Why the change in name? The problem was that Alderman--although widely respected in his own day--had become a controversial figure in more recent years. For one thing, despite his reputation as a progressive in his own time, Alderman was an unabashed racist. According to Gard, in a speech delivered in 1908:
[Alderman] called denying African Americans the right to vote "the chiefest political constructive act of Southern genius" and defended segregation as "a far-sighted politics of justice, both to the negro as a race, and to the higher groups that inhabit this nation and to civilization at large."
In addition, Alderman promoted the study and teaching of eugenics at UVA, which Gard describes as "the ersatz and disgraced science obsessed with selective human breeding." Gard further characterizes eugenics as "a broad-spectrum form of prejudice, demeaning African Americans, Jews, Southern Europeans, Asians, immigrants and people with disabilities, essentially anyone other than healthy Anglo-Saxons."
All of what Gard says about Alderman is true. However, neither Alderman's racist attitudes nor his advocacy of eugenics were unusual in his time. Indeed, with regard to eugenics, it was regarded in the early 20th century as part of the scientific mainstream. As John G. West of the Discovery Institute notes:
The intellectual leaders of the eugenics crusade were largely university-trained biologists and doctors, and they pushed for eugenics because they thought it was fully justified by Darwinian biology. It should be stressed that eugenists represented mainstream biology, not the fringe. They were affiliated with institutions like Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, and Stanford. They were leaders in America's most prestigious scientific organizations. Biologist Edwin Conklin was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). ("Darwin's Theory and Social Darwinism: There is a Connection," May 1, 2009, at discovery.org)
What was the inspiration for this "eugenics crusade," which Alderman helped promote? It is not difficult to find its ideological origin in the writings of Charles Darwin. As West points out, in his influential book The Descent of Man:
[Darwin] criticized modern society for undermining the natural "process of elimination" by building asylums for the mentally ill, homes for the handicapped, hospitals for the sick, and welfare programs for the poor. Darwin was even concerned about vaccinating people against small pox! "No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man...hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."
West does acknowledge that Darwin went on "to indicate that we can't follow the dictates of 'hard reason' in such cases without undermining our 'sympathy...the noblest part of our nature.'" Nevertheless, contends West, "Darwin clearly supplied a logical rationale for eugenics in The Descent of Man, even if his personal scruples made him ambivalent about pressing his concerns to a logical conclusion. His followers, of course, were not so squeamish."
Moreover, Alderman's racist beliefs also had a "scientific" basis. Note the reference in Alderman's 1908 speech to "the higher groups inhabiting this nation." This phrase is quite representative of the popular view among many whites of the time that people of European descent were more highly evolved that those of other races. This is known as "scientific racism." To be fair, Darwin was not personally responsible for "scientific racism." Richard Weikart writes: "As many scholars have pointed out, Darwin's view that races are unequal is unremarkable. Such racist ideas were circulating widely throughout Europe, both in scientific and popular circles, long before Darwin came on the scene" ("The Racism of Darwin and Darwinism," February 9, 2022, evolutionnews.org). Nevertheless, Darwin's theory of evolution provided a justification for his own racism and that of others, making it seem "scientific." As David Klinghoffer at discovery.org notes:
For Darwin, evolution explained the phenomenon -- so he saw it -- of racial inferiority. Some races were further up the evolutionary tree than others. Thus, in his view Africans were just a step above gorillas. ("The Dark Side of Darwinism," July 2, 2010)
In summary, Edwin Alderman's embrace of the notion of white racial superiority and his promotion of eugenics were not very controversial in his own time. This was in part due to the "scientific" gloss they had acquired thanks to Darwin. I suspect, though, that not too many at UVA, especially the faculty in the biology department, would be willing to concede this. Nevertheless, as a UVA alumnus, the decision to remove his name from the university's library seems to me to be the right move.
Image of the former Alderman Library (now Shannon Library) at UVA from Wikimedia Commons