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From: President Peter Salovey

To: The Yale Community
Re: Decision on the Name of Calhoun College

To the Yale Community,

Today I write to announce that the name of Calhoun College will be changed, and that we will
honor one of Yales most distinguished graduates, Grace Murray Hopper 30 M.A., 34 Ph.D.,
by renaming the college for her. The universitys board of trusteesthe Yale Corporationand I
made this decision at our most recent meeting. The decision to change a colleges name is not
one we take lightly, but John C. Calhouns legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader
who passionately promoted slavery as a positive good fundamentally conflicts with Yales
mission and values. I have asked Jonathan Holloway, dean of Yale College, and Julia Adams, the
head of Calhoun College, to determine when this change best can be put into effect.

This decision overrides my announcement in April of last year that the name of Calhoun College
would remain. At that time, as now, I was committed to confronting, not erasing, our history. I
was concerned about inviting a series of name changes that would obscure Yales past. These
concerns remain paramount, but we have since established an enduring set of principles that
address them. The principles establish a strong presumption against renaming buildings, ensure
respect for our past, and enable thoughtful review of any future requests for change.

In August, I asked John Witt 94 B.A., 99 J.D., 00 Ph.D., the Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960
Professor of Law and professor of history, to chair a Committee to Establish Principles on
Renaming. After this committee completed its work, three advisorsG. Leonard Baker 64 B.A.
(Calhoun College); John Lewis Gaddis, the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval
History; and Jacqueline Goldsby, professor of English, African American Studies, and American
Studies and chair of the Department of African American Studieswere charged with applying
the Witt committees principles to the name of Calhoun College. The thoughtful and instructive
reports produced by these two distinguished groups will be available.

As part of its work, the Committee to Establish Principles on Renaming studied similar
conversations about naming and commemoration that have arisen in recent years at institutions
such as Georgetown University, Harvard Law School, Princeton University, and the University
of Texas at Austin. At these and other institutions of higher learning, certain names have
changed, while others have not. Yale has learned from these situations while, necessarily,
charting its own course.

The Witt committee outlines four principles that should guide any consideration of renaming: (1)
whether the namesakes principal legacy fundamentally conflicts with the universitys mission;
(2) whether that principal legacy was contested during the namesakes lifetime; (3) the reasons
the university honored that person; and (4) whether the building so named plays a substantial
role in forming community at Yale. In considering these principles, it became clear that Calhoun
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College presents an exceptionally strong caseperhaps uniquely strongthat allows it to

overcome the powerful presumption against renaming articulated in the report.

Understanding Calhouns Legacy

The name of Calhoun College has long been a subject of discussion and controversy on our
campus. John C. Calhoun 1804 B.A., 1822 LL.D. served the United States as vice president,
secretary of state, secretary of war, and a U.S. senator. Yet he leaves behind the legacy of a
leading statesman who used his office to advocate ardently for slavery and white supremacy.

When he learned of Calhouns death, Benjamin Silliman Sr. 1796 B.A., 1799 M.A., professor of
chemistry at Yale and the namesake of another residential college, mourned the passing of his
contemporary while immediately condemning his legacy:

[Calhoun] in a great measure changed the state of opinion and the manner of speaking
and writing upon this subject in the South, until we have come to present to the world the
mortifying and disgraceful spectacle of a great republicand the only real republic in the
worldstanding forth in vindication of slavery, without prospect of, or wish for, its
extinction. If the views of Mr. Calhoun, and of those who think with him, are to prevail,
slavery is to be sustained on this great continent forever.i

Sillimans conviction (shared by many other Americans) that Calhoun was one of the more
influential champions of slavery and white supremacy speaks across the generations to us today.
As a national leader, Calhoun helped enshrine his racist views in American policy, transforming
them into consequential actions. And while other southern statesmen and slaveholders treated
slavery as a necessary evil, Calhoun insisted it was a positive good, beneficial to enslaved
people and essential to republican institutions. The legacy that Silliman decried was that of a
man who shaped the state of opinion on this issueensuring that slavery not only survived but
expanded across North America.

