Renaming Jordan Hall

In summer 2020 a long-running discussion about the eugenic beliefs of IU President (1885-91) David Starr Jordan reached the level of the university's naming committee. Numerous faculty members and students (including much of IU's Biology Department) presented a petition to rename Jordan Hall. They cited Jordan's essay "The Blood of the Nation" as an example of the scientist's now-debunked belief that human behaviors were carried genetically through racial and national lineage.

The Jordan Hall naming controversy (which may, additionally affect Bloomington's Jordan River and Jordan Avenue) is just one of a number of public discussions about American buildings, places, or institutions whose names reflect what many contemporary Americans consider offensive, outmoded, or dangerous beliefs. At the time of this writing, we do not know how IU's naming committee will rule on the petition to change the name of the building that has, since 1956, housed Jordan's former department of biology.

Michael Reschke, "University Expansion, Naturalism, and Eugenics all Part of Jordan Legacy," Bloomington Herald Times, July 27, 2020

https://www.hoosiertimes.com/herald_times_online/news/iu/university-expansion-naturalism-and-eugenics-all-part-of-jordan-legacy/article_ae579e0c-cdd6-11ea-b2e9-0bc2f20ffe52.html

David Starr Jordan, The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit

https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ZvQ9EzgV0xIC&rdid=book-ZvQ9EzgV0xIC&rdot=1