Should McGill change its name?
Taylor C. Noakes argues that, if Ryerson could change its name to Toronto Metropolitan, McGill University should follow suit, although he doesn’t propose any alternatives.
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Tim S. 11:41 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Really, no. I’ve long argued on here against renaming streets because they’re navigational aids and changing the names just creates confusion. Maybe even more so for universities, where name recognition is a very big deal for the hundreds of thousands of people, me included, who have it on their CVs. If we decide not to name things after people any more, cool, but we can please accept that referents have a value beyond the merely symbolic?
Taylor C. Noakes 12:08 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@tim – I’m sorry but that doesn’t add up in the least. Stores change locations all the time, people still figure out how to get there. Waze and google maps and the internet has ensured people will never get lost again. Streets are renamed frequently and everyone adjusts (we renamed Amhearst street a couple years ago, no harm no foul).
You can update your CV, everyone else does, and companies change their names all the time. HR managers are usually the first people to know about this.
As to name recognition, I get it that McGill sounds nice and authoritative, but the man enslaved children, two of whom died in his employ, and there is evidence to suggest that one of the people he enslaved may not have been told about his emancipation. McGill made his fortune from a slave-based economic system and further traffickec in enslaved people to settle accounts after a war of empire and colonialism.
If you want to be a McGill grad that’s fine, but that legacy needs to be out in the open, and quite frankly the more people know about it the more pressure there will be on McGill to change its name simply to be a viable business. McGill will likely be better off changing its name and having an open and transparent discussion of McGill’s legacy. James McGill will always be the founder, and no one is proposing to remove his remains from the grounds, but his connexion to slavery is evidently making the students and staff uncomfortable at this point.
@kate – that was a deliberate choice, I felt like it would detract from the bigger issue of McGill enslaving people.
But I do have some ideas to share (in no particular order):
Hochelaga University
Bethune University
Montreal University
Mount Royal University of Montreal
Tiohtià:ke University
Carrie Derick University
Kondiaronck University
Abbott University (for Maude Abbott)
Brooks University (for Harriet Brooks)
Courage (for Hugh MacLennan) University
I think we have options
Kate 12:21 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
TCN, it will cost the city a fortune to rename McGill. Renaming it will also mean renaming McGill College Avenue and McGill metro station, all of which will cost the city, the STM, and innumerable businesses that have the street or metro station names on their material, all the signage in all the underground city stuff, and that’s beside Tim S.’s point, plus things I may not be thinking about.
Is it all worth it to make a Mea Culpa gesture?
What McGill needs to do is divest from fossil fuels and move forward. The past is the past.
Ephraim 13:36 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@Kate – There are more than one McGill. James McGill of the College/University. Peter McGill the mayor (who was not related to James McGill). There is also John McGill, Peter McGill’s father-in-law (Peter McGill changed his name to McGill), though John is more famous in Upper Canada. Couldn’t they simply rename it McGill after Peter?
Kate 14:10 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Right, McGill Street down by Victoria Square is named for Peter McGill, the city’s second mayor, about whom I’ve seen no dirt dug up. It would be casuistry to claim to change the university’s name from McGill to McGill, though.
Blork 14:24 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Unlike Ryerson, which is a technical school that only achieved university status a couple of decades ago, McGill is a huge university and healthcare megastructure system with branches and tentacles that reach around the world and far back in time. Changing that name will cause organizational and administrative chaos for years.
Dan 14:40 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
LOL at McGill grads boo-hooing about name recognition and having to add an asterisk to their CVs.
Anyone who has had to deal with them know that universities are already organizational and administrative nightmares, so I say bring on the name change. Anyone proud of the name McGill should really check their privilege. Make the change – let’s do better in 2022.
Kate 15:06 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Blork, I didn’t even think of the MUHC and its many tentacles.
Taylor C. Noakes 15:20 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@Kate – no, I don’t buy it. The station and street are named for Peter McGill and McGill College could easily be renamed ‘college’, university’, or ‘rue de la place Oscar Peterson’ which I think they were going for anyways. It’ll cost some massive corporations some scratch for new stationary and signage. I don’t feel bad for Bell, BNP Paribas, BMO, Industrial Alliance and whoever else has their offices there.
Yes, rebranding costs money. But it’s untenable to continue having a prominent institution named for someone who literally enslaved children, trafficked in enslaved people, built a fortune off slave labour, and maybe didn’t tell one of his servants he had gained his freedom.
The past is not dead, it’s not even past, after all.
And that’s the whole point – there is a history here that’s been buried for a long time, but it was inevitable it would get out and rub people the wrong way. The students don’t like it, and profs given the James McGill award aren’t keen to receive it.
