On Monday, Sept. 21, Swarthmore College President Val Smith announced via email that the academic building known as “Old Science Hall” would be renamed “Edley-Morgan Hall.” The change honors legal scholar Christopher F. Edley Jr. ’73, H’99, and Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor Emerita of History Kathryn L. Morgan.
“Old Science Lawn,” the green space adjacent to the building, will likewise be known as “Edley-Morgan Lawn.”
The new name is the culmination of a multiyear process. Smith first launched the effort to redesignate the building (then “Trotter Hall”) in May 2023, responding to a Philadelphia Inquirer article published early in the previous year which described the flagrant anti-Indigenous racism of the former Swarthmore faculty member for whom it was originally named.
The article reported that “two Swarthmore professors” illicitly exhumed human remains and funerary items from a local Lenape burial site in 1899. Smith’s 2023 statement clarified that the people in question were biology professor Spencer Trotter and student Bird T. Baldwin, class of 1900, adding that the pair later displayed these materials on campus for a meeting of the Joseph Leidy Scientific Association.
“The histories of institutions of higher learning often contain disturbing chapters,” Smith wrote in her statement. “Swarthmore College is no exception.”
In the same statement, Smith announced the creation of a committee of faculty members and research specialists to locate the human bones Trotter and Baldwin had appropriated, as well as determining whether any similar remains existed in the college’s collections.
The task force concluded that there was “no indication that the remains unearthed by Trotter and Baldwin remain on campus, and there is no evidence that the college held other Native American human remains,” but was unable to verify the location of the exhumed materials.
“This reckoning will ultimately help us shape a better future,” Smith added. She went on to outline various steps the college was taking to contend with Trotter’s actions, including the decommissioning of all human remains in Swarthmore’s osteology collection, a broader audit of the college’s archival holdings, and a commitment to “develop a process to reexamine the name of Trotter Hall.”
How the Task Force Chose a Name
In December 2025, Smith announced that the 18-month examination process concluded with the decision to remove Trotter’s name from the academic building and adjacent lawn.
The administration convened a task force composed of students, faculty, staff, and external consultants to compile and evaluate potential replacement names. The announcement emphasized that “members of the task force will create opportunities to engage with the campus community to seek a broad range of input and perspectives.”
“I felt honored to have the opportunity to gather and represent the voices of students on the Task Force alongside Danika [Grieser ’26],” said Ayla Gordon-Mandel ’27. Gordon-Mandel noted that she and Grieser, the two students selected for the committee, are both of Indigenous ancestry. Gordon-Mandel explained the group’s methods:
“The Task Force prioritized community input throughout our process. We sent out a survey to gather name proposals and receive feedback from community members regarding the most important factors to them when selecting a name. We then evaluated each candidate suggestion based on their alignment with the community-sourced criteria.”
According to Alisa Giardinelli, the college’s assistant vice president for communications and special projects, the task force met roughly every week of the Spring 2026 semester. “All of the suggestions were discussed and evaluated by consensus (we did not vote),” she added. “And I think we were all impressed that more than 500 people responded to the survey — more than half of whom were students. We were thrilled that students seemed so engaged with the process.”
Initially, the committee discussed adopting a Lenape-related name for the hall in order to honor the communities that Trotter harmed.
According to Chief of Staff and Secretary of the College Erin Brownlee Dell, the task force consulted with the Delaware Tribe of Indians in Oklahoma in their consideration of this move. Jeremy Johnson, the tribe’s cultural education director, visited campus for a public lecture in April. Ultimately, Brownlee Dell said, Johnson “made it clear that it would be inappropriate to use a Lenape-related name for the building.”
Some Indigenous students on campus wished they could have had more say in the matter. Adina Shane ’27, president of the Swarthmore Indigenous Student Association, said that she was glad to see Swarthmore “recognizing the harm associated with Trotter,” but that she would have wanted more opportunities for Indigenous students to become involved in the renaming process.
“While there was [Indigenous representation] on the committee,” she said, “for an issue that adds another painful chapter to Swarthmore’s relationship with Indigenous communities, I believe there should have been more intentional engagement with Indigenous students and SISA.”
Shane concluded that she hoped “to see a plaque or other marker around the new Edley-Morgan Hall acknowledging this history so that it does not go forgotten.”
Smith’s email clarified the renaming “is an important milestone, but not the end of this work.” She added that the college’s “future efforts will also ensure that this reckoning with the past is appropriately documented and acknowledged so our community can continue to learn and heal.”
“In the end,” said task force member and Isaac H. Clothier Professor Emeritus of History and International Relations Bob Weinberg, “the members of the committee concluded that the lives and careers of Kathryn Morgan and Christopher Edley best embodied the values, principles, and ethos that characterize the college. Their professional accomplishments and contributions speak volumes about the ideals and vision of Swarthmore College.”
Who Were Edley and Morgan?
Edley graduated from Swarthmore with High Honors in mathematics in 1973, subsequently earning an M.P.P. and J.D. from Harvard University. He later joined the faculty of Harvard Law School as a professor of administrative law, collaborating with political science scholar Gary Orfield to found the Harvard Civil Rights Project. Later in his career, Edley worked as a political consultant for both the Carter and Clinton presidential administrations, as well as President Obama’s Transition board. Edley and his father, Christopher F. Edley H’76, both served on Swarthmore’s board of managers and both received honorary degrees from the college. They are the only father-son pair to have done so.
Morgan was a professor of history at Swarthmore for 25 years, having joined the faculty in 1970 as the college’s first Black professor. Morgan lectured on the history, folklore, and culture of the Black American diaspora, pioneering the college’s Black Studies program. She later became the first Black woman to receive tenure at Swarthmore. Established in 1991, the Kathryn L. Morgan Award continues to sponsor students interested in Black Studies; the Morgan fund also supports the Black Cultural Center Library. A spring poetry festival named in Morgan’s honor launched at the college in April 2009.
The new name for the academic building and lawn was effective immediately as of Smith’s Sept. 21 email. She added that it would take time to update all references to the spaces on campus and online.
