Caltech’s Renaming Committee – Progress and Problems

Jacaranda Tree at Caltech (Photo – Emmanuel Kraultez).

The powerful antiracist Black Lives Matter Movement gained renewed momentum after the death of George Floyd on May 25, and it has continued to stoke reflection and consternationn across the nation.

By Raha Riazati

It is no surprise that this movement also affected Caltech’s campus, where debate over the renaming of buildings such as Millikan Library, Chandler Dining Hall, and Ruddock House has been brewing for over nine months.

The push to rename

The push to rename Caltech buildings originated with UCLA political science professor and Caltech alum, Dr. Michael Chwe. Dr. Chwe created a petition calling for Caltech to remove the names of scientists associated with the California eugenics movement from its buildings and grounds. Dr. Chwe says he was inspired to start the petition, which would garner 1032 signatures, after reading student and alumni discussions at other universities, including Princeton University and Pomona College, about whether to remove Robert Millikan’s name from buildings on their own campuses. He conducted some of his own research and was shocked at Millikan’s ties to virulent race science. Realizing the full scope of Millikan’s bigotry and the forced sterilization conducted due in part to his support, Dr. Chwe felt ”betrayed that Caltech faculty taught [him] that [Millikan} was a person worthy of admiration.”

The Human Betterment Foundation

Such harsh and uncomfortable criticisms of Noble Prize winners and Caltech namesakes led to questions and pushback for 27.8% of the undergraduate students surveyed by the local student newspaper, the Tech; they reported feeling unsure about the renaming.  This is where a careful understanding of the history of Caltech and the Human Betterment Foundation, the chief institution responsible for the California eugenics movement, is essential. The Human Betterment Foundation was an organization devoted to supporting research on race science and the forced sterilization of women deemed not evolutionarily “fit” to bear children. Robert Millikan is famous for quantifying the elementary electric charge, and he is probably the most revered scientific icon at Caltech; the illustrious 9-story Millikan Library, Millikan Pond, and the Athenaeum’s Millikan Suite bear his name.  Robert Millikan also was a leading figure in the Human Betterment Foundation. He strongly advocated for the forced sterilization of poorer women, who were almost always Black, Latinx, and indigenous, so as to “help” natural selection advance the survival of “superior” humans (almost always white).

The Human Betterment Foundation was well-received by the California scientific community.  Its members included Harry Chandler and Albert Billings Ruddock. Chandler, for whom Chandler Dining Hall is named, was a staunch defender of eugenics and, as the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times, allowed columns on the need for “better breeding habits” to flourish under his leadership. Albert Billings Ruddock, for whom Ruddock House is named, was on the Board of Trustees of the Human Betterment Foundation and helped establish the E.S. Gosney Research Fund.  This Fund, existing until January 2021 under the same name, specifically granted financial support to Caltech scientists investigating the biological distinctions of race. Caltech’s historical tie to the Foundation does not manifest itself simply in the activities of a few individuals. After World War II, the Foundation was dissolved, and Caltech assumed all of its financial assets and activities. As Dr. Chwe delineates, “Caltech is the direct institutional successor of the Human Betterment Foundation” and, notably, “has never disavowed its activities”.

Committee on Naming and Recognition

In response to Dr. Chwe’s petition, President Thomas Rosenbaum commissioned the Committee on Naming and Recognition on July 22, 2020.This group of trustees, professors, and students was to offer recommendations based on historical, scientific, and practical considerations. Yet just three months after the Committee was formed, Sarah Sam, the only Black individual on the Committee, announced her resignation* in a publicized letter addressed to President Rosenbaum and circulated among the entire Caltech community. Sam is the president of BSEC (Black Scientists and Engineers at Caltech), an organization that works to improve racial equity and diversity on a campus that is struggling to provide opportunities to underrepresented minorities. Caltech’s Black and Latinx student population is extremely low; Black students in particular make up less than 1% of the population, a much lower percentage than at peer institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

In her letter, Sam stated that:

• several Committee members dismissed Millikan’s views as “private” and “a product of the times,” a phrase often used to justify the memorialization of Confederate leaders in Southern states;
• Committee members did not take it upon themselves to read the testimonies of victims of the forced sterilization practices promoted by the Human Betterment Foundation;
• Committee members failed to read the petition started by Dr. Chwe; and
• she came to realize the Committee members were eugenics apologists, more focused on defending Millikan than having an honest discussion about how he and his compatriots at the Foundation were cogs in the machine of white supremacy.

It is not hard to see the writing on the wall after such glaring assertions, but Sam made it clear that: “because of the unwillingness to condemn irrefutable evidence of overt racism, . . .this Committee will be [unable] to complete its charges in a responsible way.”

Sam’s resignation did not signal the end of campus activism, however; BSEC and the Socialists of Caltech, as well as a number of alumni groups, continued their advocacy.  The advocacy finally culminated in a declaration by President Rosenbaum on January 15^th to proceed with renaming all buildings, assets, and “additional memorializations.” This action clearly is a victory for the marginalized communities at Caltech. The Institute has begun the long work of disentangling itself from its difficult history of race science and eugenics.

Raha Riazati is an electrical engineering major at Caltech and a writer for The California Tech. This article was published first in the California Tech in a different format.