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Trinity College Dublin in Ireland has stripped the name of George Berkeley from one of its libraries, The New York Times reported. Berkeley, an alumnus of Trinity College, was a renowned philosopher who owned slaves, advocated for slavery and believed in the forced assimilation of Native American children.
Berkeley is also the namesake of the University of California, Berkeley—and the town in which it is located—and Berkeley College, one of the 14 residential colleges at Yale University.
While UC Berkeley has renamed buildings formerly named after slaveholders, a spokesperson told the Times it was not considering taking the same step for the institution as a whole.
“We acknowledge that the university’s founders chose to name their new town and campus after an individual whose views warrant no honor or commemoration,” the spokesperson said. Nowadays, however, “‘Berkeley’ has come to embody and represent very different values and perspectives.”
The decision to rename the library at Trinity College was reached by a campus group dedicated to reviewing “problematic legacies,” according to the article. The group considered both historical documents and submissions from the campus community, a slim majority of whom said they believed the name should be changed.
It is unclear as of yet what the new name will be.
