Washington University in St. Louis will retire the Robert J. Terry Lecture and rename the Robert J. Terry Professorship, following approval by the Board of Trustees. The action follows a recommendation from the university’s Naming Review Board (NRB) and concludes its yearlong review of Terry’s legacy.
Prompted by a student submission to the NRB, the review was the first formal renaming submission considered under the university’s naming policies. The process involved extensive archival research, stakeholder consultation and historical analysis. The NRB ultimately determined that continued honorific recognition of Terry was not consistent with the university’s values and ethical responsibilities. The Board of Trustees approved the recommendations in May 2025, and implementation work followed.
In accepting the NRB’s recommendations, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin emphasized the importance of facing uncomfortable histories with full transparency:
“Washington University in St. Louis is committed to confronting the difficult aspects of our institutional history with honesty, rigor and care,” Martin said. “After a thorough and thoughtful review, we believe that retiring the Robert J. Terry Lecture and renaming the professorship are necessary and appropriate steps. These decisions are consistent with our core mission to foster an inclusive, respectful and forward-looking academic community.”
Peter Kastor, chair of the Naming Review Board, said the review was designed not only to reach a decision but to encourage thoughtful engagement with the university’s history.
“I’m very pleased to see both the outcome and the process that brought us to that outcome,” said Kastor, the Samuel K. Eddy Endowed Professor of History in Arts & Sciences. “The goal of the Naming Review Board is not only to reach the right decision in each case, but to encourage careful and thoughtful engagement with the past.”
Retiring the Terry Lecture
While the Naming Review Board recommended removing Terry’s name from all university features, the lecture required additional consideration because of its recurring nature.
For that reason, the chancellor charged an implementation subcommittee with determining how best to carry the recommendation forward and offer guidance for future NRB review efforts.
After consultation with students, faculty and administrators, the subcommittee concluded that retirement — rather than renaming — was the most appropriate course of action.
“Because a lecture is a recurring event that evolves over time, we needed to ensure that the university’s response would be durable and not dependent on a single department or organizer,” said Dennis Barbour, chair of the implementation subcommittee and a professor of biomedical engineering at WashU. “Retiring the lecture allows us to end honorific recognition while embedding the educational work about Terry in a more sustainable framework.”
The Terry case prompted a renewed examination of how this history can be incorporated into broader educational efforts at WashU Medicine. As an outcome of the implementation committee’s work, the Department of Neuroscience and the Office of Education are collaborating on a medical ethics lecture that will provide opportunities to examine the history and ethics of medicine. Other programming may include lectures, visiting speakers, curricular sessions and related public-facing initiatives.
