Abstract
University renaming is often seen as either a necessary moral correction or a less significant symbolic reform. This article examines renaming as a matter of higher education governance. It analyzes the removal of Paul Brandon Barringer’s name from honorific spaces at the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech through a qualitative documentary comparative case study. A contextual policy scan of the University of Richmond, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Oregon State University situates the two primary cases within a wider field of naming-governance design. Guided by critical toponymy, institutional theory, policy-decoupling scholarship, organizational-routines theory, and campus-racial-climate research, the study analyzes publicly available institutional reports, policy documents, committee materials, governing-board actions, and official communications.
The analysis uses a four-dimensional framework of evidentiary, procedural, temporal, and reparative stewardship. The findings show that historical evidence and identifiable decision authority supported the primary cases. Still, that review was activated by the 2020 racial reckoning rather than by a standing cycle of periodic review. The study does not estimate the effects of renaming on belonging, campus climate, or equity outcomes. Instead, it offers an analytic framework for distinguishing a substantively defensible naming decision from a routinized governance system. It identifies design features that can make university naming review more transparent, repeatable, and accountable.
Recommended Citation
Barringer-Brown, Charletta H. and Brown, Daniel N.
(2026)
"Removing Barringer: University Renaming Governance, Campus Racial Climate, and the Limits of Symbolic Reform,"
Journal of Research Initiatives: Vol. 9:
Iss.
3, Article 11.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.uncfsu.edu/jri/vol9/iss3/11
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