Middlebury College in Vermont became nationally infamous as a result of the student riot that occurred when Charles Murray was scheduled to speak there in 2017. The school’s lefty administrators shamefully took no action against the perpetrators.

Just recently, the school has waded into the building-renaming fad with its decision to remove the name of a donor from a chapel on campus. In today’s Martin Center article, Joanne Florino of Philanthropy Roundtable delves into the controversy.

The “bad” person involved is John Read, Vermont’s governor early in the 20th century. It turns out that he at one time regarded the eugenics movement favorably, as did many other prominent Americans of that day. In their need to signal their virtue, school officials have removed his name from the chapel that was built in his honor.

Florino explains the fight that has erupted:

In 1914, Mead offered to build a chapel on his alma mater’s campus in honor of the 50th anniversary of his graduation. By the time the chapel was completed in 1916, Mead’s gift totaled $75,000 (over $2 million in today’s money). Middlebury named the structure the Mead Memorial Chapel, but the intent of the naming is in dispute. Middlebury claimed, in its official announcement of the change, “The building’s name honored him and his wife, Mary Madelia Sherman.” Other sources—and the current lawsuit—say otherwise. Gov. Douglas included a copy of Mead’s original letter in the complaint he filed with the Vermont Superior Court on March 24. That document indicates that Mead’s naming intention was, in fact, to honor his ancestors.

So, the college now has a costly legal case on its hands because it couldn’t say no to the woke crowd that insists on renaming or even destroying things that it finds offensive. The eugenics movement was bad — harmful government intrusion into the lives of peaceful people — but changing the name on the college chapel does nothing to change the past. And, of course, eugenics isn’t the only kind of harmful government intrusion in our past. FDR did plenty of that, but it wouldn’t help to change things if we got rid of FDR statues and changed everything named for him.