A new exhibit chronicling a controversial period at the University of Minnesota raises the question.
The names behind the most egregious acts are some of the best known at the U, including former President Lotus D. Coffman and Edward Nicholson, who served as the U’s first dean of student affairs. Both served during a turbulent time when issues of race, equality, war and students’ rights roiled the campus. Both have prominent campus buildings named after them.
Now, as controversies over Confederate monuments rage and names of slave owners are being removed from buildings, streets and lakes, the exhibit is likely to raise questions about whether well-known U administrators involved in discriminatory policies of the past should continue to be memorialized.
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Josh Verges / St. Paul Pioneer Press | 6:53 pm, Feb. 20, 2019 ×
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ST. PAUL The names of four former University of Minnesota leaders should be scrubbed from Twin Cities campus buildings, according to a task force appointed by President Eric Kaler.
A 125-page report made public Wednesday, Feb. 20, says the four white men, who promoted racist and anti-Semitic policies at the university, were not simply a product of their times. Rather, they discriminated against students despite significant activism on and off campus and while other universities chose integration.
The 11-person task force, chaired by law and history professor Susanna Blumenthal and liberal arts dean John Coleman, argued that changing the building names will help the university come to terms with its past: