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Last month, Caltech announced that the names of six men with historical ties to the university would be removed from all
“campus buildings, assets, and honors.” This unnaming came as the institution renounced its historical connections to the Human Betterment Foundation, a zealous pro-eugenics organization that influenced and admired Nazi racial hygiene policies in the 1930s and 1940s. Caltech determined that prominent trustees of the foundation, such as Caltech’s inaugural president and Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan, no longer deserved to be commemorated at the university.
Also among the six whose names will be scrubbed from Caltech was Harry Chandler, who served as publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1917 until his death in 1944.
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Having traveled the difficult road of coming to terms with racism in its own past, Caltech on Friday said it would remove the names of Robert A. Millikan and five other important figures in its history from campus.
The reason is their association with the Human Betterment Foundation, a major promoter of the discredited science of eugenics and of programs to forcibly sterilize those whom eugenicists labeled “feeble-minded” or “unfit.”
The move amounts to a major reckoning with the university’s history. That’s especially true as it applies to Millikan, who has traditionally been more closely identified with Caltech’s emergence as a leading scientific institution than any other individual.
"Renaming buildings is a symbolic act, but one that has real consequences in creating a diverse and inclusive environment. It is an act that helps define who we are and who we strive to be."