I’ve seen many Japanese Americans protest in favor of reparations and an apology. Which they received.
You are free to start a campaign to have Calhoun College renamed Reagan College. I’m sure many a Yale parent would be thrilled.
Roosevelt did enough good to outweigh his internment of Japanese Americans, although he should be criticized for it.
^ Would you expound on your methodology of determining if a historical figure has done enough good to outweigh the bad? Colleges could use it to determine in their building’s names are up to par.
Interesting fact - the federal government is still providing veteran’s benefits to the daughter of a Civil War veteran. He was in his 80s when she was born.
ETA - Reagan isn’t qualified to have a residential college named after him since is isn’t an alum. However, if they gave him an honorary degree, they can claim him, like they are claiming Ben Franklin, lol.
One of the key differences between the Japanese-Americans and slavery was that the US government was wholly responsible for the WWII internment camps, and the payments were made to survivors. In the case of slavery, slaves were generally owned by private individuals or institutions, not the government, and there are no living survivors.
“I’m calling on Yale to no longer sweep under its wealthy rug the fact that Calhoun was a notorious defender of a philosophy we today consider catastrophic and abhorrent.”
Didn’t a post above indicate that they installed some kind of explanatory plaque at this hall? So how are they “sweeping it under the rug”?
I am not a Yale alum, nor do I have a kid currently attending Yale. It seems reasonable to me for current students to ask Calhoun be renamed. I don’t understand ridiculing them. That just seems unnecessary to me. I am interested in what alums think about the issue. I’ve been trying to remember who has what Yale connections in this thread. I have difficulty understanding why those with no Yale connection are so exercised about this. It seems to have really touched a nerve. I was hoping JHS or Hunt might comment on the re-naming question, and so kept reading along. Of course, I certainly understand if they don’t care to do so.
I joined the thread when it began to discuss white privilege. There was some more general discussion for a while. Recently I’ve found myself in groups, in real life, where individuals are debating whether monuments should be removed, buildings renamed, etc, but those individuals are more or less directly involved in making some of the decisions. Usually they are putting students feelings first in their decisions, when that is practical, as far as I can tell.
I also am not a Yale Alum, nor do I have a kid attending Yale.
I do however have a son who will be attending Wharton (in one week) where he was chosen to become a civic scholar. This means he will spend the majority of his time advocating for social justice issues for minorities- trying to bring business solutions to societal problems… social impact is his passion. Right now there is a disparity in educational and employment access and outcomes for minorities. The LGBT population does not yet have full civil rights (you can be fired and denied housing in many states for merely being gay). These problems will take social and policy changes to fix.
Multiculturalism is no longer a buzz word it is the new era in business- as diversity in corporations has been proven to increase profits and efficiency - a diverse board makes for better problem solvers. There is an inequality today in our ability to bring diversity to the conference room. He wants to find ways to equalize this.
I came onto this thread in interest of minority POC issues at other IVYs - in an effort to get a glimpse of things he may well run into… I am taken aback by the passion with which some are mocking students for trying to change their environment -one that they have deemed needs changing. But I am heartened by the fact I know there are so many students like my son who are ready to effect change.
The students have every right to ask for change, but just because they are students there and may have a meaningful right to protest doesn’t mean they should whitewash history. How does ignoring that slavery had a historical impact on Yale change anything other than assuaging their feelings (perhaps of powerlessness, but maybe more “don’t remind us”)?
Why not instead of bowing to yet another campus political correctness protest and pretending the guy never existed, keep the building name, install a plaque with a bit of history (which I understand Yale has decided upon) and have a required freshman seminar on US history which includes the modern day reaction to issues such as this one?
My D attended a small LAC and became so disillusioned by the students who basically never went to class or spent any time in the library, but found plenty of time to march around campus for one cause or another, that she actually became a bit more conservative during her time there. I just don’t get why so many colleges continue to bow to, sorry, but these KIDS! I recognize that there was alumni discussion and support for the potential building name change at Yale, but for the most part, it’s hard for a lot of us older folks to not want to shake our head and tell 18-20 year olds that they haven’t, in fact, lived a very long life, that they should ALL read their history books (not just those more or less politically involved) and become a bit more knowledgeable about this country so that perhaps their interactions can become more thoughtful and less reactive. How many times do we see student protesters on the news for one issue or another that just sound completely ignorant, primarily because they haven’t any real background on the cause they are promoting or protesting? (and yes, I do recall being 19 and thinking I knew everything about everything, sigh…)
This is the classic correlation is causation fallacy. The best performing companies have diverse boards, and therefore people believe that the diverse boards cause improved performance.
An alternate explanation is that high performing companies have the luxury and talent to look at all the ways that they can be criticized, and inoculate themselves against it. The top management in a company like Apple or ExxonMobil realize that they will be criticized for lack of diversity in board representation, and they will find competent diverse board members.
To be explicit, I am not saying that a diverse board makes things worse. It can make it better or worse.
I do think the schools should consider the request of students, or sometimes even make the decisions themselves. Who would care if Calhoun house was changed? Just a bunch of the people who were in that house for the last 70 years, and maybe many of them wouldn’t care. Calhoun wouldn’t care, South Carolina wouldn’t care, there probably aren’t a lot of little Calhouns who would care.
Penn State took quick action to remove Paterno’s name from everything. Some people cared, but the university made the decision and that was it.
“The students have every right to ask for change, but just because they are students there and may have a meaningful right to protest doesn’t mean they should whitewash history. How does ignoring that slavery had a historical impact on Yale change anything other than assuaging their feelings (perhaps of powerlessness, but maybe more “don’t remind us”)?”
Well said.
“there are many (now with access to guns) that haven’t gotten over the civil war and refuse to believe in civil rights for all and want the south to “rise again” working every chance they have to enact legislation (recent voting restrictions in NC comes to mind) that undermine full equality- These remaining symbols give them hope and perceived power as the flag did flying over the statehouse.”
If we were drawing a Venn diagram, and one circle is the unwashed yahoos who are still fighting the Civil War and want the south to rise again, and the other circle is the Yale community (students, alums, faculty), those two circles don’t really intersect.
Don’t kid yourself that that the first group is looking north enough of the Mason-Dixon Line to concern themselves with what a college in CT is doing. They aren’t drawing their power or their rationale from Yale’s actions. They’re not pointing to their fellow racists and saying “see? Yale is on our side!”
Since I knew absolutely nothing about Calhoun’s background before this all hit the news, the protesting students have educated me. For me, the white washing had to do with history I had been taught, which ignored all this, and now I know some some new history. FWIW I took American history in college, as well as HS. These students have educated me about slavery and its historical impact, at Yale and beyond.
^^^ exactly. Protesting the name Calhoun and asking for it to be changed is not whitewashing history. Putting it there in the first place and pretending all is just fine because he was a “worthy” Yale alum IS whitewashing history.
Yale hasn’t said it would put up a plaque about the Calhoun controversy, they are holding a competition for public art:
Oh, and the students have started to call it “the residential college formerly known as Calhoun”.
Maybe something like the seal of Whitesboro, NY would be appropriate
@greenwitch I don’t believe alumni status is required to be a Yale residential college namesake, e,g, John Davenport, died before Yale was established, and that’s not the only one not named after a Yale alum.
Did Ben Franklin go to Yale?
I didn’t go to Yale, but I did attend Harvard which has a similar system. I lived in South House as a freshman which was renamed Cabot House after an old Boston family. North House was renamed at about the same time becomeing Pforzheimer House after who donated a bundle of money. I later lived in Dunster House. I had no clue who Dunster was when I lived there. I guess I should have known he was the first president of Harvard, way back in 1640.