A Vermont Superior Court has sided with Middlebury College in a case challenging the de-naming of its historic Mead Memorial Chapel, now known as “Middlebury Chapel.”
Former Governor Jim Douglas sued the college last year on behalf of the estate of the chapel’s donor, John Abner Mead.
In his October 3 decision resolving most of the lawsuit in the school’s favor, Judge Robert Mello wrote the former governor “would not be entitled to relief compelling Middlebury to retain the chapel’s original name or monetary relief compensating the name change,” regardless of how the remainder of the case is decided.
Background on the court case, which we covered from the beginning, is here:
Mead, a Middlebury alumnus who served as governor of Vermont from 1910-1912, gave the chapel to the school in 1914 with specific instructions to name it “Mead Memorial Chapel” in honor of his ancestors.
But after over a century, the school decided to remove the Mead family name from the iconic building he endowed, citing his “instigating role” in Vermont’s eugenics movement.
The school’s decision came just months after the Vermont state legislature had formally apologized for past state-sanctioned eugenics practices, including legislation enacted in 1931 authorizing the sterilization of at least 250 of its citizens.
For his role in promoting eugenics statewide, Middlebury pointed to Mead’s 2012 farewell speech, where he recommended the Vermont legislature consider policies to protect society from “degenerates,” including vasectomies and restrictions on marriage.
But when I spoke to Gov. Douglas last year, the school had not explained how Mead’s departing speech as governor led to Vermont’s eugenics law enacted in 1931, nearly 20 years after he delivered it and more than ten years after he died.
That information, the school told Douglas, was confidential under its records retention policy and would remain sealed—for 75 years.
Douglas said the college “terribly mischaracterizes Governor Mead’s life and legacy. He was distinguished, successful, and actually progressive by the standards of his time.”
He sees Middlebury’s decision to erase the Mead family name as part of a bigger struggle over freedom of expression on the Middlebury campus.
In 2017, the school made national news when students shouted down invited speaker and conservative author Charles Murray.
And in 2019, Polish conservative scholar Ryszard Legutko was cancelled at the last minute before he was to speak on campus.
The de-naming of Mead Memorial Chapel is the latest episode in the assault on academic freedom at Middlebury, Douglas said last year.
In the court case, Douglas argued that Middlebury’s decision to de-name the chapel breached a contract between Governor Mead and Middlebury. But the school claimed the transaction between the two parties was a gift rather than a contract, and it was not obligated to keep the name on the chapel as a condition of that gift.
Either way, the court held last week, Douglas could not compel the school to keep the Mead family name on the building:
[T]he chapel retained its original name for well over 100 years, and approximately 100 years after Governor Mead’s own death. Governor Mead contributed most of the funds supporting the initial construction of the chapel, but he did not provide funds for its indefinite maintenance, and Middlebury has determined that the time has come to change the name.In these circumstances, the court concludes that the reasonable duration of any contractual term as to the name of the chapel has been satisfied as a matter of law.
Judge Mello gave Governor Douglas 30 days to pursue his remaining claims as to whether, assuming there was a contract, Middlebury breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
Even then, the court expressed skepticism about what damages he could recover, seeing how “Governor Mead has been deceased for over a century and could not have been emotionally harmed by Middlebury’s decision to remove the Mead name from the chapel.”
And that underscores what Douglas sees as the travesty in this case: the building was named for Mead’s family, not for Mead himself:
“They took the name off the chapel without even knowing for whom the building was named.”
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