Mead Chapel – The Burning Platform

Guest Post by Jim Douglas via Paul Craig Roberts

At the crack of dawn on September 27, 2021, while the campus was just coming to life, Middlebury College removed the sign denoting the name of the institution’s house of worship. It had been ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ for more than a century, since a former Vermont governor, John Mead, donated the structure on the grounds of his — and my — alma mater. He specified its name, to which the Trustees readily agreed.

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The College issued a statement shortly after the deed was done, explaining that the Chapel had been named to honor Governor Mead and his wife. That’s completely false. The Governor selected the name not in his own honor, but in memory of his ancestors, the first settlers in the region. That’s right: Middlebury removed the name from a building without even knowing for whom the building was named!

Continue reading “Middlebury College Removes Chapel Donor’s Name”

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

Middlebury College is one of the most expensive schools in Vermont. It features a safe, bucolic, and well-maintained campus along with a sizeable endowment for a school of its size. During the heat of the BLM movement when it seemed that statues of historic figures were being toppled almost daily, a small group of administrators decided to strip the name of Mead from the marble Chapel that bore it for over a century. They created a narrative that the man responsible for its construction, a former Governor of Vermont and alumnus, John Mead, was a -gasp- eugenicist. The statements that they made at the time gave the impression that the decision was made only after thoughtful deliberation, a fiction that was quickly exposed by members of the Mead family.

The actions, impulsive and reactionary, were not to go unanswered and last year a suit was filed by another retired Vermont governor on behalf of the family of John Mead.

This story is one that reflects the current zeitgeist of Progressive Post America. Claiming current standards should apply to historic personages and that shaming, deplatforming and censorship is the only suitable solution for imagined transgressions of another time. Had they not been so dishonest in their communications with family members, and the press it is likely that they would have gotten away with it. Their responses were equally fallacious, claiming that no records of any agreement between Mead and the College existed and that the removal of the name from the hallowed shrine was purely academic rather than a breach of contract.

The pendulum of history is wont to swing both ways. Perhaps in some small way there will be an accounting for these transgressions and the school will be one of the first to reverse course when politically correct decisions are made in haste.

Via Legal Insurrection

Exclusive Video Interview: Former VT Governor On His Challenge To Middlebury College’s De-Naming Iconic Mead Chapel

James Douglas: “They took the name off the building without even knowing for whom the building was named.”

Early one morning in September 2021, while most of Vermont’s Middlebury College campus was still asleep, workers arrived at the Mead Memorial Chapel. Tools in hand, they wrenched the rustic wooden sign bearing the Mead family name out of its niche above the entrance to the 105-year-old historic house of worship. It broke as it came out, exposing the bare brick wall behind it.

After the deed was done, the school pointed to Governor John Abner Mead’s “instigating role” in the Vermont eugenics movement as the reason for ripping his family’s name off the iconic chapel he endowed.