A special committee has been formed at Yale University, set with the task of renaming offensive buildings and monuments around campus.
According to The Daily Caller, The Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming will determine which aspects of Yale’s history continue and the ones that don’t. The committee was formed due to the controversy surrounding a residential college at the school that is named after a former vice president and defender of slavery, John C. Calhoun.
Six faculty members, three alumni, two students, and one administrator make up the committee.
At this point, Calhoun College has not been renamed, in large part due to Yale President Peter Salovey previously saying the move doesn’t represent the school’s core principles of “light and truth,” like its motto states.
“Removing Calhoun’s name obscures the legacy of slavery rather than addressing it,” he said earlier this year.
But that's all about to change. As the DC notes, Salovey has reversed his stern stance against renaming historical buildings on campus and now wants the committee to pursue the changes.
“It is now clear to me that the community-wide conversation about these issues could have drawn more effectively on campus expertise,” the president said in a statement. “I have therefore appointed a Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming, and am charging this committee with developing clearly delineated principles to guide the university’s decisions on proposals to remove a historical name from a building or similarly prominent structure or space on campus.”
Salovey’s sudden change of heart may have been influenced by the actions of a Yale employee, who over the summer, purposely broke a historic stained glass window in the Calhoun building because it depicted slaves working in the fields. That employee was charged and fired, but was never punished. In fact, he was rehired and is back on the payroll.
No word on whether the school will remove "Yale" from its title, since it was named after Elihu Yale, a known-slave trader.
