University Of Minnesota Refuses To Rename Building Honoring Anti-Semitic Dean
By Aiden Pink April 30, 2019
The regents of the University of Minnesota voted Friday not to re-name four buildings named after past college leaders with racist and anti-Semitic histories.
After a two-hour public hearing, the regents voted 10-1 to keep the names of the Coffman Memorial Union, Nicholson Hall, Middlebrook Hall, and Coffey Hall, despite a 125-page report from a school committee outlining the namesakes’ histories.
“We’re spending way too much time on this particular issue,” Regent Michael Hsu said, according to Minnesota Public Radio. “If we all spent this much time on the budget, we’d actually be able to solve some problems.”
Nicholson Hall is named after Edward Nicholson, who served as the dean of student affairs from 1917-1941. He frequently approved spying on student activists he believed to be Communists, and kept a list of supposed “Jew agitators” that he shared with the F.B.I., MPR reported. Coffman Memorial Union is named after former university president Lotus Coffman, who during his 1920-1938 tenure barred African-Americans from student housing.
Despite support for the name changes from University president Eric Kaler and the student government, the regents voted not to re-name the buildings. But regent Dean Johnson promised that conversations would continue. “Everyone’s voices are not only welcome but necessary,” Johnson said, according to the local Jewish website TC Jewfolk.
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor for the Forward. You can reach him at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
