To ensure that our community acquires a deeper, more consistent, and more explicit understanding of our institution’s past, Yale will begin an interactive history project, starting with an examination of the legacy of John C. Calhoun.
Advertisement
President Peter Salovey said the bill would discourage top researchers from coming to Yale and have a negative impact on the region’s biotech companies and other research-based businesses, many of which were spawned by Yale research.
The two new colleges are part of an expansion plan for Yale’s undergraduate student body.
Murray – the first woman and the first African-American to get a residential college named after her at Yale – was an extraordinary scholar, lawyer, and activist.
The decision to retain the name Calhoun College, which has been called that since 1933, caps a period of petitions, protests and widespread student outcry.
He said the university also will be addressing Calhoun’s legacy in other ways, including a work of art to be commissioned and placed on the grounds of Calhoun College. The University of Texas at Austin changed the name of a dormitory that honored a man who was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The decision brings to a close months of deliberation on the issue, and it likely represents an unsatisfying decision for many in the Yale community who believed the name should be replaced.
Yale’s statement went on: “The current masters themselves no longer felt it appropriate to be addressed in this way, and archival records show that “head” and “headship” were placeholders for the title in the university’s original residential college planning documents”. Some people at the university argued the title master, despite its ancient roots with the college system at Oxford and Cambridge, had a painful and unwelcome connotation of slavery.
However, he said, retaining the name “forces us to learn anew and confront one of the most disturbing aspects of Yale’s and our nation’s past”. The term “head of college” will replace it. Mr. Salovey explained that Franklin was a “personal hero and role model” of Charles B. Johnson, a businessman and Yale alumnus who donated $250 million to pay for the new buildings – the largest gift in the school’s history – and who suggested the honor.
Advertisement
But some focused on disagreement over dropping the master title. “The term master has been part of university life since the 12th century, ridiculous”.
