Stanford University has announced that it will rename several campus locations named after Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the California mission system.
The decision comes after recommendations by a committee formed to consider the renaming of campus features named after individuals with “complex legacies.” The committee’s decision was motivated by their evaluation that the “mission system inflicted great harm and violence on Native Americans” as well as that “Stanford has several features named for Serra even though he played no direct role in the university’s history.”
No similar such initiative has yet been made by the committee to rename the psychology building, named after David Starr Jordan. While Jordan was the founding president of Stanford, he is also very well known as a prominent figure within the eugenics movement. Beginning in 1906, Jordan chaired the first Committee on Eugenics of the American Breeder’s Association. It was from this committee that the 1909 California practice of forced sterilization of “feeble minded” individuals in state institutions, such as state prisons and mental hospitals, was born.
Jordan also authored The Blood of the Nation, which aimed to promote the eugenics movement to the broad, nonacademic population and claimed that poverty could be inherited through the bloodline. He was also a founding trustee of the Human Betterment Foundation, which published Sterilization for Human Betterment, a text cited during the creation of Nazi Germany sterilization legislation.
The campus is also home to buildings named after professors and known eugenicists Lewis M. Terman and Elwood P. Cubberley. Terman once wrote that “it is more important, for man to acquire control over his biological evolution than to capture the energy of the atom” and served on multiple eugenics associations.
Cubberly, who served as the dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Education, is said to have advocated that educational resources be spent on the most intelligent and able children, so as not to squander them on disabled children who would detract from the goal of fostering “able” minds. He was also opposed to the immigration of Eastern Europeans to America and claimed that their arrival would “dilute” the American population.
Serra Mall will now be named after university co-founder Jane Stanford. The committee contends that this decision was based upon the fact that she “was instrumental in establishing the university, shaping its mission and vision, and guiding it through the many struggles of its early years” and that there exists “no major campus feature that appropriately honors her.”
New names have not yet been chosen for Serra Dormitory and the Serra academic building. The committee has stated that they are not opposed to references to Serra on campus, so long as they are features or buildings that are “less salient.”
While the committee emphasizes that Serra had no direct role in the forming of Stanford, he has been an integral part of the school’s history and identity:
Serra’s name has been integrated into the Stanford campus since 1891 when Serra Avenue, now Serra Mall, was named. The university has stated that “this selection was rooted in the founders’ goal of anchoring their new university in the history and culture of the region,” adding, “The Spanish Revival or ‘mission revival’ cultural phenomenon of the period apparently played a role and influenced the architectural design of the new Stanford campus, in addition to some of the namings of campus features.”
Celine Ryan (@celinedryan) is a journalism student living on the Central Coast of California. She writes about politics, culture, and campus news.
