While extremely uncommon, elected officials have pondered municipal name changes in the past. At the time, sponsors of the celebrations argued that the philosopher may have simply advocated for Western enlightenment to spread around the world, rather than boasting about conquest. However, there was local support for the controversial scholar as recently as 2003, when the Berkeley City Council unanimously voted to proclaim May 24 as George Berkeley Day. But some people think there should be.īerkeley’s legacy began in the Golden State more than 150 years ago by virtue of a poem. No plans are currently in the works to rename the city of Berkeley nor UC Berkeley, which actually bore the moniker first. The college’s researchers advocated for the decision, citing public documents showing that Berkeley openly advocated for owning, evangelizing and educating Native Americans, whom he characterized as inhumane, barbarous and savage. Ireland’s largest university took a stand on Berkeley last month, voting to expunge his name from its central library. Circa 1740, Irish philosopher George Berkeley, the Bishop of Cloyne and a noted metaphysician. Last year, the City Council agreed to begin its meetings with a land acknowledgment, recognizing Berkeley as stolen land from its first inhabitants, the Ohlone people.īut now, historians at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, have renewed scrutiny of records indicating that the city’s namesake - Bishop George Berkeley, an 18th-century Irish philosopher and influential scholar - purchased enslaved people to toil at a Rhode Island plantation he briefly operated until 1732.

The city’s reputation for anti-imperialism has only grown since becoming the nation’s first city to swap Columbus Day for “Indigenous Peoples Day” in 1992 and installing city-limit signs that declare “Welcome to the City of Berkeley - Ohlone Territory” in 2019.

It’s perhaps ironic that Berkeley is the latest place to face this question. But what happens when the name of an entire community is tainted by racial injustice? The problematic pasts of historical figures have forced the renaming of hundreds of buildings and the removal of dozens of statues from public squares across the U.S.

A Welcome to the City of Berkeley sign with the slogan “Ohlone Territory” erected near the intersection of College and Alcatraz avenues on Tuesday, March 12, 2019, in Berkeley, Calif.

The namesake paperback