You don't want to erase the past, but acknowledge it
At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, the name of a nineteenth-century biology professor has been quietly removed from a building he graced for nearly nine decades — not as an act of forgetting, but as a belated acknowledgment of harm done to the Lenape people whose burial site he disturbed in 1899. The college's reckoning with Spencer Trotter's excavation of Native American remains and his promotion of racial hierarchies reflects a wider cultural struggle over what institutions owe to the wounded past. Whether renaming a building constitutes genuine accountability or merely rearranges the furniture of conscience remains the deeper, unresolved question.
- Human remains were removed from a sacred Lenape burial site in 1899, displayed on campus, and their final resting place is still unknown — a wound that has never fully closed.
- A two-year investigation and faculty-led task force brought the full weight of Trotter's legacy into view, including his writings promoting scientific racism used to justify Indigenous dispossession.
- Alumni and community members are pushing back, arguing that erasing his name allows the institution to move on without truly confronting what happened — that discomfort, not erasure, is the point.
- The college has rejected symbolic gestures like naming the building after the Lenape people, opting instead for new ethical standards around human remains collections and a more deliberate naming process.
- The building now sits under a placeholder name — Old Science Hall — while the institution searches for a permanent namesake whose values and ties to Swarthmore can withstand serious scrutiny.
Swarthmore College has stripped Spencer Trotter's name from the building that carried it since 1937, closing one chapter of institutional reckoning while opening a harder one. Trotter, a biology professor who taught at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college for over three decades, excavated a Lenape burial site in 1899, removed human remains, and brought them to campus for display. What became of those remains is still unknown. College President Val Smith called the excavation "inexcusable," and the building is now temporarily known as Old Science Hall while a permanent replacement name is sought.
The decision followed a more than two-year investigation triggered by a 2022 report. A faculty-led task force — including students and staff — spent months reviewing records and consulting the campus community, tasked with finding a name that reflects Swarthmore's current values and has genuine institutional ties. Task force chair Cat Norris acknowledged the difficulty plainly: "individuals are really complicated."
Not everyone welcomed the change. Some alumni and community members argue that removing Trotter's name is revisionism — that keeping it would compel the college to explain and teach from his legacy rather than quietly move past it. History professor and task force member Bob Weinberg offered a counterpoint: the goal is not erasure but honest acknowledgment of why the change matters.
Trotter's legacy reaches beyond the burial site. His writings advanced scientific racism, including arguments that Native Americans had underutilized land later farmed by Europeans — ideas that provided intellectual cover for displacement and dispossession. The college considered naming the building after the Lenape people but rejected the idea as potentially performative, choosing instead to launch a broader review of its collections and establish new ethical standards for the handling of human remains.
The deeper question lingers: whether changing a name on a wall constitutes genuine reckoning, or whether accountability demands something more sustained — a willingness to sit with what was done, and what it cost.
Swarthmore College has removed Spencer Trotter's name from the building that carried it for nearly nine decades, a decision that closes a chapter in the college's reckoning with its own past but opens a harder conversation about what institutions owe to history and to the people harmed within it.
Trotter, a biology professor who taught at the Pennsylvania liberal arts school for more than three decades around the turn of the twentieth century, excavated a Lenape burial site in 1899. He removed human remains from the ground and brought them to campus, where they were displayed. The college has been unable to determine what became of those remains. In a statement to the campus community, President Val Smith called the excavation and display "inexcusable," acknowledging that the bones "should never have been removed from their burial site." The building that bore Trotter's name since 1937 is now temporarily called Old Science Hall while the college searches for a permanent replacement.
The decision to remove his name followed a more than two-year investigation launched after a 2022 report surfaced details of the burial site excavation. A faculty-led task force, including students and staff, spent months reviewing records and surveying the campus community. The group was tasked with finding a new name aligned with the college's current values—one that reflects a commitment to diversity and has genuine ties to the institution. The work proved complicated. As task force chair Cat Norris told the student newspaper, "individuals are really complicated," a recognition that vetting potential namesakes requires more than surface-level scrutiny.
But the renaming has also sparked pushback from alumni and community members who see it as revisionism—an erasure of inconvenient history rather than a confrontation with it. Some argue that keeping Trotter's name on the building would force the college to reckon with what he did, to explain it, to teach from it. Removing the name, they contend, allows the institution to simply move on. History professor Bob Weinberg, a task force member, countered that reassessing historical figures is part of legitimate academic work. "You don't want to erase the past, but you want to acknowledge it and explain why it's important that we are changing this," he said.
Trotter's legacy extends beyond the burial excavation. His writings promoted what scholars call scientific racism, including arguments that Native Americans had underutilized the land that Europeans later farmed—a claim used to justify displacement and dispossession. These ideas shaped how he saw the world and how he treated the dead.
The college considered naming the building after the Lenape people themselves but ultimately rejected the idea, worried it would amount to performative gestures without substantive change. Instead, the institution has launched a broader review of its collections and the handling of human remains, establishing new ethical standards for how artifacts and remains are acquired and returned to their communities. A final decision on the building's new name is expected later in 2026.
What remains unresolved is the larger question the renaming raises: whether institutions can truly reckon with historical harm by changing a name on a wall, or whether accountability requires something deeper—a sustained commitment to understanding what was done, why, and what it cost.
Notable Quotes
The remains should never have been removed from their burial site, and such actions were inexcusable.— President Val Smith, in a statement to the campus community
You don't want to erase the past, but you want to acknowledge it and explain why it's important that we are changing this.— Bob Weinberg, history professor and task force member
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did it take more than a century for the college to act on what Trotter did in 1899?
The excavation wasn't secret, but it wasn't scrutinized either. It was treated as normal scientific practice at the time. It took a 2022 report to make the college actually look at what had happened and ask whether it was defensible.
And they couldn't find the remains?
No. They're gone. Trotter displayed them on campus, but somewhere in the decades since, they disappeared. That's part of what makes this so difficult—there's no way to make it right by returning them.
Some people say removing his name is erasing history. Do you think that's fair?
It depends what you mean by erasing. The name comes down, but the history doesn't have to. The college could teach about Trotter, about what he did, about why they made this choice. The question is whether they will.
What would accountability actually look like here?
Probably more than a name change. New standards for how remains are handled. Real engagement with Lenape communities. Transparency about what happened. The college is doing some of that, but whether it's enough—that's what people are arguing about.
Why did they reject naming the building after the Lenape?
They worried it would look like they were trying to have it both ways—acknowledging harm while still controlling the narrative. It felt too easy, too much like a gesture without substance.
So what's the real tension here?
It's between two legitimate impulses: the need to confront uncomfortable truths about your institution, and the fear that removing the evidence makes it easier to forget.