But this is all, at the end of the day, about a for-profit, publicly-subsidized institution’s viability as a de facto commercial enterprise in an era in which an increasing number of consumers don’t want to buy services or in any way shape or form be related to something with such a negative history.
And the consumer is always right.
Bad press will inevitably force McGill to do this anyways; it’ll be no different from the Bay taking down that stupid daughter’s of the confederacy plaque.
As a public historian, my only concern is that the renaming effort is done in a way the stimulates rather than stifles public discussion.
And yes, they should also fully divest from fossil fuels, get out of serving the military industrial complex and leave the SSMU alone when they opt to boycott Israel too. If they want that sweet sweet student cash, they need to play ball with their customers.
Taylor C. Noakes 15:25 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@Blork, @Kate – we all know the MUHC has been planning to rename itself the Arthur Porter Memorial Health Complex for quite some time.
SMD 15:44 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
McGill grad here — please change the damn name. I don’t think there would be a need to change any street names, as has been noted there are other McGills out there.
Kate 15:58 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
For what it’s worth, the STM says the metro station was named for “avenue McGill College, that leads directly to the university that was established in 1821 according to the wishes of James McGill (1744-1813), a successful merchant trading in furs.” There is an image of Peter McGill in the station, on the stained glass panel, but the station itself is named for James.
TCN: They were going to name the road into the complex Arthur Porter Way until we found out what his ways actually were. (I half suspect the guy is still alive somewhere.)
walkerp 17:09 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
organizational and administrative chaos vs. a near destruction of an entire people.
Not a difficult choice.
Also, as someone who administers, if you can’t handle a name change, you suck at your job.
Blork 17:11 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
I suppose some people think it’s important to rename the university because we need to stop glorifying James McGill. I’m not buying that because there is no glorifying of James McGill. There are no “James McGill Days” or parades in honour of James McGill. Aside from that one statue and a few short blurbs at the back of some documents that nobody reads, James McGill is irrelevant. The name, as the name of the UNIVERSITY, superseded the name as the name of the PERSON, long ago.
Given the dire state of the world at the moment, on so many issues, this kind of thing feels like fiddling while Rome burns.
Blork 17:15 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@walkerp, I’d be with you if the name change CHANGED that. Or somehow prevented it. But the name change will make no difference on that issue.
Here’s the easiest thing to do: declare that the university is no longer named after James McGill. No, it’s named after Peter McGill. Or the Metro station. Or that kid named McGill who delivered the Saturday Gazette back in the 70s.
There. Job done. Same symbolic effect but without all the cost and chaos.
Uatu 17:37 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
I would like the road to the hospital named after Porter just as a permanent reminder of the complete incompetence of the executive committee of the hospital (aka the suckers)
Michael 18:04 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
There is a clear tangible value for people that graduate from McGill and have it on their resumes vs other less prestigious universities.
Same if you had Harvard on your CV vs a random name like Sanders University.
If McGill was some a bottom the line university that nobody knows or cares about, then a name change is fine.
But since it’s not, I disagree with changing my alma meter’s name. I graduated from McGill, not Concordia or Laval or UQAM.
Taylor C. Noakes 18:43 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@Kate – I’m of the same mind, though I also thought Andre Arthur was Arthur Porter in disguise
@Blork 1 – McGill’s highest honour for their scholars is the ‘James McGill professorship/chair’ and yes, plenty of people *do not* want it specifically because of who he is and what he did (I asked)
@Blork 2 – If the name of the university is detached from the person, all the more reason to rename it, no? I think you just made an excellent point in my favour
@Blork 3 – We can walk and chew gum; this issue isn’t taking anything away from any other issue out there. Periods of significant societal change often involve many different kinds of change happening simultaneously. No one told the anti-Apartheid movement to stop sucking the air out of the save the whales campaign. Decolonization can happen at the same time as the movement for Palestinian rights, the renewal of organized labour and the effort to end global warming. In for a penny, in for a pound.
@Michael – if the institution was less prestigious, what, McGill’s enslavement of other human beings could matter more? do you hear yourself? The prestige of the institution doesn’t matter, McGill’s slave driving does – and that’s why it needs to be renamed. Also, Harvard is currently trying to deal with their history of slavery. Paris numbered their universities, and they’re plenty prestigious.
Chris 20:01 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Morals change over the centuries, and will again in centuries to come. We’ll never be able to name anything after anyone. No one will pass the purity test. When speciesism is as abhorrent as racism in future centuries, woketivists will want schools named after Martin Luther King Jr renamed since he was a vile meat eater.
