McGill student paper drops “McGill” name
The McGill Tribune is dropping the university’s name from its masthead, saying the university should follow suit, because it has shown itself to be indifferent to its “violent, colonial and racist origins.”
We’ve debated here before whether McGill should change its name, and I tend to come down on the No side, for these reasons:
- A lot of things in Montreal are named after the university and it would be expensive, confusing and – I think – not particularly useful to the “Black, Indigenous, and racialized students and faculty” the change is supposed to benefit, for these names to be changed
- A lot of people have pride in having graduated from the university, and it appears on many lists of best universities – throwing all that history away would be silly and damaging not only to the university, but to many people connected with it, and, again, to the prestige of the city
- The MUHC has a name that it won’t benefit anyone to change
- If McGill wants to do anything of immediate benefit, it could start by paying its teaching assistants and course lecturers a decent rate, and divesting from fossil fuels
As an old white chick maybe I have no business commenting on this, but to me it goes on the pile of symbolic gestures, rather than of truly beneficial change.
walkerp 17:57 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
Orthogonal to your argument, simply changing the name also relieves much of the pressure for institutions like McGill to make actual substantive changes. You say this implicitly but I’m just reinforcing it by saying it out loud.
JaneyB 17:58 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
Have to agree with you, Kate. I wish students would take time off from the easy symbolic stuff and wrangle with the structural problems eg: divesting and paying the lecturers. (Some do, I know but not enough). How many of these historical figures mistreated the women in their lives? Probably all of them. Yeah crappy but…McGill right now underpays its contract faculty – disproportionately women. Where’s the student campaign to fix that? Grrr.
walkerp 18:23 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
Oh come on, that’s not on the students.
Chris 19:39 on 2023-04-13 Permalink
Yup, so many of today’s ‘activists’ are stupidly focused on symbolic salves like this, it’s pathetic really. Real activism is too hard, you can’t just press ‘+1 like’.
Also, class issues are much more important (a la paying staff more) but instead they pursue this divisive culture war stuff. I think the power elite must love it, as it keeps the working class fighting amongst themselves.
Tee Owe 11:22 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
OK, wading in where I probably shouldn’t – consider many names and whether they similarly deserve renaming – just for starters – Victoria, Champlain, Jacques Cartier, Rockefeller, Stanford – I’ll stop there. Do we really believe they were all so squeaky clean that we couldn’t find anything at all on any of them? How correct must we be? I’m not trying to justify outdated mores, just saying that once we start, where do we finish? Not coming back to this, that’s all I have to say.
shawn 12:45 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
Yep, I agree.
Kate 14:04 on 2023-04-14 Permalink
Also, Blork made the point last time around that nobody glorifies James McGill. The statue was a deliberately casual one and has been removed, nobody holds James McGill days or treats him as a hero. I’d bet that the vast majority of students of the university would have no idea that McGill Street is not named for the same man. The name is semantically very close to null.
Tux 00:16 on 2023-04-16 Permalink
I agree that a name change does not really do much to make up for colonialism. Much like land acknowledgements – I always kinda roll my eyes when I see a show at the Centaur and they start out by saying “we’re on native land that was stolen” and it’s like, that’s great you’re admitting it but the unsaid part is “and we’re still profiting from it, and nah, we’re not giving it back”
So maybe changing McGill’s name is worth it simply because it would inconvenience a bunch of privileged folks. Maybe that alone is enough reason to do it. Other educational institutions named after James McGill later changed their names… Why not the big, well-known one? To be fair, as someone lacking post-secondary education I don’t really have a dog in this fight but I do enjoy it when rich people are uncomfortable, so there.
Orr 21:18 on 2023-04-16 Permalink
These students still pretty happy to have the status and prestige of McGill University on their diploma.
Colour me cynical, and them more than a little hypocritical.