NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Newly-minted Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway says the university won’t be changing its name anytime soon.
Holloway – who is black – was answering a reporter’s question at a Monday press conference.
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“We are not going to change the name of the university,” Holloway said. “That does not mean I’m opposed to having a conversation about it.
“The reason we’re not going to change the name is that names have value that exceed someone’s existence,” Holloway added. “If I were to walk around feeing bludgeoned by every name I see, I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Rutgers’s namesake is Colonel Henry Rutgers, a hero of the American Revolutionary War and famed philanthropist who later saved what was then called Queens College through the donation of a $5,000 bond. Historians believe Rutgers owned slaves during his lifetime not unlike fellow patriot Richard Stockton, namesake of Stockton University.
Both Monmouth University and Princeton University recently took steps to scrub former President and Governor Woodrow Wilson’s name from buildings on their respective campuses; Wilson was a known racist, Confederate apologist and sympathizer of the KKK.
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