


Back in February, I covered the woke push to rename George Washington University’s sports teams from the Colonials. At the time, there was talk of renaming them “the Fog” for the school’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood, “the real aim of which is yet again to choose a team name that is stripped of any sort of evocation of human beings, humans being by nature controversial.” I suggested a better alternative that wasn’t even on the list of ideas: the Continentals.
Well, GWU has made its choice, and it’s the best of the remaining alternatives: the Revolutionaries. It was overwhelmingly the popular choice among the school’s students, alumni, faculty, and staff. I suppose that’s a compromise: It honors the legacy of George Washington (George will remain the mascot), but the name also reflects the left-wing frisson of revolution that today’s academia demands. The school’s press release states that “the Revolutionaries moniker represents GW community members because they ‘are not afraid to break boundaries and change the game. The GW Revolutionaries go beyond what’s conventional or expected to focus on shifting mindsets and creating a new future for ourselves and our world.’” The mascot may need to remind them that successful revolutions also need to be grounded in timeless truths.