Wednesday, February 22, 2017 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, February 22, 2017 // The Statement
5B
The Push to Change History on Campus
Looking in the Mirror
b y J a c k i e C h a r n i g a, Daily Staff Reporter
I
n an opening scene of “The Dan-
gerous Experiment,” a play that
premiered last month, James Bur-
rill
Angell,
then-University
of
Michigan president, stands before
the Board of Regents at a late 1870s meeting
to fight for women’s right to admission to the
University.
As a contribution to the ongoing bicenten-
nial celebration, the play — written by LSA
junior Emma McGlashen — depicts a time in
University history when forward-thinking
campus leaders faced resistance from the
institutional norms of the day. Portrayed as a
fatherly figure, Angell challenges his conser-
vative opponents in favor of a woman’s right to
enroll at the University.
“What struck me most strongly, doing
research, was the humanity in the history,”
the play’s program quotes McGlashen as say-
ing. “Social movements of the time inspired
some and threatened others. The students
were barely adults, and the adults were just
doing the best with the world they lived in,
and that’s the most quintessentially human
thing.”
However, there is more to Angell’s his-
tory than can be conveyed on a stage. Today,
Angell is known as the namesake of Angell
Hall and the oldest senior honor society at the
University. The beloved Michigan Union was
dedicated to him. Few, however, associate him
with negotiating an exclusionary immigration
policy viewed darkly in U.S. history.
Following his tenure as University presi-
dent, Angell played a key role in drafting the
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 while serving as
U.S. minister to China. Renamed “The Angell
Treaty,” it became the first comprehensive
law limiting immigration to the United States.
The treaty led to a decade-long moratorium on
Chinese laborers and restricted those who had
already migrated in response to racial preju-
dice and anger over wage competition on the
West Coast. Chinese immi-
gration would be effectively
banned until 1943.
*****
Campuses
across
the
nation have been roiled by
the question of historical
revisionism, or the desire
to reconcile modern moral-
ity with the darker points
of an academic institution’s
history.
At Yale University, stu-
dents staged a sit-in at
Calhoun College in protest
of the school’s namesake,
alum John C. Calhoun the
seventh vice president of
the U.S., who championed
slavery as a “positive good.”
Earlier this month, Yale
administrators agreed to
rename the college after
Grace Hopper, a Yale alum,
computer science pioneer
and Navy admiral.
In late 2015, Princeton
University students chal-
lenged the name of the uni-
versity’s Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and Inter-
national
Affairs.
Though
Wilson — who served as pres-
ident of both Princeton and
later the United States — was a champion of
national self-determination and democracy
abroad, his administration pursued domestic
segregationist policies far more aggressive
than those of his predecessors. In spite of the
president’s controversial policies, Princeton’s
board of trustees declined to rename the
school in April 2016.
Debates surrounding the renaming of Uni-
versity buildings raise an uneasy question:
How can the dark episodes of American his-
tory be reconciled with the country’s current
values?
Former LSA Dean Terrence McDonald, a
professor of history and director of the Bent-
ley Historical Library, currently serves as
chairman of the President’s Advisory Com-
mittee on University History, which was
commissioned by University President Mark
Schlissel in the spring of 2016 to draft guide-
lines for renaming University buildings.
The committee released a memo in Janu-
ary outlining eight principles for consider-
ation upon renaming a University building,
including pedagogy, interpretation, histori-
cal and institutional context, contemporary
effect and a proposed process for implementa-
tion. There are, however, no binding rules for
future buildings, and any name change must
receive approval from the board.
“Our document is not a policy on naming,”
McDonald said. “If a historical question is
raised about an existing name, that’s when
we come into play. None of the principles will
determine (what names are chosen), but taken
together they will offer perspectives.”
McDonald said the timing of the memo is
explained by the coming of age, not only of the
University, but of academic institutions across
the nation.
