In June 2020, conservative writer Ann Coulter penned an op-ed arguing that Yale University should change its name. Coulter observed that Elihu Yale, the namesake of the university, was a slave trader. Her op-ed precipitated in what was seen as the disingenuous #CancelYale movement on social media. Graeme Wood, Yale Professor and writer for The Altantic, pushed back against #CancelYale, arguing that the university’s name “has long been divorced in meaning from the life of” its namesake. (The same argument is made by Coulter about Fort Hood and Fort Bragg.) Wood further claimed that supporters of #CancelYale were simply trolling.
But Yale alum Nathan J. Robinson noted even though the movement is “a silly effort to troll activists” it raises a serious question: “What principles do we use to evaluate what should and shouldn’t be renamed?” As the Yale community mulls over this question, another Ivy League school has changed the name of one of its schools. Princeton decided to strip Woodrow Wilson’s name from its school of public affairs because of the president’s purportedly racist policies.
This debate is not new. In 2001, to mark the 300th anniversary of Yale University’s establishment, three Yale scholars published a research paper in which they noted the university’s history of relying on slave-trading money. In response, then-university officials defended the school’s history noting that “few, if any institutions or individuals from the period before Emancipation remained untainted by slavery.”
In 2017, Yale University changed the name of Calhoun College, one of its residential colleges. The college was named after John C. Calhoun, a staunchly pro-slavery politician who served as U.S. Vice President from 1825-32. This name change came after Peter Salovey, Yale’s president, convened a Committee to Establish Principles for Renaming. Some writers noted the inconsistency of policy when the principles that were established did not also precipitate a change to the name of the university, too.
But society has arrived at a period of historical reckoning. The defenses of historical legacies that sufficed in 2001 and even 2017 may no longer be accepted now. As statues are toppled and names are struck off from building masonry, Yale’s previous attempts to historically contextualize the university’s connection with slavery may be indefensible to some.
Perhaps Yale’s name reveals the peril of naming academic institutions after donors or prominent alumni. After all, it is argued that Jeremiah Dummer, not Elihu Yale, was the university’s most important early benefactor. Dummer courted Yale and other donors to contribute to the then-fledgling Collegiate School. Despite Dummer’s contributions, Yale’s name had a better consonance.
–DISCUSSION QUESTIONS–
Should Yale change its name? What principles should we use to evaluate whether an institution should be renamed? Whose voice should matter most?
Should we evaluate historical figures by present-day moral standards?
Graeme Wood argued that the university’s name “has long been divorced in meaning from the life of” its namesake. Is it possible to separate an institution from the legacy of its namesake? If so, how?