Yale University has just announced that the college previously named after former John C. Calhoun, the 7th Vice President of the United States and diehard slavery advocate, will be renamed after Grace Murray Hopper. An awardee of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Dr. Hopper earned a MA in mathematics and a PhD in mathematics and mathematical physics in the 1930’s from Yale University and invented the first compiler for computer languages. Along with her long-list of achievements in computer science, “Amazing Grace” as she was often affectionately named, she served more than four decades in the United States Navy and reached the rank of Rear Admiral. Yale’s recent decision marks the end to a long and contentious onomastic debate that had sharply divided the university’s community. In a statement given to the New York Times, Rianna Johnson-Levy, 21, a senior from Ann Arbor, Mich., who was involved in the protests, stated: “This is definitely a victory, but we’re not done fighting […] It’s our job to keep pushing Yale in the right direction.”