“It’s really incredible how much we’re start-
ing to learn about the University,” McDonald
said. “These issues of … naming buildings have
been in the air at other campuses at well. Their
own anniversaries have created this pushback
to history. Georgetown was financially saved
by the sale of slaves. How do you deal with it?”
*****
Hindsight has not favored Clarence Cook
Little, a biologist who was president of the
University from 1925 to 1929. Born to an “old
Boston family” that traces its lineage to Paul
Revere, Little progressed to Harvard Univer-
sity, where he studied genetics and cancer.
After serving as an officer in World War
I, Little jumped between various academic
positions, serving as president of the Univer-
sity of Maine from 1922 to 1925 before he was
appointed president of the University.
Serving as University president from 1925
to 1929, Little’s name has been attached to
the C.C. Little Science Building on Central
Campus since 1968. In recent years, however,
students have questioned whether his name
contradicts the University’s values.
During his brief tenure, Little did rela-
tively little. He banned alcohol in fraternity
houses, tried to limit the use of automobiles in
some areas of campus and expanded research
resources available to faculty. Little resigned
after four years — hurt by a recent divorce and
facing opposition from segments of the faculty
— and dedicated the remainder of his career to
research, becoming managing director of the
American Cancer Society in 1929.
However, Little was also a firm believer
in eugenics, a now-discredited pseudo-sci-
ence that sought to improve the human race
through selective breeding, maintaining that
certain genes were defective and should be
kept from reproducing.
In Europe, Nazi leaders used eugenics
to justify violent and discriminatory poli-
cies against Jews and other populations they
deemed “inferior,” such as homosexuals, dis-
abled people and Romani.
Little was a president of the American
Eugenics Society, an organization that spear-
headed the promotion of eugenics education
nationwide. He also supported eugenic ster-
ilization, maintaining that those who were
deemed “unfit” for breeding should be steril-
ized. In accordance with the sterilization laws
enacted by the state, the University’s hospital
performed forced sterilizations until the mid-
20th century.
Little’s beliefs were not unique to the time,
nor was he alone at the University. Eugenics
was widely accepted across the medical pro-
fession and Victor Vaughan, the first dean of
the University’s Medical School, held similar
views. The Victor Vaughan building is also
located on Central Campus, serving as a hos-
pital administration building located on Cath-
erine Street.
Because of his belief in eugenics, Little sup-
ported birth control — an unusual position at the
time — as a means to prevent what he considered
unworthy pregnancies.
Along with John Harvey Kellogg, popularly
known as the cereal magnate and less popularly
known for his questionable politics and support
for eugenics, Little helped organize the third
Race Betterment Conference in 1928, at which
people shared what would now be considered
discriminatory, exclusionary and racist ideas.
“It’s the easiest thing in the world to judge
people by our contemporary standards,” McDon-
ald said. “What we know and stand for and what
people in the time knew and stood for. And we
need to understand that. And historians
wrestle with that all the time, but that’s the
complicated thing. How do we have sufficient
knowledge, and empathy, and how can we
stand back and judge what they did?”
A panel discussion, titled “The Power of
Place-Naming: C.C. Little, Eugenics, and the
University of Michigan,” will be held in April
to debate the merits of the continued use of
Little’s name on campus buildings. Ameri-
can Culture Prof. Alexandra Stern, author of
“Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Bet-
ter Breeding in Modern America” is organiz-
ing the panel.
Stern said her bicentennial event will
explore the implications of the University’s
history as it pertains to Little. She said while
there were many connections between the
eugenics movement in the early 20th century
and the University, the same could be said for
prominent universities across the country.
“But what is interesting and what prompts
us to use the bicentennial as a period of
reflection,” Stern said. “He was only presi-
dent for four years — he appears to have left
due to some pressure because of his contro-
versial ideas and some of his discriminatory
belief.”
The panel discussion, which Stern hopes
will consist of three to four faculty members,
will create the forum for a conversation about
the process of naming, and talk through it as
part of a deliberative process.
