calhoun. He said this week that just changing the name would do little.

“To me the real issue is context,” said Rabb, now an educator and state representative in Pennsylvania. “How do you contextualize the choice made in the 1930s” – when the college was founded – “and the choice it made ever since to keep it?

“What does it mean now in terms of Yale’s connections to slavery and issues of social and racial justice in a diverse city?”

The controversy flared again last summer following the arrest of a black dining services worker, Corey Menafee, who used a broomstick to smash a stained-glass window at the college that depicted slaves. Criminal charges were dropped and Yale rehired Menafee, who had described the image as offensive.

Matos cited Menafee as one of the reasons the administration changed course on the name.

“This victory happened because of the courage of community leaders, faith-based leaders, faculty, city residents and students who came together to seek change,” he said. “This is New Haven at its best.”