UMaine will rename building named for eugenics advocate
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The name of a former university president and scientist who advocated for eugenics and helped obscure the health risks of tobacco will be removed from a building at the University of Maine.
The board voted Monday to remove Clarence Cook Little’s name from Little Hall on the Orono campus, the Portland Press Herald reported.
Little was president from 1922 to 1925 and was a prominent genetics researcher. He also supported the eugenics movement, which advocated for forced sterilizations of people viewed as undesirable, often meaning immigrants or people with mental illness, the newspaper reported.
The vote followed the recommendation of a task force convened in response to a student petition.
“As fiduciaries for a public institution of high education, the board has to be open to the constant evolution of knowledge and understanding,” board Chair James Erwin said Monday. “While many facts of our past, what people have done or said, may be immutable, history certainly is not. As new information emerges and new interpretations follow, we acknowledge our understanding of history is subject to constant change.”
The task force recommended that the building be named after a Wabanaki person, as the college is on the tribe’s territory. A new task force has been convened to recommend a replacement name for the academic building.