Emory University to drop names of 2 men, citing their pasts

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Emory University to drop names of 2 men, citing their pasts

Emory University in Atlanta will remove the names of a former psychologist and a former U.S. Supreme Court justice from campus institutions and professorships.

President Gregory Fenves announced the changes on Thursday. They follow his decision to convene a committee in 2020 to examine people whose names are honored by Emory.

The Yerkes National Primate Research Center is named for psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes, who the university said “vigorously supported” eugenics. That idea called for genetic improvement of humans and was often used to discriminate against racial minority groups and people with disabilities. The facility will become the Emory National Primate Research Center.

Two professorships in the university's law school now named for L.Q.C. Lamar, an Emory graduate who wrote Mississippi's secession ordinance and defended slavery and white supremacy, will become Emory School of Law Distinguished Professors.

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