The Name-Change Charade

After a University of South Carolina commission released an exhaustive report in July on the institution’s historical ties to racism, Harris Pastides, the interim president, publicly promised to take “decisive action.”

But privately, leaders on the Columbia campus had already made up their minds — weeks, if not months, earlier — not to act on the commission’s key recommendations: removing the names from 11 campus buildings that honor people who held racist views.

Emails obtained by The Chronicle through a public-records request show that the commission’s efforts were used largely as cover for administrators’ inaction, and seem to confirm critics’ fears that university leaders were more focused on optics than on making real change.

Though it was widely known that renaming campus buildings would have been an uphill battle — a state law requires South Carolina’s majority-Republican legislature to sign off on such changes — email correspondence among university leaders reveals that they had no intention of even making the request.

What’s more, the emails show, Pastides’s public response to the commission’s report was carefully crafted to create the perception that administrators were acting on the group’s recommendations when, in fact, the outcome had been predetermined. The president’s response described an "$11-million investment” in diversity and inclusion efforts, as did a university news release. But that amount was just the university’s existing diversity budget, not a new investment.

Administrators’ only immediate step was to create an “implementation group” — yet another committee charged with making more recommendations.

A university spokesman pushed back this week against the idea that the naming commission’s work had gone nowhere, saying it “was always broader than building names.” In the future, university leaders will consider naming new buildings and public spaces for prominent African American South Carolinians, informed by the commission’s research.

“The commission’s work was intended to include the full scope of how the university has evolved, allowing us to better educate students, faculty, staff, visitors, and local community members about the complex history of the university, to include the contributions of marginalized and underrepresented people whose voices have typically not been heard,” Larry Thomas, the spokesman, wrote in an email.

What happened with the University of South Carolina’s commission highlights the difficult balancing act faced by many public universities: satisfying people on campus who want to see robust commitments to racial justice, without angering campus board members and elected officials who believe such efforts are political correctness run amok.

So far, the situation also raises the biggest fear of a university task force: that its hard work will gather dust on a shelf.

Students have pushed for years for the University of South Carolina to remove building names that honor slaveowners, Confederate generals, and others who held racist views.

As the racial-justice movement has grown, so has the pressure on university leaders to do something. In 2019 an advisory committee on diversity recommended what would become the Presidential Commission on University History.

The commission, charged with writing a historical report and producing a list of recommendations based on its research, had more than two dozen members, including students, professors, administrators, researchers, and a campus trustee. It was co-chaired by Pastides until he was tapped as interim president, in May 2021. (The former president, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., resigned after he plagiarized a commencement speech.)

The commission’s work, which covered only the university system’s Columbia campus, became more urgent after the murder of George Floyd led to another round of calls for action on the university‘s controversial names. In August 2020, Caslen, then president, explicitly asked the commission to review particular buildings for potential renaming and to provide arguments for and against their current names.

The biggest lightning rod was the fitness center named for Strom Thurmond, the U.S. senator and former South Carolina governor who died in 2003 and supported segregation for much of his life. Opponents of the name included students of color, current and former college athletes, and Dawn Staley, the Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach. But Thurmond was also beloved by many in South Carolina, including some Republican lawmakers and university trustees who knew Thurmond personally and believed his contributions to the state had outweighed his mistakes.

In its July report, the commission formally recommended that Thurmond’s name and 10 others be removed from campus buildings.

Pastides responded with a public statement that voiced support for racial justice. “As the commission’s report makes clear, and as I strongly affirm, the names given to many of our buildings honor individuals we would not even consider today,” he wrote in a July 14 letter. “Some reflect a legacy of racism and oppression that we abhor and forcefully reject.”

Pastides also stressed the importance of the commission’s work. “By learning our history, and grappling with its complexity, we can create a more inclusive, and better, future for all of us,” he wrote.

But behind the scenes, campus leaders had already decided that removing building names was off the table.

University officials carefully managed Pastides’s public response to the commission’s report — cognizant that state lawmakers, members of the campus community, and others would be reading it closely. Emails reveal there were at least 14 draft versions of Pastides’s statement, which was in the works for months before the commission wrapped up its work.

A core contingent of Pastides’s cabinet wrestled with how to address the barriers imposed by state politics — and the fact that the university didn’t plan to ask the legislature to make the recommended name changes. In one draft, university officials considered forceful finger-pointing at the legislature.

“Our elected leaders have made it clear to me, and to our trustees, that they will not at this time entertain a debate on renaming our buildings,” the July 6 draft said. “Our mission, however, is different than theirs.” The university’s mission, the draft continued, is to transform the lives of South Carolinians through education, research, and service “within an inclusive and diverse environment.”

That language was later softened, based on the advice of Craig Parks, the director of government relations. He suggested that a legislator might wonder, “Are they saying … that ‘I am close-minded’???”

The same draft spelled out four pages of actions the university should take in response to the commission’s work, including naming four new residence halls and two scholarships for prominent African Americans in the state.

The draft proposed a commitment of $25 million over seven years to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The money would fund a “Carolina Consortium on Slavery, Race, and Memory,” a $2-million rise in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s annual budget, and $4 million to increase the diversity of the student body, faculty, and staff.

