One of the five greatest senators of all time is an opinion.
If you are interested in opinions, why don’t you google worst vice presidents.
The naming of Calhoun may show there are a heck of a lot of racists around.
586 - You seem to be assuming that when Yale named Calhoun, that Yale considered his support of slavery a "flaw."
That is not at all clear to me at this point in time, especially after reading the Yale Alumni article I linked to this morning.
@mastadon, you make my point. The great sin of slavery (to quote someone else I can’t remember) was far more complex than North good, South bad.
A question for @dstark and @pizzagirl. If the civil war was about slavery only, how do you explain the large numbers of familial splits in civil war armies? Do you really believe that there were that many enlightened families with either one stone cold racist child or racist families with one enlightened son? Or better still, look at the Gettysburg Address. Certainly Lincoln was thinking of the struggle to eradicate slavery “that this nation, under God shall have a new birth in freedom”. But he also spoke of the concept of representative government “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Slavery was undeniably a huge issue in the civil war, and over time was understood as the most significant cultural issue being contested, but to assume that it was viewed as such in 1860 is, in my opinion, a gross misreading of the historical record.
And FWIW, I think an excellent argument can be made that the name Yale is no longer associated with Elihu Yale the individual but with the institution itself. Certainly Mr Yale was by no measure as consequential a historical figure as Calhoun, and Calhoun college has no, or at least very little, independant significance from its name. For that reason, I personally do not see it as hypocritical to seek to rename Calhoun college but not Yale itself.
The goebbels college reference was posted days ago. Seems like we are talking in circles.
@runswimyoga, I am not justifying anything. I have no dog in the fight over whether Yale should rename the college. But I object to intellectual laziness. To call Calhoun’s philosophy “over the top” in the context of his times, much less to say that a man who died around a decade before Ft Sumter led us to the civil war is just objectively wrong.
@Ohiodad51, I don’t know who said north good, south bad in this thread. That’s a strawman. Last I looked, Yale is located in the north. Has that changed?
I think I am just going to agree with your last paragraph.
Calhoun’s ideas led us to the civil war. Of course others shared those thoughts.
I haven’t read anything that stated Calhoun physically led the country into a civil war. Any links?
It depends on whether or not you’re taking a principled stance on the issue.
“We don’t like institutions named after bad guys, and we should change their name” - principled.
“We don’t like institutions named after bad guys, and we should change their name, unless nobody really knows who they are, or if it might impact our brand” - not so much.
The point, obviously, is that they were not “Calhoun’s ideas” but rather the ideas of large numbers of people in the country at the time.
I am sure you also understand what the north good south bad phrase references, if not in the above post, certainly in the prior two.
And really, you want to be snarky about a phrase I used that was a direct quote in the post to which I was responding?
I have no idea what point you are driving at by referencing Yale’s geography.
They were Calhoun’s ideas. The ideas didn’t die when Calhoun died.
@doyleb I disagree. Yale the institution means something in itself in a way Calhoun College does not.
Well, with all this controversy, they should look to Vassar. It was founded by a brewer 
@Ohiodad51 Nine of the residential colleges are named after slave owners or slavery supporters. What about those other than Calhoun? Change them as well, on principle?
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MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I have no issue with someone posting that GWTW shows racism. What I do have an issue with is when that comment elicits further comments that have nothing to do with Yale/Calhoun College/John C. Calhoun/slavery, etc, like “What did you think of the movie?” That’s when I start to go into delete mode.
In my view, no name change is needed. All that is needed is for the tour guides to always at the end of the story say “While Calhoun was an influential figure in his days, today we are not proud of his position about slavery” or something to that effect. An not quite accurate analogy would be the naming history of st Petersburg and Mosco. They became Stalingrad and Leningrad and then back. At a particular time, it made perfect sense to rename a certain way. Not that there’s not a “right or wrong” way to rename. It’s that once the door is open it will become easier to make a case for renaming later…
Vassar - Brewer
Excellent Yale president - Kingman Brewster (who explored merging the 2 schools in the late 60’s)
Looks like people forgot that the North and South also differed majorly in what each viewed as fair trade with other nations (their exports were different), tariffs (their import needs were different), and federalism, i.e., how far should the rights of states be set in order to control internal policies vis a vis Federal policy.
No one is disputing the huge role of slavery, but to not understand that other issues were also points of major contention is missing the entire point of why it is still our most deadly war to date. The Civil War was a serious war over the entire direction of the nation, with slavery being one, albeit large, aspect.
At what point do we decide that a person was not instrumental enough in the right way in determining the role and shape of the nation, even though they were instrumental? I would say Calhoun was extremely instrumental in deciding how governance was to develop and gave credence to the South to fight the War, and also gave credence to the North to fight against the South. Slavery was but one aspect of his philosophy. To hold that above all others makes little sense to me, He helped shaped the nation, in good ways and some not so good ways.
》》 Calhoun’s ideas led us to the civil war. Of course others shared those thoughts.《《
But isn’t that a good thing since the Civil War was ALL. ABOUT. SLAVERY (NO QUESTIONS ASKED OR YOU ARE RRRRAAACCCIIISSSTTT!!!)? If the Civil War wouldn’t have happened, would the slaves have been freed?
Anyone who doubts it was about slavery might want to look at this link: