BY SARA TABIN
Daily Post Staff Writer
Stanford said today that it might follow Palo Alto School District’s lead and rename Jordan Hall, the psychology department building which honors David Starr Jordan.
Jordan, Stanford’s founding president, was a eugenics advocate.
Stanford students and psychology professors asked the university to rename the building and remove a statue of Jordan from outside of it, according to a statement from Stanford.
Palo Alto’s school board renamed Jordan Middle School at 750 N. California Ave. as Greene Middle School in 2018 because of Jordan’s ties to the eugenics movement. Current namesake Frank Greene was a black Silicon Valley engineer who started a venture capital firm to invest in the businesses of women and people of color.
Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne will appoint a committee to review the requests to rename the building and remove the statue. The group will use a number of principles, including Jordan’s relationship to the university and the harmful impact of his behavior, to decide whether to move forward with removing him.
It’s fun to see them pretend as if there is going to be some sort of process to determine if Jordan’s name will remain on the building. We all know how it will turn out. His name will be gone and in its place the name of some radical activist who has a thin tie to Stanford. Quit pretending and just remove his name now. Don’t drag it out as if there was a deliberative process here. We all know it’s predetermined.
Jordan was a eugenics advocate. As was Cubberley (namesake to the PA community center) and Terman (had a middle school named after him for decades here in supposedly liberal Northern California). Removing the names of those who’ve promoted racist ideas in their respective fields is no longer radical in 2020. The resistance to this process of reclaiming public spaces for all Americans, not just racist white guys, resulted in Heather Heyer’s tragic death not too long ago. Let’s get it right this time. Take down the name already.