@dstark Thanks for posting that committee website info! Very interesting! - Some quite highly esteemed/credentialed members …one would think this group will be up to this task…
Am I seeing this right though when I pull up their bios- there is just one actual African American on the committee -Wilhelmina M. (Mimi) Wright? I wonder if this is problematic…??
@jym626 Your link to the committee members signing the petition didn’t work can you summarize?
never mind just saw your update. thx
@jym626, that’s a secure website. I can’t get on there.
I read conflicting things from David Blight. I read for history sake maybe the name should be kept. The latest thing I did read was you don’t need to keep the name.
I don’t want to see Yale go from a racist symbol to a partially racist symbol. A partially racist symbol is still racist. 
I don’t see a great compromise here so some people are going to be disappointed.
I see one member from the black community in the committee. I don’t know the race of two members. I see very smart people who are historians on the committee. A black American is going to have the experience of being black in America while a non black person can never have that experience. I think the committee is going to listen to black Americans.
I see there are members of the committee from the financial community. I guess the views about how changing the names affects Yale’s finances will be brought up.
I think it is disgusting if somebody won’t donate to Yale if the Calhoun name is removed. If I was Yale, I wouldn’t want that money. I am not Yale though. Calhoun would not have been on my list of names.
I see somebody who has worked for a holocaust foundation, or something like that, is on the committee.
I don’t know how somebody can speak with such pride, “I live in Calhoun”. I would support that name changed as soon as possible.
I know. People have different views.
Its not a secure site, @dstark . I pulled it up off the web. IIRC it was a link form one of the Yale Daily News’ articles.
Its called “letter to Peter and Corp” dated 5/5/16.
@runswimyoga @dstark Among the committee members, in addition to Mimi Wright, Jonathan Holloway (Dean of Yale College) is African-American. For further background on him, and what this crisis has cost him, see here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/nyregion/yale-college-dean-torn-by-racial-protests.html?_r=0 and here: http://wwlp.com/2015/11/07/yale-students-speak-out-about-racial-climate-on-campus/
This is not a simplistic story of a group of old out-of-touch white men on the Yale Corporation giving a united community the back of their hand, as some may feel. Again, there are many constituencies (and many different, considered and sincerely held points of view within those constituencies). Yale is trying to resolve this matter as thoughtfully as it can, in the knowledge that whatever it decides is likely to have repercussions far beyond Calhoun College, and will inevitably disappoint the many whose proposed solutions weren’t adopted.
@DeepBlue86, thanks for the info and the links. I liked the links. Informative. I understand your last paragraph.
I live in Northern California. I worked in an office of 5 people. 3 were racists. They had sincerely held points of views…and they were racists.
I understand there are sincerely held points of views…but decisions have to be made. What is Yale going to do? Choose the points of views that have been considered and sincerely held but have racist overtones or not? Yale’s decisions are going to help define the school.
What is going on at Yale? Offensive Halloween costumes, a frat party with only white women invited (Is this true?), buildings named after slave owners, very few African American professors, swastikas on campus, students complaining they don’t feel welcome on campus (Your link had an Asian male complaining)…what is going on?
I’m not convinced about the frat party. There were conflicting reports.
What happened to that post Mastadon promised us?
Oh, you should never doubt Mastadon.
He already posted links to an article by a Columbia professor and another one by an US Army librarian and called them examples of how Yale was planning to solve “Negro problem”
I am sure he will come up with more stuff.
I think - I know - we’re talking past each other, @dstark.
Other than choosing to leave things exactly as they are (which I don’t hear anyone advocating, and seems very unlikely to happen), anything that Yale decides to do will be progress toward dealing with the racism in Yale’s history. There’s no right answer - the question is how much Yale should do, balancing everyone’s interests and mindful of the potential disruption and the precedent being set.
There’s a continuum of possible actions, ranging from promoting education and putting up lots of signs and art in Calhoun College, to hyphenating the name of Calhoun College with that of a black alumnus or other notable figure, to removing the Calhoun name entirely and replacing it with something else to be determined, to moving on from there to changing the names of Morse and other residential colleges named after slaveholders/racists, to revisiting the Yale name itself, given Elihu Yale’s personal history.
There are different views - within and among students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders - as to what should be removed and what preserved in order to atone for racism, enable continuing dialogue and prevent whitewashing. Different views as to what should be added to or replace the Calhoun name, or any other controversial college names. Many permutations, and many ideas as to what’s necessary and appropriate in the circumstances. It seems to me that you insist on seeing this in a binary way - Calhoun off or on - when it’s a much more complicated choice than that, every answer is going to make many people feel that either not enough or too much was done, and the ultimate consequences aren’t necessarily obvious or controllable once you start removing or altering names.
