Chris Rabb, a Temple University professor who graduated from Yale in 1992, said the "choice to name something minor for a black person in the aftermath" of the Menafee incident "does not address the fundamental issue which is Yale's connection to slavery.
"It's bigger than the stained-glass window and it's bigger than the name [Calhoun] itself," said Rabb, who added that Yale's "wealth and influence indirectly benefited from slavery."
As an undergraduate, Rabb, who is the co-founder of the Yale Black Alumni Network, succeeded in getting a stained-glass panel removed from Calhoun after voicing his objection to its image of Calhoun with a shackled slave kneeling by his side.
"It's a belated nominal attempt to put out yet another fire relating to Yale's original decision in the 1930s," Rabb said, " to name a residential college after a self-avowed white supremacist."
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