Bryn Mawr College has taken the name of a former president off of its library due to concerns about her problematic past. The school removed Martha Carey Thomas’ name due to her racist and antisemitic views.
Bryn Mawr College officials said they are confronting the school's past by removing the name of the school's first dean and second president -- M. Carey Thomas -- from its Old Library, this week.
According to a statement from school president, Kim Cassidy, that was released on Tuesday, the decision to remove Thomas' name comes after the school's board researched her history of outspoken racist and antisemitic views.
During her tenure -- Thomas was elected school president in 1894 -- she barred Black students from attending the school and refused to permit Jewish individuals from working at the school.
"As a campus, we aspire to be a learning community that creates conditions that encourage all who study and work at Bryn Mawr to flourish. We seek to continue our dialogue with one another so that a better understanding of our diverse lived experiences can inform the actions we undertake to heal and move forward together. I am grateful for the many voices of students, alumnae/i, staff, faculty, and administrators who participate in such dialogue and who advocate for change," Cassidy said in a statement on the removal of Thomas' name from the library.
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Cassidy said that the inscription above the main entrance of the school's Old Library will be physically removed from the building later this year.
The school, she said, also plans to display this inscription -- along with the previously displayed bust sculpture and oil portrait of Thomas -- "as part of a future exhibit that allows for purposeful engagement with these objects and a reckoning with the full stories behind them."
The school also plans to host an art project later this month that will focus on telling stories that are missing from the history of the school, in an effort to "acknowledge and hold the pain of the past while we continue institution-wide work to build a fair, inclusive Bryn Mawr," said Cassidy.