>We can walk and chew gum
Only to an extent. Every hour spent lobbying for things like renaming McGill is an hour NOT spent lobbying against actual slave labour that still exists on this planet.
Renaming McGill solves no real problem, but advocating it sure does prove one’s woke bona fides to other in the clique.
Taylor, I’m curious based on your positions stated here, what do you think of the Mahatma Gandhi statue in the eponymous park in Cote Des Neiges, given that he was clearly a racist?
DeWolf 20:15 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
McGill is not a “for-profit, publicly-subsidized institution,” it’s a public university governed by a number of different Quebec laws. In terms of its legal status, it has more in common with the University of California than with Harvard.
Phil M 20:16 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
The University Formerly Known as McGill.
Problem solved on all sides.
Blork 21:53 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
I was half kidding when I said above to change it so the “McGill” refers to Peter McGill instead of James McGill, but now I’m saying it for real. Why not?
(1) It solves the problem of the stink of James McGill.
(2) It disrupts nothing in terms of changing all those names, logos, titles, etc. (which is not a small consideration).
(3) It does not disrupt or otherwise affect the prestige associated with the McGill University name.
Because really, the problem isn’t McGill University; the problem is James McGill. So just pick a different McGill. When it comes right down to it, nobody is sentimental about James McGill, but lots of people care about the McGill name (not because of James; because of the university) and lots of people care about the disruption of re-naming a major institution that has many tentacles.
Declaring that it is named after the OTHER McGill fixes everything and costs almost nothing.
Taylor C. Noakes 21:54 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
@Chris –
1. I sincerely doubt there’s any future in which slavery becomes okay again (aside, of course, from the slavery that currently exists that was resurrected by the ill-advised NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, which our corporate media refuses to talk about, but I digress).
2. I would say social mores may change, and in our present day the change is towards openess. Morality is a little more consistent, with some important exceptions. The question you need to ask yourself is: was the institution of slavery considered immoral in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and the answer is evidently yes given abolitionist groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-slavery laws went into effect. The idea that being held in a state of human bondage is bad and that people shouldn’t do it to other people are ideas as old as time. It’s a lot like the idea that murder is bad, or that rape is bad. Some things have been bad forever.
2a. There’s a remarkable hypocrisy in Canada wherein we scold the Americans for not getting rid of their Confederate statues and for all the things they’ve named after slave-holders, but the same people are then saying ‘hit the brakes’ when it comes to the people on this side of the border who did the same thing. What’s bad is bad is bad. James McGill enslaved children. Whatever good the man did needs to be weighed against the fact that he looked at two children and said to himself, every day for many years, ‘you are my property, you work for me, you will not be educated, you will not have any parents, and when you die, I shall discard of you like the trash.’ Like it or not, that’s exactly what the man did.
3. Every hour spent lobbying an institution to adhere to a higher set of principles and be wholly transparent about itself is a step in the right direction that will bring about other kinds of change. This isn’t a zero sum game. People successfully protested the Viet Nam War and civil rights and women’s liberation and somehow also managed to have a lot of sex, drop acid and go to the Moon all at the same time. If you can’t keep up, get out of the way.
4. I have nothing to prove to anyone. Read my articles, that should become very clear quite quickly.
5. Gandhi was a racist in his 20s, very much a product of his age, background, social status (etc). He also later rejected the racism of his youth, and worked towards a pluralistic, multi-cultural India. It’s the second part that’s pretty important. Nehru told Attenborough not to make a saint out of him, something that unfortunately happened anyways. If Gandhi’s racism was too inexcusable for Montreal’s Black community to bare, and they wanted his statue removed, then by all means. That said, Gandhi inspired MLK, so I doubt there will be too strong a push to remove his statue. But consider this: Gandhi never organized a genocide, he never fought to defend slavery, he never owned other people, so he’s coming out head and shoulders above a lot of other people.
5a. I’m saying this as a public historian who works with and writes about monuments: most people aren’t worth putting on pedestals, and doing so makes critical evaluation of their lives very difficult. That’s incidentally why it’s done – so that the elites can essentially say to the masses, ‘this is something we value, you may not judge it’. But that only lasts as long as there are institutions to maintain that kind of thinking. When societies change, as they do, it’s inevitable that the people they venrated will be reconsidered.
6. At the end of the day this will be a business decision made by an institution that cares about its reputation and bottom line, and if students and faculty make it clear they’re not comfortable with this, it’s inevitable the name will be changed. This is no different that a sports team changing its name, and I can’t imagine anyone here was too broken up about the renaming of the Washington football team. The world turns, get used to it.
GC 22:19 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
“We’ll never be able to name anything after anyone.” And why is this a bad thing? As others have said, let’s stop doing it.
