Markeshia Ricks, Matthew Brady Photos
New Haven Mayor Toni Harp Monday added her voice to those calling for Yale to remove a leading slavery advocate’s name from one of its 12 residential colleges.
On Saturday Yale President Peter Salovey and Dean Jonathan Holloway launched an “open conversation” among students, faculty and alumni about whether the university should rename the college, which bears the name of the late U.S. Sen. John C. Calhoun (pictured above at right). The conversation follows on the heels of South Carolina’s decision to stop flying the Confederate flat at its state Capitol.
“As a descendant of slaves, that is something that continues to scar this country and scar people of African descent,” Harp (at left), a Yale architecture school grad and New Haven’s first female African-American mayor, said in response to a question from a caller to her weekly appearance on the “Mayor Monday” program on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven.”
“I certainly would love to see the name changed. They don’t have the name of an abolitionist for the name of a college. So I would hope that we find a way to change it.”
Click here for a background story on the issue, which characterizes Calhoun as a “senator, vice president, and statesman, Yale class of 1804, was a fervent white supremacist who argued that slavery was ‘a great blessing’ for both white and black Americans.”
Harp observed Monday that “we live in a time where as you learn things and you can make more reasoned decisions, that you ought to be able to make a change.”
The mayor was asked if the name of founding father Thomas Jefferson — a slaveholder — should be removed from prominent buildings.
No, she replied.
“Jefferson had other, broader views about freedom [which] at the time he probably didn’t ascribe to women and Africans — but that if you do, I think the broadness of his view about humanity distinguishes him from the others.”
The discussion about Calhoun begins at 25:35 in the above sound file of Monday’s radio program. During the program Harp fielded questions from listeners by phone and through Twitter about subjects ranging from where ambulances stop at Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital to the first day of public school and her relations with alders backed by Yale’s unions. (She noted that she is supporting some union-backed candidates but not others, and that she has had some policy disagreements with the majority.)
In response to one question she reaffirmed her support for the presidential candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton. “I think it’s time for the United States to have a woman president,” she said. Asked how Clinton compares to Republican candidate Carly Fiona, Harp cited Clinton’s track record on issues as well as her experience as secretary of state. She said the current controversy over Clinton’s handling of email during her stint as secretary of state doesn’t change her opinion: “None of us are perfect. I’m sure had she known that this would be an issue, she would have done something different. The reality is still I think she is the most prepared for this job.
One caller argued that Hillhouse High School should not have three separate “academies” with three separate principals.
Harp acknowledged that the arrangement has produced “a lot of criticism.” She noted that smaller schools like Hyde sometimes have fewer students per principal than Hillhouse. Students tend to do better in smaller schools than in larger ones, where they can sometimes “get lost,” she argued.
She also said that the academies have different missions. She praised the success of Hillhouse’s public safety academy, which gets students started on careers as cops, firefighters and emergency medical technicians: “All over the United States, in large urban areas, the problem of getting young people into public safety jobs is very difficult. This is one way of doing it by starting early.”
That said, she said her administration is “absolutely” looking at whether the Hillhouse arrangement is succeeding, and whether the academy-within-a-school idea (Wilbur Cross High School has an international-themed academy) works.
“I think that the jury is out, and we don’t know for sure,” Harp said. “We will know more by the end of this school year.”