“I’m not coming to the event with my deci-
sion already made about what should hap-
pen to the building,” Stern said. “Should the
building be renamed? Who was C.C. Little?
What does it mean that thousands of under-
graduates everyday are going into this build-
ing named after a person with those beliefs?
Do we erase history if we take a name off the
building, and if we do, do we sanitize the past
to make it cleaner and neater for ourselves?”
Stern said that though it was planned
before the memo’s release, her event coin-
cides in the spirit of those guidelines.
Overall, Stern said, she believes the nam-
ing process at the University should not be
lightly undertaken. In the context of history,
she said, figures praised in their time, like
C.C. Little, may not remain so pleasant when
viewed through the lens of their contempo-
raries.
“I think the real question is: Does the C.C.
Little name and does his history, does it rise
to the level of needed to be renamed by the
University?” Stern said. “The fact is it is get-
ting close to that threshold, because it keeps
coming up.”
***
Further complicating the question of the
naming of University buildings is the influ-
ence of donors. Contrary to what most believe,
Jim Harbaugh’s job title isn’t the head coach
of the Michigan football team. Instead, he is
officially the J. Ira and Nicki Harris family
head football coach. Because of a $10 million
donation to the Athletics Department, all
those who hold the position will also bear the
Harris family name.
Those who donate to the University decide
what happens to their funds, which has occa-
sionally been a point of contention with the
University community. When the renaming
guidelines were released in January, mem-
bers of the campus community rehashed some
recent naming grievances, including the con-
troversy surrounding the changing of Denni-
son Hall to Weiser Hall
in 2014. The change
was enacted when Ron
Weiser — a sitting Uni-
versity regent — made a
$50 million donation to
the school.
McDonald
high-
lighted pedagogy as the
most essential of the
guidelines for renam-
ing buildings. For him,
every naming oppor-
tunity can be a teach-
ing opportunity, even
in cases of financial
endowments.
“Acknowledging
a
perfectly generous gift
to the University, that’s
an excellent thing to
teach about,” McDon-
ald said. “When some-
one makes a donation,
it’s not inappropriate
to put their names on
it. We’re teaching about
generosity, and giving
back and commitment
to this University. It can
be a good example of
pedagogy.”
Weiser was not the only
donor to face pushback for attempting to rename
a building after himself. Last semester, Regent
Mark Bernstein (D) donated $3 million to the
reconstruction of the Trotter Multicultural Cen-
ter on the condition it be renamed the Bernstein
Multicultural Center. Amid criticism by students
and members of the campus community that
changing the name of the center would erase
William Monroe Trotter’s legacy, Bernstein
withdrew the funds.
Trotter was a civil rights activist and co-
founder of the NAACP in 1909. The Trotter Cen-
ter is the only building on campus named after an
African American.
These episodes raise the question of whether
the name of a historical figure can be replaced
by a large donor in the future.
“When the University makes a commitment
to a name, it’s a very serious commitment,”
McDonald said. “We have to understand this
is the commitment the University’s made.
There is a heavy burden of proof to change a
name.”
Tappan Hall, named after Henry Philip
Tappan, the first University president, hous-
es the Fine Arts Library. The building was
named after him in the 1890s, 40 years after
his 11-year term.
“It would be hard to find a critic for Presi-
dent Tappan ... (even though he) was vehe-
mently opposed to the admission of women,”
McDonald said. “What do you do about this?
He was a visionary leader, except for one
thing. Nobody’s perfect, no context is com-
plete.”
As the University looks beyond the bicen-
tennial, these naming debates will continue.
Though these are not questions with easy
answers, context as well as understanding
are crucial tools moving forward.
PHOTO BY ALEXIS RANKIN
James Burrill Angell
PHOTO COURTESY OF BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY
Clarence Cook Little
PHOTO COURTESY OF BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY