It has been two years since Middlebury College removed John A. Meade’s name from Middlebury Chapel by a unanimous vote by the Middlebury College Board of Trustees. In 1914, the Meades donated the equivalent of more than $2 million today to build a new chapel on the campus’s “highest point.” However, Mead was a champion of eugenic theory in both policy and law, and spoke in favor of the potential benefits of marriage restriction, sterilization, and segregation. The chapel’s renaming comes after the Vermont government announced in early 2021 that it “sincerely apologizes and expresses its sadness and regret for the state’s complicity in the eugenics movement, which included the forced sterilization of more than 250 Vermonters.” This is a follow-up to our efforts to make a statement.
While we are grateful that the centerpiece of our campus no longer bears the name of a eugenicist, we continue our educational efforts around the issue of eugenics in Vermont, rather than simply demonstrating virtue by removing their names. We request the university to do so. Additionally, we believe that the removal of Mead’s name from the chapel is not just about erasing past misdeeds, but also about the importance of debate and discussion around important issues. I think it’s an opportunity.
In March 2023, former Vermont Governor Jim Douglas ’72, who is the university’s resident director and frequently teaches political science classes, filed a lawsuit in Vermont Superior Court accusing the school of violating its contract with the governor’s estate. A 79-page complaint was filed. Meade’s name was removed from the chapel and the name was changed to John Meade. Douglas also said the removal of Mead’s name from the chapel is an example of “cancel culture” at the university. “Cancel culture is so strong at Middlebury that for now I will celebrate alone,” Douglas wrote in a May 2022 op-ed for the New York Sun, explaining her decision to boycott the 50th reunion. I mentioned it.
A month later, Middlebury filed suit, arguing that there was insufficient evidence that the contract was conditioned on the use of Mead’s name in perpetuity, and that it lacked legal standing as a plaintiff. It filed a 37-page motion seeking dismissal. Douglas and the Mead family are not seeking financial compensation for the name removal, and have Mead’s presence in the chapel in the form of a plaque that describes eugenics, Mead’s speeches defending it, and even Middlebury’s own complacency. They want the university to restore the name. movement.
However, we as an editorial board do not focus on the technicalities of Douglas’ case or the contractual issues surrounding the name of the chapel. Rather, for us, the core of the issue lies in education about historical wrongs such as Vermont’s eugenics movement. We feel mostly positive about the university’s decision to remove Mead’s name, given his involvement in the history of American eugenics. But instead of engaging in a community dialogue about Mead and eugenics, the word “Mead” was removed from the chapel without notice and under cover of darkness. Due to the removal, the word “Chapel” on the building became unbalanced and shifted, leaving it without a proper name. This kind of sudden name removal without any educational effort is just an act of virtue on the part of the university.
Rather than informing visitors about the disgrace and indiscretion of both Mead College and the university, this removal leaves a void and cancellation. The university established an education committee in the chapel, but in an April 2023 email to the university community, the purpose of the committee was to “ [history] Then we can learn from it.”The commission has not taken any concrete public action on education since it was established two years ago. Simply removing the name from the building is the easiest way to make it appear that the university is making amends for giving one of the most important buildings on campus a controversial name, and for its own history of eugenics. It’s a method, but not a practical one.
It is wrong for the university to use Mead as a scapegoat for its own misconduct, given the university’s own history of promoting eugenic ideas through course offerings in the early 20th century. As a recent column by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe revealed, Middlebury faculty and administrators directly defended eugenics in the years after Meade served as governor of Vermont. Jacoby reports that Paul Moody, the university’s president from 1921 to 1945, was “vehemently critical of the inferiority of French Canadians in broader society.” “The entire French-Canadian population could be wiped out of Middlebury, and no one would miss it,” said Moody, a University of Vermont professor and chairman of the statewide eugenics committee. said one Mr. Henry F. Perkins.
As Douglas states in his complaint, the chapel naming debacle is connected to issues of cancel culture and the lack of diversity of political thought on liberal campuses like Middlebury. Particularly since the Charles Murray disaster in 2017, speakers with diverse views are rarely invited to campus, and even when speakers with different beliefs are invited, their events are often poorly attended. We often don’t get together. This is not surprising. In the Middlebury Zeitgeist 5.0 survey, only 7% of respondents even identified as “conservative-leaning.” According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s 2024 Free Speech Rankings, Middlebury College ranks high in terms of free speech based on the criteria of “comfort to express ideas,” “administrative support,” and “openness.” It was ranked 233rd out of 248 universities. In our experience, Middlebury classrooms are often echo chambers where like-minded professors and students agree with each other without taking truly diverse or controversial positions.
The university’s erasure of Mead reflects a broader culture of cancellation and silence on important topics at Middlebury College. While some student spaces and parts of campus certainly encourage serious discussion, there is often a noticeable lack of meaningful conversations about controversial topics on campus. Students either try to “wake each other up” or remain silent for fear of being canceled by their peers. I worry that silence manifests itself in dangerous ways when students are unable to engage meaningfully with ideas with which they disagree. There is a serious risk in how many people here now assume ideological homogeneity on campus. We ask for general self-reflection. Students consider how Middlebury, like many liberal spaces in our widely polarized country, can become a breeding ground for echo chambers and auto-cancel culture, and welcome more conversations with diverse opinions. It is necessary to strike a balance with efforts to
This editorial breaks that silence by calling on students, faculty, administrators, and the university itself to reflect on how to isolate itself from dissent and bury the difficult realities of its history. I hope.
Our hope is that school boards will soon publicize their efforts and spark discussion on these topics on campus, but not leave it to a single committee. In writing perhaps our most controversial editorial to date, we finally address a topic on which our organization has not published an editorial in over two years, in an attempt to right the university’s past wrongs and make progress on campus. I will work on it. RESULTS, DISPUTES, AND CANCELLATIONS.