BUZZ
Decision follows 2023 petition with over 1,000 signers
Harvard University announced Thursday it will drop the first name of its John Winthrop House, responding to long-standing efforts to separate the undergraduate residence from its namesake, whom historians believe was a slaveowner.
The review process began with a 2023 student petition, endorsed by over 1,000 Harvard affiliates, urging the university to remove the name “John” from Winthrop House, The Harvard Crimson reported.
The decision acted as a compromise between those who wanted “to stop honoring slaveowners” and those wishing “to retain a familiar name at the heart of Harvard’s undergraduate culture,” according to the student newspaper.
The petitioners believed the house was named after both the elder John Winthrop, the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his great, great grandson, John Winthrop, a former Harvard president from the 1770s who is also considered the first American astronomer, The College Fix previously reported.
Student protesters argued that because they both supported slavery, their name should be wiped from campus.
However, the review committee’s 35-page report clarified “that the elder John Winthrop was not an official namesake for the House — though the Winthrop House website states that the House is named for two John Winthrops,” according to the Crimson.
The committee avoided determining whether the men’s actions were “sufficient to recommend denaming.” The committee wrote that it “could not agree that the overall legacy of these two men demanded removing their names from the House.”
Instead, it recommended dropping “John” to “respond to Black and Indigenous students who feel alienated by a name they see as honoring the two John Winthrops,” the Crimson reported.
“Professor Winthrop’s place in the naming of the House and his contributions to Harvard and to the scientific community have long been obscured. Because of this, the moral complications in their legacies seemed a more decisive factor,” it wrote.
The committee also wrote that fully removing the Winthrop House name might diminish the broader Harvard community’s chance to confront the institution’s history.
Further, the committee suggested the school find “creative opportunities” for students who live at Winthrop House to learn more about its history.
“The decision on Winthrop House’s name is a new milestone in how Harvard approaches demands to reckon with racism in its history. Calls to dename Winthrop became prominent after a landmark 2022 report probed Harvard’s ties to slavery,” the student newspaper reported.
However, not everyone is in support of renaming the house.
Author and historian Mary Grabar told The Fix last year the committee should keep the original name, as it is “difficult to find any figures of historical significance who did NOT own slaves at the time.”
Grabar said contextualizing or denaming the house, “will simply invite further ahistorical attention on what is in reality a political project: the attempt to wipe away American history and founding principles.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Harvard University website; Gil C/Shutterstock
