University trustees, known as the Yale Corporation, voted in favor of the renaming on Friday, reversing a decision last year to keep the name. Keeping the name had been defended as a way to confront rather than paper over the legacy of slavery.The change will go into effect in time for the 2017-2018 academic year. John C. Calhoun s legacy as a white supremacist and a national leader who passionately promoted slavery as a  positive good  fundamentally conflicts with Yale s mission and values,  President Peter Salovey said in a message sent to the Yale community on Saturday. He said depictions in the college celebrating plantations and the Old South suggest that Calhoun was honored in part because of his support for slavery, not in spite of it.Yale is among a number of colleges that have grappled with how to honor their histories without offending modern sensibilities. Vanderbilt University last year said it would pay $1.2 million to remove the word  Confederate  from a residence hall s facade, while Princeton University said it would keep Woodrow Wilson s name on its school of public and international affairs and a residential college, while increasing discussion of the former president s support of segregation. WSJIf Yale is so concerned about promoting diversity and working to erase any signs of slavery, why not rename the Calhoun College with their most famous black alumni, US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? The tradition at Yale has been to name colleges after prominent, deceased, alumni, and ones that have contributed somehow to the human race. Morse College, for instance, is named after Samuel Morse, of the eponymous Morse Code.Yale will feel immense pressure to rename Calhoun for a minority figure, but who? Of Yale s deceased minority alumni, no one leaps to mind. Someone suggested Levi Jackson, which I thought was a nice idea, but Jackson isn t well known outside Yale circles, and I doubt any of today s students have any idea who he is.It seems likely Yale might jettison the  being dead  requirement. If that turns out to be the case, how about Clarence Thomas? He is easily Yale s most prominent black alum, even if he wasn t an undergrad.I am joking of course. While I would be proud if this came about, the left would sooner burn Calhoun to the ground than let it be named for a black conservative, only going to show that this isn t about race, it s about power and politics.One other thought: Elihu Yale was apparently a slave trader, among other things. How soon before the activists set there sights on renaming the entire university?  The Naked Dollar