In addition, the university would commit to spend $15 million on recruiting and retaining a more diverse faculty, and set aside $3 million — in both university and private funding — to create an on-campus memorial to enslaved laborers at South Carolina. The university would convene a “National Summit on Equity and Inclusion,” hosted by the university’s Center for Civil Rights, and elevate the African-American-studies program to department status.

The university didn’t end up making any of those commitments.

Senior administrators debated “action steps” over several days, emails show.

On July 7, Mark Bieger, the chief of staff, emailed four people — three communications officials and Julian Williams, the vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion — to say that Pastides wanted the university’s response letter to spell out “a wealth of actionable items” such as “new names for review” and “investment in office of DEI.”

Bieger suggested that the $25 million initially proposed for new diversity funding was unrealistic, though, and said officials would have to do “some significant review of investments, to ensure the university can actually fund.”

By July 9, the dollar amounts had disappeared from the draft letter, replaced with a general promise that “the university will commit significant resources over the next five years.”

A communications firm working with the university wanted to restore a specific number. “Julian has reservations” about doing so, Bieger wrote, referring to Williams, the vice president for DEI. Bieger then emailed the university’s treasurer, Joe Sobieralski: “Any thoughts on if and how we communicate this ‘university investment’ in the response to the commission report?”

Later, Bieger told Sobieralski and Ed Walton, the chief financial officer, that the president’s forthcoming letter would describe a “$12-million investment” in diversity and inclusion efforts, based on information the finance officials had provided. He wrote that Williams “wanted to ensure and stress this is not a ‘new’ investment in response to the commission report.”

Walton replied: “Choose words carefully, and it will work well.”

The $12 million — ultimately revised to an "$11-million investment” in the president’s letter — was the existing diversity budget.

University leaders included another “action item” in the published letter that sparked contention: the Center for Civil Rights History and Research. Like the “$11-million investment” in diversity, the center wasn’t new.

Bieger said some people had concerns about mentioning the civil-rights center in connection with the commission. On July 12, he wrote that “we probably need to get the CRC paragraph as close to ‘right’ as possible,” and said the forthcoming letter should explain that the center was an “ongoing” effort that had been announced years ago.

That clarifying language appeared in a draft but was stripped out of the final letter, which said that the university would “expand our commitment to education and research” through the center and that the center would “advance the study of this important history.”

Bobby J. Donaldson, an associate professor of history who leads the civil-rights center, told The Chronicle in an email that university officials had asked him about mentioning the center in the president’s letter. But he didn’t think it would be described as an institutional action.

“Once the university’s response to the report was released, it gave the impression (I believe) that the CRC was a byproduct of the commission’s deliberations,” Donaldson wrote.

Thomas, the university’s vice president for communications, told The Chronicle that the president’s letter points to the civil-rights center “because its mission complements the objectives of the commission and the university, and it was important to publicly acknowledge this ongoing work.”

Questions also surfaced over the “implementation group” that the university promised to form in response to the commission.

The group would be “informed by the work of the presidential commission,” according to a proposal shared via email, and was to present an action plan to Pastides in the fall of 2021.

But Williams, the vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion, was worried about asking people — especially people of color — to serve on yet another committee.

“Can we project forward and add clarity as to what happens after this action plan is created?” Williams asked Bieger and Thomas. “I ask because I envision having difficulty convincing the faculty we’ll want bought in to these efforts to participate.”

“After this commission decision,” Williams continued, “faculty, especially faculty of color, are going to be wary of joining another task force/committee.”

Bieger, a key architect of the president’s letter, has since left for a post at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge .

Thomas told The Chronicle that the new implementation group had “met multiple times.” He said there was no particular timeline for the group to complete its work.

The renaming commission’s report said its members had completed an enormous task: They had examined 200 years of university history, chronicling the ugly parts — like ties to racism — as well as the contributions of women, African Americans, Native Americans, and other underrepresented groups.

Five commission members contacted by The Chronicle in the past week didn’t respond to requests for comment. They told The Chronicle in July that they hoped their work would inform new courses, campus tours, and other efforts to educate people about the university’s complicated history.

But Hannah White, a former student-body vice president, told The Chronicle that she had, at times, questioned the process. She had wondered: “What really is the goal of the commission?”

White said she wanted the university’s Board of Trustees to make clear its stance on changing building names. “That doesn’t take an implementation committee,” White said. “That doesn’t take a year.”

She had spoken out earlier in the year about her “deep frustration and disappointment” with what she saw as university complacency on removing the names.

“Over the last year, the university has publicly denounced hate and racism, calling for the renaming of all buildings with racist backgrounds,” White wrote, in a letter with Issy Rushton, then the student-body president. “Yet these statements mean nothing for the values of the institution without a record of intentional action.”

“The longer we continue without action,” the students wrote, “the more this university will lose the trust of students, alumni, faculty, and staff.”

The week that the commission released its final report, a local newspaper, The State, reported that state lawmakers were “unlikely to pass” any proposed changes in campus-building names. Thomas, the vice president for communications, shared the article in an email to the presidential cabinet.

Pastides replied to Thomas: “Don’t they know that we weren’t planning to ask?”