This principal legacy of Calhounand the indelible imprint he has left on American history
conflicts fundamentally with the values Yale has long championed. Unlike other namesakes on
our campus, he distinguished himself not in spite of these views but because of them. Although it
is not clear exactly how Calhouns proslavery and racist views figured in the 1931 naming
decision, depictions in the college celebrating plantation life and the Old South suggest that
Calhoun was honored not simply as a statesman and political theorist but in full contemplation of
his unique place in the history of slavery. As the Witt report reminds us, honoring a namesake
whose legacy so sharply conflicts with the universitys values should weigh especially heavily
when the name adorns a residential college, which plays a key role in forming community at
Yale. Moreover, unlike, for example, Elihu Yale, who made a gift that supported the founding of
our university, or other namesakes who have close historical connections to Yale, Calhoun has
no similarly strong association with our campus. Removing Calhouns name in no way weakens
our commitment to honoring those who have made major contributions to the life and mission of
Yaleanother principle described in the Witt report.

The presidential advisors found no Witt committee principles that weigh heavily against
renaming, three committee principles that weigh heavily toward renaming, and a fourth that
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suggests the need to rename. The advisors recommended unanimously that the name of Calhoun
College be changed.

It is now clear to me, too, that the name of Calhoun College must change. Yale has changed
magnificently over the past 300 years and will continue to evolve long after our time; today we
have the opportunity to move the university forward in a way that reinforces our mission and
core values.

In making this change, we must be vigilant not to erase the past. To that end, we will not remove
symbols of Calhoun from elsewhere on our campus, and we will develop a plan to memorialize
the fact that Calhoun was a residential college name for eighty-six years. Furthermore, alumni of
the college may continue to associate themselves with the name Calhoun College or they may
choose to claim Grace Hopper College as their own. As the Witt report states, A university
ought not erase the historical record. But a great university will rightly decide what to
commemorate and what to honor, subject always to the obligation not to efface the history that
informs the world in which we live.

A Legacy of Innovation and Service: Grace Murray Hopper

In selecting a new name for the college at the corner of College and Elm streets, Yale honors the
life and legacy of Grace Murray Hopper. Hopper was an exemplar of achievement in her field
and service to her country. As we considered potential namesakes, the trustees and I benefited
from hundreds of unique naming suggestions made by alumni, faculty, students, and staff who
either advocated for a name change to this college or submitted ideas for the names of the two
new residential colleges. This community input was indispensable: Hoppers name was
mentioned by more individuals than any other, reflecting the strong feeling within our
community that her achievements and life of service reflect Yales mission and core values.

A trailblazing computer scientist, brilliant mathematician and teacher, and dedicated public
servant, Hopper received a masters degree in mathematics (1930) and a Ph.D. in mathematics
and mathematical physics (1934) from Yale. She taught mathematics at Vassar for nearly a
decade before enlisting in the U.S. Navy, where she used her mathematical knowledge to fight
fascism during World War II. A collaborator on the earliest computers, Hopper made her greatest
contributions in the realm of software. In 1952 she and her team developed the first computer
language compiler, which would make it possible to write programs for multiple computers
rather than a single machine. Hopper then pioneered the development of word-based computer
languages, and she was instrumental in developing COBOL, the most widely used computer
language in the world by the 1970s. Hoppers groundbreaking work helped make computers
more accessible to a wider range of users and vastly expanded their application. A naval reservist
for twenty years, she was recalled to active service at the age of 60. Hopper retired as a rear
admiral at the age of 79, the oldest serving officer in the U.S. armed forces at that time.

The recipient of Yales Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the National Medal of Technology, and the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, Amazing Grace Hopper
was a visionary in the world of technology. At a time when computers were bulky machines
limited to a handful of research laboratories, Hopper understood that they would one day be
ubiquitous, and she dedicated her long career to ensuring they were useful, accessible, and
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responsive to human needs. An extraordinary mathematician and a senior naval officer, Hopper
achieved eminence in fields historically dominated by men. Today, her principal legacy is all
around usembodied in the life-enhancing technology she knew would become commonplace.
Grace Murray Hopper College thus honors her spirit of innovation and public service while
looking fearlessly to the future.

The Calhoun issue is complex. There are substantive arguments on all sides. Good people
moral and principled peoplecan and will disagree about it. These disagreements, however
great they may seem, should not prevent us from finding common ground. Our bonds as Yalies
are greater than our opinions about a name or a building. Those bonds ensure that we will
continue together the great work of improving the world today and for future generations
through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.ii This is our
common ground.

Sincerely,

Peter Salovey
President and Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology

i
George Park Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman, M.D., LL.D., late professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology
in Yale college: Chiefly from his manuscript reminiscences, diaries, and correspondence, Volume 2 (New York: C.
Scribner and company, 1866), 98-99. Emphasis added.
ii
Yale University Mission Statement, http://www.yale.edu/about-yale/mission-statement.