It could be argued that the best thing Elihu Yale did in his life was make the donation that got the university named after him. Apart from that, he administered the slave trade in Madras and made a fortune out of it, was directly responsible for enslaving and mistreating individuals and ultimately seems to have been removed for corruption. One might claim that Congressman/Senator/Secretary of War/Secretary of State/Vice President John C. Calhoun’s record of public service was superior, and, unlike Elihu Yale, I don’t believe he sought to enrich himself through his office. Elihu Yale’s views on blacks don’t seem to have been any less repellent to 21st century observers than John C. Calhoun’s, either. Based on all this, should changing the name of Yale University be on the table? If not, why not?
If Elihu Yale were a paragon of virtue, the answer would be straightforward. Simply comparing the two men’s lives, though, it’s not morally obvious (at least to me) that Calhoun College, which has 40 - 50 black members (less than 1% of the undergraduate population), should have its name changed, while Yale University, which has some 600 black undergraduates that might feel harmed by attending a university named after someone like Elihu Yale, should not.
Do you think the Yale Corporation wants to encourage that kind of discussion, though? Do you think they want to get into a war of attrition in which they negotiate about Calhoun this year, Morse next year and Yale the year after that? Do you think they want to deal with what that would do to the campus climate and relations with alumni? It seems to me that this is why they’ve appointed the committee, in the hope that it will settle these issues for all time.
I think most people would tell you it would be objectively insane for Yale University to contemplate severely damaging or destroying its relationship with most of its hundreds of thousands of students and alumni, let alone the incalculable brand value built up over 300 years, by altering or removing the Yale name. Some are already suggesting it, though - you can see evidence of that in one of the links on the Calhoun website. If you disagree with their view because you think the Yale name is too valuable to change, does that make you a racist? If it doesn’t, why not?
This is why, somewhere, after due consideration of the alternatives and the feelings of all stakeholders, a line is going to have to be drawn. Wherever it’s drawn, though, there will be unhappy people on either side of it.
I’m not going to get into the issues with your last paragraph, because all of it’s been extensively litigated elsewhere and there’ll be no end to this discussion (I note your 34,000 posts on this forum, which I couldn’t match in several lifetimes).
People can donate, or not, for any reason they choose. To imply racist motives is highly unjustified.
@DeepBlue86,
I know all the arguments you just made.
I can argue with you, but I would like to think you have heard the reasons why the Calhoun name should go and why comparing Yale and Calhoun doesn’t necessarily fly.
I think Deep Blue is making the point very cogently that the same rationale for changing Calhoun could easily be applied to changing Yale. And he’s right - you insist on being binary about this. It’s frustrating when you’ve already decreed your way is right. Yale needs to develop principles for renaming (which presumably they are doing) - which circumstances merit, which don’t, instead of your knee jerk “some people are offended so it must be renamed.” Where’s the tipping point? 1 person? 10? 100? 1000?
I expect Yale’s renaming committee to
do what it said it is going to do.
Yes, come up with principles. And within those principles, see where Calhoun renaming fits. It might be renamed, it might not, it might be hyphenated, plaques might be put up, who knows. But it’s not the knee jerk “it must be renamed” position you are taking. Go conceptual on this one, okay?
OK, @dstark, so if several hundred black Yale students - a multiple of the number of black 'Hounies- accompanied by many more of other colors, start holding protests of which the central point is that it’s too painful to attend a university named after a corrupt, notorious slave trader and that the name “Yale” needs to come off, what’s your position on that? That you’re not black, can’t presume to understand how they feel and of course the name should be changed? If not, why not?
@Pizzagirl, No. Don’t tell me what to do.
Let me help you.
I looked at arguments before I posted. I gather more information as I go along. I will continue to look at new information. I know renaming is a process. I know the decisions Yale is going to make can be complicated. I know there is a difference between remaming Yale and renaming Calhoun. More importantly, I know the committee knows. I know that Yale has to deal with lots of gray area. I don’t believe every renaming decision is binary or leads to a mass binary decision.
I have looked at the Calhoun remaming issue. Read the arguments on both sides. I don’t believe there is a slippery slope by renaming Calhoun. Yale’s renaming committee is going to come up with guidelines to make sure there is no slippery slope.
Calhoun’s name should be eliminated. I expect Yale’s guidelines will upset people. I doubt everybody is going to be happy.
Are you saying the hundreds of professors who want Calhoun renamed are making knee jerk reactions? The students who suffer from racism are making knee jerk reactions?
Pretty much the best the anti-renaming crowd can do is cry slippery slope or trot out the hypotheticals at this point.
I mean, what if Handsome Dan came out of the closet as genderqueer and protested that dividing college sports by biological sex was offensive? what would you say to that omg amirite?
You are an intelligent person. You know that slippery slopes matter.
Because they are professors, a multitude of them can’t be wrong? Remember Duke Lacrosse and the Group of 88?
“I know there is a difference between remaming Yale and renaming Calhoun.”
What if there is no difference?