Citing racist papers, Fresno State takes next steps to rename Henry Madden Library
Fresno State President Saul Jiménez-Sandoval on Wednesday sent a letter formally recommending the California State University Board of trustees remove Henry Madden’s name from the library, Fresno State officials said.
Jiménez-Sandoval’s letter to CSU Executive Vice Chancellor Steven Relyea came the same day a task force issued its final report, recommending the library remove Madden’s name. The task force reported that Madden expressed antisemitic and pro-Nazi views throughout his life, for which he never apologized or expressed remorse.
It is expected that the board will act on the recommendation at its July 12 meeting, according to Michael Lukens, chair of the task force.
“Since the Board approved naming the library after Dr. Madden in 1980, any action related to the name must be approved by the Trustees,” he said through a Fresno State spokesperson.
Earlier this month, the academic senate passed a resolution in support of removing Madden’s name.
The task force’s final report included a timeline of Henry Madden’s life, why the library was initially named after him, and how his views came to light.
Madden was the university librarian from 1949 until 1979, and 10 months before he died in August 1982, a dedication ceremony was held to name the library after him, according to the report. The CSU board of trustees voted on the name of the library.
His papers were donated to the university, but the more than 50 boxes were sealed for 25 years as a condition of the gift.
The task force wrote that “there was effectively no way for the Fresno State community, the Board of Trustees, or the community members and political figures who wrote letters in support of the decision to know the depth and extent of his antisemitism, Nazi sympathies, and otherwise racist views prior to his death. The decision to name the library was thus unfortunately made without a full understanding of the man who would be honored.”
Madden’s papers were kept sealed in the Special Collections Research Center until 2007. Despite having been open for more than a decade, it wasn’t until Fresno State Professor Bradley W. Hart published his 2018 book “Hitler’s American Friends,” which included some of Madden’s quotations, did word begin to get out.
In late November last year, according to the report, Hart discussed his findings with an upper-division American History class taught by Lori Clune. By Nov. 29, Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval had called for the formation of a task force to review keeping Madden’s name on the library.
The task force was made up of professors, students, and many Jewish leaders in the community, who sifted through 100,000 letters and documents from Madden. A preliminary report released in April detailed Madden’s disturbing comments but fell short of recommending a name change.
The committee ultimately found that Madden’s racism affected his work at Fresno State.
For example, “he told a colleague in Berkeley that he did not give much ‘consideration’ to job applicants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India,” according to the report. “Madden’s racial prejudices also reared their head during campus conflicts over ethnic studies in the late 1960s, contributing to a campus climate that was hostile to students of color,” the task force wrote.
Some of the most incriminating evidence of Madden’s hateful views are letters he wrote in the 1930s while he studied European history at Columbia University in New York and while he traveled to Germany.
In one letter, he wrote: “The Jews: I am developing a violent and almost uncontrollable phobia against them.”
Although the report found Madden did not outwardly express his views during his time as a Stanford lecturer from 1937 to 1942, “he privately cheered on the German war effort in letters he sent to friends in the United States and Germany.”
As he grew older, his views did not appear to change, the committee found, but “generally reflected a tendency to avoid the violent attitudes and fantasies of his 1930s letters in favor of casual antisemitism often couched in jocular phrasing that he could disavow as joking if needed.”
“Madden clearly understood that this language was offensive, but this knowledge did not stop him from using it,” the report concluded.
The task force did not find one instance in Madden’s papers of regret or sympathy for his views.
“On the contrary, in 1982, seven months before his death at the age of 70, Madden wrote in a letter that he had once helped an ethnic German immigrate to the U.S,” the report found. Madden supposed the man was “probably a member of the SS,” or the Nazi party.
The committee wrote that after Madden’s retirement in 1979, he spent “countless hours sorting through his collection of personal papers and memorabilia with an eye toward donating them to an archive in order to cement his personal legacy for posterity.”
The years-long project “provided Madden ample opportunity to reflect upon—and express remorse for—his repugnant views,” the report concluded. “As a historian and a librarian, Madden knew better than anyone that future researchers would see the letters, photos, and memorabilia he had saved.”
The task force said Madden could have written a repudiation or an apology of his views and placed the documents in his collection.
“Or he could have done what many individuals have done before donating their papers—he could have destroyed the incriminating documents. Yet Madden did none of these things.”
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This story was originally published May 18, 2022 at 4:22 PM.