(Ficklin Media Note: I am convinced at the moment that name of Calhoun College should not be changed. ( Link to history of Calhoun College and it's being named after John C. Calhoun click here)
The college was named after him in the early 1930's, relatively recently from a historical point of view. More importantly to Calhoun's life, career, views and opinions so vibrantly illustrate what has made America , America then and now.
America has always been at ideological civil war , or at least fervent disagreements from it's inception to the present.
Lastly, the address by President Salovey to the Yale Freshmen class is noteworthy.
I would suggest however that he did not need the Charleston Massacre to deliver such a address.
I am glad he used this recent tragedy however to re engage and to spark the consistent discussion of "What Does it Mean to be an American" in real terms rather than just from a convenient politically correct flavor of the day topic.
Launching a Difficult Conversation | Yale College: "Good morning and welcome Class of 2019, family members, and colleagues sharing the stage with me. To our entering students: I hope this is the most exciting day of your lives…so far. And to the parents and other family members joining us today: I hope this day is your proudest (also so far)!
Toward the end of June, I began to consider this address, and I was meditating what I might say about the joys and challenges that Yale will inevitably present to you. Without warning, I found myself shocked by events in which I had not participated and over which I had no control. (This happens more often than you might think.) In the weeks that followed, Dean Holloway and I realized that we could and should bring before you a quite particular aspect of the Yale College experience, both because we want to open a campus conversation about it, and because we saw no better time than now for you to begin using your intellectual capacity to address complex and substantive issues that concern an entire community.
Like everyone else here, I was confronted earlier this summer by a horrifying massacre in a Charleston, South Carolina, church – a house of worship founded nearly two hundred years ago by slaves praying for their freedom. On a warm summer evening, nine African Americans were gunned down by a twenty-one-year-old white man with a history of ranting in public about white supremacy – a man whom, an hour earlier, the congregants had welcomed into their bible study. That evening, the killer participated in prayer and discussion and then stood up, argued about scripture, made racist statements, removed a .45 caliber handgun from a backpack, and began shooting at the others in the room. He reloaded his gun five times, and fired dozens of shots. He also appears to have posted a vile manifesto on the internet, along with photographs of himself posing with the Confederate battle flag.
In the days that followed, the nation heard Barack Obama deliver a eulogy that could rank as one of the most powerful addresses of his presidency. Many of us wept as we listened to family members of the victims forgive the deranged killer of their loved ones. And we saw the people of South Carolina consumed with an examination of how signs and symbols of the Confederate past had abruptly and inescapably become questions about the present. Widespread public discussion resulted in the removal of a Confederate battle flag that had long flown over the state capitol. Similar discussions began regarding a battle flag incorporated into the Alabama state seal, the use of the battle flag in everything from rock concerts to street parades, and the status of various other memorials and symbols of the Old South.
But what does this have to do with Yale and with you and me? Well, as the events in South Carolina shook the nation, many members of our own community could not avoid considering a matter that ties us here in New Haven to similar questions of history, naming, symbols, and narratives." Click on link for more of the article President Peter Salovey's Freshman Address to Yale's Entering Class
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