Michael 22:29 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
If McGill was less prestigious, like some random university that nobody cares about in Montreal, I wouldn’t care about a name change. If I graduated from that no name university and they changed the name, I would shrug my shoulders and not care.
McGill being #2 in Canada and #30 worldwide means something today.
What McGill did 300 years ago doesn’t.
It’s like renaming the Washington Monument -> Hochelaga Monument or something foolish because George Washington owned slaves. For things that have prestige and value and recognition, keep the name.
Michael 22:41 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
Also, “McGill” is more than just the man that owned a few slaves. Just like George Washington is more than just a slave owner.
McGill is the premier institution of Canada that has taught hundreds of thousands of students, saved hundreds of lives, raised hundreds of millions of dollars for public research for 200 years.
We are going to throw McGill into the dustbin of history because he owned some slaves?
Would be extremely shameful of us to do that.
Not everything in life is about finding new ways to be outraged.
JaneyB 23:07 on 2022-05-09 Permalink
I don’t see any reason to change it. So he owned a few slaves. Yes, odious. Many good people have been associated with McGill University since and I think that’s worth something. There is no sinless past. I assure you that basically every family and every last name includes rapists, thieves, and slavers if you go back even as recently as 3 or 4 generations. Really, almost half the women I know have been raped; that wasn’t all by the same man. Vile deeds are everywhere. If people want names free of moral awfulness, they’ll have to turn to plants and verbs. Nothing associated with a living person will ever be clean. Might as well keep the name. I’m not sure where the renaming activists live; are they really so certain that their own great-grandfathers were men of unimpeachable honour?
MarcG 10:00 on 2022-05-10 Permalink
The reason McGill University has so much prestige and value today is because James McGill was wealthy and left land and money to build the school. He was wealthy because he was a good business person, which at the time meant enslaving people. You cannot disconnect the prestige from the slavery. Changing the name today sends a signal to present day ‘good business people’ that the horrible things they are doing to advance themselves are not acceptable and can’t be bought-off by doing good deeds with their filthy lucre when they’re dead.
Meezly 10:23 on 2022-05-10 Permalink
@JaneyB
“Really, almost half the women I know have been raped; that wasn’t all by the same man. Vile deeds are everywhere.”
Rape is a systemic problem, shrug, so might as well live with it — is this you’re line of reasoning for dealing with a university named after James McGill?
It makes me think of descendants of Nazis, like Rainer Höß, whose grandpa was a top exterminator at Auschwitz. If he took your line of reasoning, he’d be going, hey, those were my grandfather’s sins, they have nothing to do with me. I’m a good person, that should be good enough. And besides, what can I do anyway?
What’s remarkable is that Höß chose to actively make amends and right the wrongs of his family’s past. He connected with Auschwitz survivors and their families, spoke at many high schools, participated in documentaries. He didn’t have to, but he chose to because it’s the right thing to do. He even became persona non grata with his own family for this because they still think of his grandfather as a war hero.
Based on your curious and rather dispassionate line of reasoning, anyone who has ever fought for social justice was supposed to have a family history free of vile deeds, we’d still be in the dark ages.
Tee Owe 15:05 on 2022-05-10 Permalink
Montreal College Giving Inspiration Literature & Learning
Chris 22:27 on 2022-05-10 Permalink
>The question you need to ask yourself is: was the institution of slavery considered immoral in the late-18th and early-19th centuries, and the answer is evidently yes given abolitionist groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-slavery laws went into effect
The question you need to ask yourself is: was speciesism considered immoral in the late-20th and early 21st century, and the answer is evidently yes given vegan and animal rights groups were well-established at the time and that’s when anti-animal cruelty laws went into effect. i.e. you seem to be confusing what the avant-garde consider immoral vs what the average person does. All this really establishes is that McGill was not at the avant-garde, it does not mean his morals were outside the norms of the time.
>Gandhi was a racist in his 20s, very much a product of his age, background, social status (etc).
And McGill wasn’t a product of his age, background, social status? Also, 20s seems plenty old enough to know better, no?
>Gandhi never organized a genocide, he never fought to defend slavery, he never owned other people…
Well, yeah, by then those things were outside the moral norms of *his* time.
>If Gandhi’s racism was too inexcusable for Montreal’s Black community to bare…
Why only “Montreal’s Black community”? Non-blacks can’t be offended by Gandhi’s racism and lobby for his cancelling? As you’re no doubt aware, his statue has been toppled at several African universities. Maybe Montreal will be next!
Elvi 11:28 on 2025-03-30 Permalink
What about MacDonald College, like the West Island agriculture faculty of McGill? Were they just as bad? Could we name the whole university after him/her instead?