Opinion: It's time to strip Calhoun's name from Clemson's Honors College

In 1837, John C. Calhoun was an angry man. He was sick and tired of abolitionists – “blind fanatics,” he called them – who criticized the South’s peculiar institution. For years, the planter class had treated slavery as a necessary evil. But as the abolition movement gained momentum, Calhoun felt that this position was too conciliatory, too weak.

So Calhoun fought back, declaring to the U.S. Senate that because of the “physical differences, as well as intellectual” between black and white Americans, “the relation now existing in the slave-holding states between the two (races), is, instead of an evil, a good – a positive good.”

Calhoun’s apologists regret that his most infamous line looms so large in historical memory. After all, he was a Congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president. But his radical defense of human bondage continues to define his legacy. Calhoun did not apologize for his white supremacy; he sought to enshrine it.

Now, in a call for change that has been endorsed by student government, Clemson University students and alumni no longer want to enshrine Calhoun, the namesake of the university’s honors college. They are right, and, as events nationwide continue to demonstrate, the time is right for change.

Retaining the name of one of slavery’s most ardent defenders on one of the university’s most prestigious programs contravenes Clemson’s goal “to create a diverse community” and its mandate to function as “a high seminary of learning.”

Opponents of removing Calhoun’s name will cite the South Carolina Heritage Act of 2000. They are doubly wrong, for in this case such appeals are both legally and intellectually dubious.

The Heritage Act, forged as a compromise over the Confederate flag, states that “No street, bridge, structure, park, preserve, reserve, or other public area” that is “named for any historic figure or historic event may be renamed or rededicated” without a two-thirds vote of both houses of the General Assembly. It makes no mention of honors programs.

There is also a larger sense in which appeals to the Heritage Act are wrong. The law desperately scrambles to proscribe any reconsideration of public commemoration. In this effort, it seeks to foreclose critical thinking, historical inquiry, and ethical consideration.

But those are precisely the elements at the heart of Clemson’s Honors College, which I’ve worked in for the past 15 years. We think, we inquire, we consider and reconsider. We invite and foster diverse perspectives, reasoned debate, and intellectual exchange. I am proud of the work of our honors students; they deserve a name they can take pride in.

Opponents of change who fear “erasing history” confuse public commemoration with historical memory. Calhoun was not forgotten before 1981, when his name was first affixed to the honors college. It was a choice to commemorate him then, and it remains a choice now. No appeal to tradition, no punting to task forces or retreating behind legal teams can circumvent that fact. And in whose name would one so appeal or so retreat? It is a decision, and it is time to decide.

In making that decision, I encourage the Clemson leadership to emulate the courage of our students rather than to mimic the timidity of our politicians. Let us examine facts rather than hide from them, encourage debate rather than foreclose it, discharge our responsibility rather than shirk it.

Spring is a hopeful time on a college campus. Newly admitted students come to visit. Seniors will soon graduate. It is also a time when administrators are tempted to sweep troublesome issues under the rug, hopeful that they will have gone away come fall. But this spring is the time for Clemson’s leadership to make a statement that speaks to rather than ignores the hopes, ideals, and aspirations of our students.

This issue is not going away, and now is not the time to kick the can yet once more. Now is the time to stop celebrating the legacy of John C. Calhoun in the name of Clemson’s Honors College.

Michael LeMahieu is associate professor of English and faculty fellow for the National Scholars Program at Clemson University. He is the recipient of research fellowships from Yale University, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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