Winthrop House

In Spring 2023, a request was submitted by a group of FAS affiliates to dename John Winthrop House, one of 12 residential Houses at Harvard College. Following an administrative review in accordance with FAS denaming procedures, a committee was convened to review the denaming request and submit a recommendation on whether to keep the name, remove the name, or keep the name and contextualize it. Given the significance of the House System and all residential spaces to the University, it was decided that the Review Committee would make a recommendation to both the President and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.  

John Winthrop House is typically understood to have been named after two individuals: Governor John Winthrop (1588-1649), one of the original founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Governor Winthrop’s great-great-grandson, Professor John Winthrop (1714-1779), the second Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard College and its interim President on two occasions. Through archival research, the committee was able to establish that Professor John Winthrop was the intended namesake for the House, though the complicated legacies of both individuals are discussed and considered in the report. 

The committee’s historical research was complemented by community dialogue that uncovered an array of perspectives on not only the Winthrop name, but about what it means to reckon with the University’s complicated past.  In its report, the committee recommends removing the given name “John” from the House and retaining the Winthrop name. President Alan Garber and Dean Hopi Hoekstra accepted this recommendation. The committee expressed hope that this step would catalyze creative efforts to contextualize the Winthrop name and engage with Harvard’s history.