Yale Center for British Art
Elihu Yale; William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and Enslaved Servant, ca. 1708
“Nothing is known about the boy on the right, who has just finished pouring Madeira (a sweet, fortified wine) into the glasses on the table… the silver collar and padlock around his neck indicate that he is enslaved.”
So begins the curator’s comment for a portrait of Elihu Yale, one of three paintings in Yale University’s collection that depicts a slave attending to Elihu the slavemaster.
Slavery is as inseparable from Elihu as these paintings depict. Such a namesake is a liability for Yale the institution. By that I mean a billion-dollar brand, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, an affiliated college in Singapore, and a huge healthcare network. This “open secret” is a ticking timebomb. It is about to go off.
#CancelYale trended this past week on social media, having started as a trolling of liberal elites by conservative influencers.
One example: “For an institution that prides itself on its so called progressivism, why has Yale not yet distanced itself from its namesake — a notorious slave trader?!”
To Yale’s chagrin, they have a point. It must be difficult to take a cold, hard look in the mirror when your face is covered in blood.
As has been well documented, America’s leading universities profited from slavery and have deep roots in colonialism. Dozens of schools have acknowledged their roots in racism and slavery, long before the current wave of Black Lives Matter protests.
The awful murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others should not have been required to start an honest conversation about race in America. What will it take to galvanize the process at Yale?
Renaming Yale is a small but required step in the right direction and Yale University president Peter Salovey knows exactly why. As he states, “Mr. Floyd’s death follows a pattern of racial injustice that has become too familiar in our country and that amounts to a national emergency…. George Floyd’s horrifying death shocks our shared conscience and indicts our shared failure. It can and must remind us of other similar killings and of the racism, nativism, and bigotry too pervasive in society today and throughout our country’s history.”
Salovey goes on to acknowledge that “members of our community feel fear in their daily lives because of the injustices they have experienced and witnessed… fear so reliably leads to anxiety, depression, health deterioration, and anger, and also to aggression and even violence.”
We’ve seen this anger bubble up at Yale before. It took bravery and action for Corey Menafee to remove the “racist, very degrading” imagery of slavery that flanked his working life at Yale.
It took student outrage and grassroots organizing to change the name of Calhoun College, with Yale fighting to preserve the namesake of slavery’s most ardent defender at every step.
Rather than leading by action, Salovey infamously stated “the name of Calhoun College will remain,” choosing to sit on the fence of the issue and be burned by both sides. Instead of standing on the right side of history as the ground obviously moved beneath its feet, Yale chose minor changes like removing the title of “master” in an effort to safeguard the cashflow from Calhoun alumni. When the writing was on the wall and and a new name became inescapable, the university predictably leaned into the change and promoted itself as a bastion of progress.
Yale continues to dance around the perimeter of the racial divide, quietly altering reminders of its legacy. The history of indigenous oppression and genocide is whitewashed by sheepishly deciding to alter and then remove stone carvings.
Such actions are as inadequate as a salad on the McDonald’s menu and the purpose is just as transparent. Transformation at Yale is on the horizon, and I’m afraid that a few gutted gargoyles aren’t going to stop it.
This week’s removal of the Columbus statue in Wooster Square was inevitable and the conflict was predictably messy. Racism was not just present via echoes of the past, it was embodied in the ugly words and actions of the statue’s defenders.
As an Irish and Italian American who grew up in East Haven and now lives in Morris Cove, I know the pro-Columbus arguments. I understand the deep-seated feeling of connection with America’s founding myth, the desire of my ancestors to prove their whiteness, their “nativeness,” and their value in a country filled with hatred for the immigrants who arrived in the 19th Century.
There are two facts that supersede all of this. The first is that Columbus was a terrible colonizer and an awful human being, carrying out atrocities against indigenous people and enslaving them.
The second is that I myself am the product of white privilege, regardless of when my ancestors arrived in the U.S., benefiting from the long history of genocide, racism, and colonization that began with Columbus.
Though nearly two centuries separate Elihu Yale and Christopher Columbus, the similarities between the two men attest to the unbroken thread of European colonialism in American history.
We can’t just dismiss these figures as “products of their time”, incapable of avoiding the brutality of their respective ages. Just as Columbus was investigated for his tyranny and torture during his lifetime, Yale was notorious for ruling with an iron fist, violently suppressing revolts as governor of Fort Saint George in India.
During a 2005 visit by then-president of Yale Richard Levin, the Indian press was quick to remind us that “[Elihu] Yale was also notorious for arresting and trying Indians on his own private authority, including the hanging of a stable boy who had absconded with a [British East India] Company horse.”
There is no ambiguity here. The records of Fort Saint George indicate that Yale sentenced “black Criminalls” accused of burglary to be branded, whipped, and enslaved.
By 1718, the year that the Collegiate School was renamed to Yale College in Elihu’s honor, opposition to slavery was not a niche subject in the British Empire, and there were notable abolitionists in Pennsylvania.
It was precisely Elihu Yale’s fortune as a slavemaster that compelled Yale College to honor his name, though even in that regard history has not been kind, with Elihu being dubbed the “most overrated philanthropist.” His contribution to the Collegiate School was so minor that it has been suggested the name was chosen either to curry favor for future investment or to avoid the moniker of Joseph Dummer (a factoid that the #CancelYale pundits have repeated ad nauseum).
It is a gross understatement to say that Yale University, Yale-NUS, and Yale New Haven Health have no worthy or honorable connection to Elihu Yale, who was undoubtedly a cruel slavemaster.
Why then have the stewards of Yale been so silent on the issue? The anti-racist movement now shaping our country demands not just reflection on the past but present-day action. Sure, wealthy alumni will be enraged at even a mention of renaming Yale, if past campaigns to save Mory’s and deify college memories are any indication. Perhaps the cult of Elihu-boosters will worship in the Skull and Bones tomb, where Elihu’s gravestone is rumored to be displayed behind glass.
Whatever the reaction from alumni, history will judge the preservation of the name “Yale” very harshly. The current moment demands more from Yale’s administration, as Peter Salovey noted in his statement on George Floyd: “I believe that all of us at Yale must do what we can to replace fear with hope — and not with anything less than action.”
I am part of the Yale community. I have worked and lectured at Yale, Yale has opened the door for incredible opportunities, and my ancestors attended Yale (in a time when being Irish at Yale was not easy).
More viscerally, however, we’re New Haveners. That brings weight to any debate about Yale — indisputably the dominant force in New Haven.
During the Great Depression, Yale thrived via land grabs and a building boom as New Haven suffered.
Right now, New Haven is on the brink of serious economic disaster. Just as Yale is trying to dodge its ethical responsibly to denounce and discard Elihu Yale, it will attempt to avoid its fiscal responsibility to New Haven and the State of Connecticut.
Yale’s reluctance to confront its racist history is more connected to money than it may seem. Savvy Yale administrators understood that the renaming of Calhoun College would lead to justified criticism of Yale’s name. Whenever commentary by New Haveners reaches that level, the subject of taxation will arise.
#CancelYale, in one way or another, will become #TaxYale with the economic fallout of Covid-19 as the backdrop. These subjects are two sides of the same coin, rooted in Yale’s charter. As Henry “Sam” Chauncey Jr., a well-known Yale alum, has speculated, a name change would “give legislators a chance to remove the university’s tax-exempt status.”
Rightfully so. Racism is not just rooted in our culture, in the names of our institutions, in statues and paintings. It’s rooted in economic reality, a fact that people of color across New Haven and the U.S. will feel as they pay taxes this month.
Sean O’Brien leads the Privacy Lab initiative of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and teaches digital self-defense classes via PrivacySafe.tech .