Stanford University leaders have spent the last two years trying to decide whether or not campus locations should retain the namesake of a humble Franciscan friar. After a committee failed to reach a consensus on renaming standards, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne decided to double the number of committees involved to bring some “fresh eyes” to the matter.
Back in March 2016, the California university formed a committee to “establish principles for reconsidering and renaming campus streets and buildings,” considering “first and foremost” places that honor Catholic saint Junipero Serra out of respect to the indigenous and Native American communities on and off campus.
Serra founded nine of 21 Spanish missions in California and converted thousands of Native Americans to Christianity. He was granted the posthumous title Apostle of California and declared a saint by Pope Francis in 2015.
While some say Serra imposed Christianity on the indigenous peoples of California, scholars on both sides have defended his character.
Professor Edward Castillo, a Native American and director of Native American Studies at the Sonoma State University in California, told William F. Buckley, Jr. on an episode of Firing Line: “I haven’t cited Serra as oppressor. You can’t put a whip in his hand. You can’t put a smoking gun in his hand. And that is true. The man was an administrator.”
Tessier-Lavigne will appoint faculty and students to two new groups in December: one to define the renaming principles and the other to use the principles to make a recommendation on Serra. The process could — and likely will — drag on until the end of the school year.
While the effort has primarily targeted Serra, it remains to be seen whether or not the committees will tackle other, more insidious figures. Stanford’s first president, David Starr Jordan, was chair of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association, a member of the Human Betterment Foundation, and an advisory council member of the Eugenics Committee of the American Eugenics Society. “If we sell or destroy the rough, lean, or feeble calves, we shall have a herd descended from the best,” he wrote
Let’s hope, for the sake of fairness, the Left has a “cow” over Starr’s background as well.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is a freelance journalist in California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
