De‐naming and Renaming Schools and Buildings, and Even a Little Road: The Challenges of Getting It Right

In 1989, the brilliant Spike Lee (Fig. 1) released his film Do the Right Thing. Movie pundits have debated as to whether it was his best. It was an evocative lesson of values wherever they are taught and followed (or not). The setting was no stuffy classroom at an Ivy League college where a discourse on Greek philosophy was underway but instead a Brooklyn neighborhood during a broiling summer. The movie included uncomfortable moments of racial polarity with rough characters, some hurling vile words, and with Ossie Davis' and Ruby Dee's roles adding soulful balance as the priest and priestess of grace. The movie was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the 1990 Oscars (losing to Tom Schulman for his script of Dead Poets Society). Although the temperature soared on some days, my past summer was nothing like that of the players in Lee's movie. And yet, my summer included two experiences that reminded me of this movie. One was a biography. The other is a local dispute about the name of a road. I'll take them up in that order. I had read previous biographies of the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (Fig. 2), but the one I read this summer was the most spellbinding (1). To get into the depth of this superb biography is beyond the scope of this editorial, but I would emphasize that Stephen Budiansky brings out more on Holmes' horrific Civil War battlefield experiences (wounded no less than thrice) as well as his troubled relationship with his father (the esteemed Harvard man of medicine), than has been so vividly revealed before. But the seminal point I took away from this biography, and others on Holmes, was his creed that the law is about customs as to the rights of aggrieved parties because said customs have evolved. As he famously said in his seminal opus The Common Law: “The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience” (2). So now we have the sterling principle of doing the right thing (Spike Lee) and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. saying that legal doctrine evolves and is not codified in stone. These are the key elements, both as metaphor and precedent, for what follows, about a little road situated in the village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Louis Agassiz (Fig. 3) was a Swiss-American geologist and biologist who, from his Harvard perch, enthralled the learned lay public of Boston, somewhat like Louis Pasteur had done in the salons of Paris. A group of Boston Brahmin women created a fund for a summer biological station on Penikese Island in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, where Professor Agassiz did research with the local marine species and taught students. In 1888, in the village of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) was founded and soon became a summer mecca for biologists. In the next decades, MBL either purchased or received as gifts various tracts of land in the village, adding to the institution's ability to create housing for its scientists. This also added to the institution's status in the town of Falmouth, within which the village of Woods Hole is situated. With permission from the town, MBL named several roads within or abutting these tracts of land in honor of the most distinguished biologists who had worked at the laboratory in the early 20th century. One of these was named “Agassiz Road.” Seeing the sign when I first went to Woods Hole as a student, I leapt to the same assumption most have made: “Oh, sure. He was the famous biologist who came to Woods Hole and got MBL started.” My innocent thought was amplified by the fact that in the main building at MBL, there was a large framed quotation of him: “Study Nature not Books.” So he was huge. He was owed. Naming a road for him was obvious. But things are not always what they seem. And the truth sometimes lies beneath. This past summer, some current residents of the road as well as others in Woods Hole have raised an issue: by all accounts, Louis Agassiz was manifestly racist. The record is clear that he believed that differences among human races make some constitutionally inferior to others. He conducted comparative anatomical studies based on this hypothesis. So now let us, just as a fantasy, ask Spike Lee and Justice Holmes to approach the ethical-moral bench (surely a reversal for Holmes) and advise. What is the right thing? The Woods Hole community has a group that is demanding that the name of the road be changed. As in each of these cases, one considers the degree of offense to those now living as well as the historical reasons to put things right. Some have argued that Agassiz's role in biology was so huge that his name should be on the pantheon. Maybe so. But the fact is that he had nothing to do with either the founding or ascent of MBL, having died 15 years earlier. The petitioners have argued that his racist beliefs are reason to rename the road because it is a “stain” and is more so because the naming may have been underserved in the first place. I find myself squarely on the side of renaming. If this were to be entertained by the town of Falmouth, a name surely in contention will be that of Ernest Everett Just (Fig. 4). Just spent many summers at MBL carrying out pioneering research on fertilization. That he was not white is admittedly part of my suggestion, and I confess to veering toward political correctness (3). And yet, Just's scientific merit is without question on a par with biologists for whom other roads in Woods Hole have been named. As we consider these issues of de-naming and renaming entities all through the academy and our society, I suggest we consider Spike Lee and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as our guides. Each of these decisions is complex. But then there it is, staring back at our ethical consciousness: a billboard that starkly says, “Do The Right Thing.”

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