The Chronicle T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2018 DUKECHRONICLE.COM
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ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEENTH YEAR, ISSUE 28
CARR IS RENAMED By Bre Bradham Editor-in-Chief
The University has stripped Julian Carr’s name from the East Campus building that bore it for nearly 90 years. The change comes four years after Duke renamed Aycock Residence Hall on East Campus because of its namesake’s history and amidst a national conversation about removing Confederate or racist memorials. The Board of Trustees approved removing without dissent Carr’s name at its meeting this weekend, Board Chair Jack Bovender said. The decision was announced to the University in an email from President Vincent Price Saturday afternoon. “Our campus is first and foremost an inclusive community of people, not of classrooms and buildings,” Price wrote in his email to the Duke community. “With each new student or faculty member who arrives here, with each new discovery made or perspective shared, this community grows and evolves to better meet the challenges of its time. The renaming of the Carr Building represents one such evolution, at once a reflection of how our world has changed and a demonstration that our values and bonds will endure far longer than mortar or stone.” The Carr Building will be called the Classroom Building until a new name is chosen. Price told The Chronicle after the Board meeting that he does not have a set time frame for recommending a new name, adding that he is considering the building’s name in conjunction with other memorial
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efforts on campus. The Classroom Building was the Carr Building’s original name before it was renamed in honor of Carr in 1930. The decision to revert to the Classroom Building comes after the ad hoc committee did not make a recommendation on a new name, according to the Duke Today release. Instead, the committee deferred the renaming process to the Board of Trustees. In its request to rename the building, the history department asked that it be named after Raymond Gavins, the first African-American professor in the department. The Carr Building’s name came under scrutiny at the beginning of the semester, when Duke’s history department filed a formal request for the name to be reconsidered. The request stemmed from the department’s concerns about Julian Carr, after whom the building was named. Carr donated the land for East Campus to Trinity College—Duke’s predecessor—and served on its Board of Trustees. “It is a reasonable assertion to say that Duke wouldn’t exist were it not for the generosity of Julian Carr. It is also true that he was a virulent white supremacist,” Taylor wrote in an email to The Chronicle in August. “Both of these things are true about Mr. Carr, and I think Duke needs to tell this story explicitly via a full, academically rigorous contextualization of Julian Carr, and then we all need to wrestle with what it means for us today.”
The Board of Trustees renamed it to the Classroom Building until another name is chosen.
Emily Qin | Staff Photographer
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