Salovey Speaks on Naming Decisions

I mean try to get your comment that it feels like, if you don't mind my rephrasing of it, that it's kind of a crafted solution designed to appease audiences So you get Pauli Murray, then you get Calhoun, and Benjamin Franklin is a curveball and what about... I'll get to money at the end So the corporation decided that because residential colleges hadn't been named for donors the new ones wouldn't be So Charlie said when he gave us this gift, I just like one thing, I'd like you to consider the name Benjamin Franklin He's my family's hero, he's my personal role model. I think what he likes about Franklin is the fact that he's a polymath The fact that he's committed to education all his life The fact that he had a relationship with Yale University is kind of interesting And also the fact that [chuckles from crowd] The fact that although he owned slaves for much of his life he became an ardent abolitionist and wrote persuasively against slavery including Including, hold on wait I'll take your question Off camera: You said although he owned slaves [applause] My biggest disappointment in us is that our number of particularly African American and Latino faculty that teach you in Yale College has, not at all times, but basically remained stagnant over a long period of time That is extremely upsetting to me. And you are a pretty diverse group of people, your faculty are not I reject the way that you, Yale students, are treated in a lot of the things we do It is hard. You are working, your families are working for you to be here. Struggle every day to try to make this place better and to try to imagine a future that is better.