Boston University Removes the Myles Standish Name from Dorm
The University will remove Myles Standish’s name from the dormitory at 610 Beacon St. because of his violent actions against leaders of the Massachusetts Tribe four centuries ago.
Boston University Removes the Myles Standish Name from Dorm
President ad interim Kenneth Freeman thanks those who argued both for and against the name change
When Anna Ward walked onto Boston University’s Charles River Campus for the first time, from a Back Bay hotel in spring 2022, the first BU building she saw was Myles Standish Hall, on Beacon Street just outside of Kenmore Square.
“Proudly feeling like this was my entry to BU, and then that being the first building I saw was shocking,” says Ward, who is a tribally enrolled member of the Osage Nation.
Her reaction stemmed from Standish’s history as a military leader of the Plymouth Colony in the early 1600s who became known for his brutality—fatally ambushing leaders of the Massachusett Tribe at a supposed peace dinner and displaying the severed head of one on a pole for months afterward. Even some of the Pilgrims were appalled by the bloodshed.
Ward, a Wheelock College of Education & Human Development lecturer in counseling psychology, helped lead a campaign that culminated Thursday when BU President ad interim Kenneth Freeman announced in a letter to the Faculty Council that the University will remove Standish’s name from the BU dormitory.
In response to a request from the Faculty Council, the executive committee of the BU Board of Trustees approved the change on May 16. The dorm will be known simply by its address, 610 Beacon Street, at least for the time being.
In his letter, Freeman thanked “the many people who advocated for the name change before I became president ad interim and, particularly, the 170 student organizations who called for the renaming. This decision reflects their advocacy, too, and I am grateful to those faculty, staff, and students for initiating this conversation several years ago.”
Freeman also acknowledged those “who offered a thoughtful rationale for maintaining the Myles Standish name.” He said the changes will include information in the building entryway that references the original name of the building and the role of Standish in Massachusetts history. And he thanked the Faculty Council for its advocacy and its “practical recommendation that we designate the street address as the formal name for the near term.”
Following students’ lead
“I’m not from the Northeast, I didn’t have a full understanding” of Standish’s story, Ward says. “But it was a name that I knew was associated with these terrible acts against the native people here.”
She helped lead the faculty push to change the building’s name with Laura Jiménez, Wheelock’s associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion and a senior lecturer in literacy education. They took up the cause after talking with students Adam Shamsi (CAS’24) and Anne Joseph (CAS’25), who first asked to have Standish’s name removed back in 2022.
The two students’ campaign included an open letter signed by numerous student clubs and organizations and an opinion essay in BU Today. “If Standish’s actions were seen as detestable by members of his own colony, then why does Boston University find it necessary to celebrate him?” their op-ed asked.
But at the time, they were rebuffed by Robert A. Brown, then BU’s president, who replied that Standish had been defending his community in a precarious time more than 400 years ago, and that he was not prepared to remove the name.
When the request came before Brown, the country was grappling with the naming issue on a broader scale. Congress in 2021 had ordered the US Defense Department to study renaming military bases, ships, and anything else that was named in honor of Confederate figures. The Naming Commission recommended changing the names of nine Army bases and Navy ships.
“Professionally, I’m supposed to say I was surprised, but I was angry,” Jiménez says of Brown’s decision. “BU is supposed to be a place where students learn how to be changemakers. And we have a strategic plan in place that talks directly to supporting marginalized communities.”
Ward of course has a personal connection to the issue: “I looked at the BU diversity reports and it said that there were three faculty that identified as native, and I thought, well, I’m one of less than a handful. So if there is anything that I could do or put my name to any kind of cause, I was willing to do that.”
Ward wasn’t the only person with indigenous roots who was troubled seeing Standish’s name on a BU building, according to these faculty members. At Wheelock alone, attempts to create projects with the Massachusetts indigenous community have been slowed, at least, by the shadow of Myles Standish Hall. And, she says, a current native American candidate for another faculty job was disturbed enough to bring it up during the interview process.
“It has certainly impacted our reputation when we’re recruiting faculty, when we’re recruiting students, when we’re trying to work collaboratively with indigenous populations,” says Kimberly Howard, a Wheelock professor and program director of counseling psychology and applied human development, who chairs the BU Faculty Council.
Winners write history, however. And Standish’s name was ensconced in the pantheon of American heroes. There is a Myles Standish State Forest in Carver, Mass., and a Myles Standish Monument State Reservation in Duxbury, Mass. In brief sketches of his background, Standish is described simply as “a British-American colonist and military leader of the Plymouth colony.”
His name adorned a Kenmore Square hotel opened in 1928, which frequently hosted baseball players like Babe Ruth, who played at nearby Fenway Park. BU bought the hotel in 1949 to use as a male dormitory to accommodate the many World War II veterans attending college on the GI Bill—and the name stuck.
“We can’t change the name on a building that we didn’t even name?” Jiménez says, noting that there was no benefactor or other relationship involved in the naming.
“These issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion are everything at BU, it comes up in every faculty meeting,” Ward says. “It just was such a glaring hole in this bigger conversation.”
An extra irony for Ward came with the choice of this year’s BU Commencement speaker, best-selling author David Grann (Hon.’24), whose book Killers of the Flower Moon is about murders committed against the Osage in the 20th century over oil rights.
Determined to make another push for the name change, Ward and Jiménez took their quest to the Wheelock Faculty Assembly last fall. “A lot of people didn’t know the history of Myles Standish,” Jiménez says. “And so at first it wasn’t like they were a no, but like an I don’t know. So we gave them stuff to read, educated them, and when we came back the next month, they’re like, ‘Hell, yes.’”
The Wheelock faculty voted unanimously in support, and the Wheelock Staff Assembly also voted in support. At the end of 2023, that resolution advanced to the BU Faculty Council, which has its own process.
“The moral standpoint is that we recognize the violence that was done to the Massachusett people at the hands of Myles Standish that even at the time was considered to be pretty horrific,” Howard says. “The practical piece is that having this when people come and visit our campus, [it’s] one of the first signs they see when they enter off Storrow Drive.”
In the last few months, Jiménez has spread the word through other DEI officials. Faculty at half a dozen other University schools and colleges voted their support, and the final Faculty Council tally at a second reading in April was 32-2 in favor. Freeman took their resolution to the trustees executive committee for a vote.
Joseph and Shamsi, the students who wrote the op-ed, are glad to see Standish’s name removed but want more. “The credit for beginning this initiative is duly owed to the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag and [former BU faculty member] Travis Franks, who initially petitioned to rename 610 Beacon to Wituwamat Memorial Hall in 2021, in honor of the innocent Native who was Standish’s primary target,” Anne Joseph says. “I call on the Board and President to follow through with the honoring of Wituwamat.”
“I’m happy we are on the right side of history on this one,” Jiménez says. “I’m incredibly grateful for the community of students, staff, and faculty that took up this cause with me. Each time, it was more about educating people, not convincing them. And that’s what we do. We educate.”
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