Princeton University, which has claimed both Toni Morrison and Sir Arthur Lewis, as faculty members, announced it is renaming two prominent campus buildings in their honor.
Toni Morrison won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, the first African-American to earn the coveted award.
The late Sir Arthur Lewis won his Nobel in 1979 in the field of economics. Nearly 40 years later, he remains the only person of African descent to capture the prize in a field other than literature of peace.
The two laureates share another distinction: Princeton University, which has claimed both of them as faculty members, announced last week it is renaming two prominent campus buildings in their honor.
West College, a four-story residential college at the heart of the campus, will be reborn as Morrison Hall. The Dodds Auditorium, which bears the name of a former white president of the college, will hereafter be known as Arthur Lewis Auditorium.
The changes go into effect on July 1. They come as the university wraps up a year of looking inward, after a series of protests in November 2015 called attention to the well-documented racist views of Woodrow Wilson, the man for whom the university's School of Public and International Affairs is named.
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison returns to Princeton U.
A former New Jersey governor as well as president of both the United States and Princeton, Wilson played a large role in denying black students entry into the university. Later, he allowed his cabinet to re-segregate government agencies and rolled back hard-fought gains by black professionals.
While a 32-hour sit-in in the office of Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber failed to convince the powers-that-be to remove Wilson's name from the prestigious school, it did kick off a year of contemplation and discussion in classes, dormitories and lecture halls.
It also prompted the university to increase the number of minority doctoral students it admitted, as well as to diversify the symbols and artwork that dot the sprawling campus.
As part of that process, a committee of faculty, students, staff and alumni sought input from the university community, including through a website that included information about the spaces trustees were considering for the name change.
More than 200 people submitted suggestions.
In choosing Morrison and Lewis, the committee focused on their commitment to diversity and their contributions to scholarship, both on the campus and beyond.
The school noted that Morrison's arrival helped attract other faculty and students of color to Princeton. The prolific author also helped the university expand its commitment both to the creative and performing arts and to the African-American studies program.
Lewis, who was knighted in 1963, taught undergraduate and graduate courses in economic development and economic history. He was the first person of African descent to be appointed a professor in Great Britain's university system.
The committee chose wisely. But the discussion shouldn't end there, especially as racism continues to prevail even at the highest levels of our government.
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