Name of SC’s John C. Calhoun no longer to grace Yale college

After a swelling tide of protests, the president of Yale announced Saturday that the university would change the name of a residential college commemorating John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century white supremacist statesman from South Carolina.

The college will be renamed for Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing computer scientist and Navy rear admiral who received both a master’s degree and a doctorate from Yale.

The decision was a stark reversal of the university’s decision last spring to maintain the name despite broad opposition. Although President Peter Salovey said he was still “concerned about erasing history,” he said “these are exceptional circumstances.”

“I made this decision because I think it is the right thing to do on principle,” Salovey said on a conference call with reporters. “John C. Calhoun’s principles, his legacy as an ardent supporter of slavery as a positive good, are at odds with this university.”

Salovey and the other members of Yale Corp., the university’s governing body, made their decision after an advisory committee unanimously recommended the renaming. The school is still determining when the change will be implemented, but Salovey said it would be by fall at the latest.

Students reacted with joy to a change many said was long overdue. “There’s a huge sense of relief and celebration,” said Rianna Johnson-Levy, 21, a senior from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who was involved in the protests. “Students of color have been fighting for this change for decades and it’s hard to believe this day is finally here.”

Still, despite their delight about the renaming, many students hope that the university will continue to move beyond symbolism to address more pressing issues of racial inequality on campus, like the dearth of black faculty members. During the fall 2015 protests, the university announced that it was committing $50 million to a faculty-diversity initiative to confront the fact that less than 3 percent of its arts and sciences faculty is black. But since then, several prominent black professors have left the university. About 11 percent of Yale’s roughly 5,400 undergraduates identify themselves as black or African-American.

“This is definitely a victory, but we’re not done fighting,” Johnson-Levy said. “It’s our job to keep pushing Yale in the right direction.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2017 at 9:43 AM with the headline "Name of SC’s John C. Calhoun no longer to grace Yale college."