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UMS Trustees Vote To Remove Name Of President Who Supported Eugenics From Building

University of Maine

The University of Maine received authorization Monday to remove the name of a former president - and leading advocate for eugenics - from a lecture hall on campus.After a petition from students, the college formed a committee early this year to look at removing the name of Clarence C. Little. Little served as UMaine's president in the 1920s. But he also was a leader of the American Eugenics Society and endorsed anti-immigration policies. He also testified in support of the tobacco industry.

The state university system's board of trustees unanimously supported removing Little's name from the lecture hall.

"I don't see this as an exercise of revisionism, which I might well resist," said Board Chair James Erwin, "but much more a correction of a mistake that should have been recognized as such as in 1966."

UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy said that while Little made positive contributions to science, she and the university committee recommended that his name should be replaced.

"This is not in any way meant to be a sanitization of the past. We acknowledge this piece of our past. It's a piece of the history of the  University of Maine," Ferrini-Mundy said. "And history allows us, on looking back, to learn more about current times and learn more about ourselves. So we do have a plan for material to be posted in the hall, when it is renamed, to acknowledge what its name was, for that period."

The committee recommended replacing Little's name with "a person of Wabanaki descent" instead.

Little also was one of the founders of Bar Harbor's Jackson Laboratory. Earlier this year, the lab decided to remove Little's name from an auditorium on its campus.