The University of Maine will consider renaming campus institutions affiliated with former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell, whose name appeared hundreds of times in the latest batch of publicly released documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel Malloy and UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy will soon launch a task force to “review and make recommendations related to institutional naming within our system, including that associated with the former senator,” spokesperson Samantha Warren said Thursday.
The potential changes, first reported by the student newspaper The Maine Campus, come as organizations around the state and elsewhere are considering cutting ties with Mitchell.
UMaine has two programs named for him: the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions — a collaborative effort of faculty, students and partners focused on “improving the well-being of people and protecting the environment” — and the George J. Mitchell Peace Scholarship, which supports UMaine students who spend a year at an Irish university.
University and system leaders will take up the name changes as part of the ongoing strategic process, Warren said, and the task force will include faculty, staff and students, and will publicly share its report later in the spring semester.
“Through that process, we will continue to evaluate available and emerging information and make thoughtful decisions that reflect our values and serve the best interests of our students and the state,” Warren said. She also said the system “condemns sexual violence and exploitation.”
Mitchell, 92, represented Maine as a Democrat in the U.S. Senate for nearly 15 years. He has denied all knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity and has never been directly linked to child sex abuse.
A spokesperson for the former senator said in a written recent statement Thursday that Mitchell “reiterates unequivocally that he never met, spoke with, or had any contact of any kind with any underage women.”
“Senator Mitchell profoundly regrets ever having known Jeffrey Epstein and condemns, without reservation, the horrific harm Epstein inflicted on so many women,” the statement said.
Mitchell resigned Feb. 5 as honorary chair of the nonprofit scholarship organization that bears his name. The leaders of the organization also said they thought it was an “appropriate time to initiate a thoughtful, responsible process to consider a potential name change.”
The latest revelations about Mitchell’s relationship to Epstein have precipitated a wave of potential renaming efforts in Maine and abroad. This week, parents in Waterville, Mitchell’s hometown, asked that his name be removed from the George J. Mitchell School, an elementary school on Drummond Avenue. The school board is planning to discuss the issue at its next meeting in early March.
Queen’s University Belfast — the city in Northern Ireland where Mitchell is known for his role in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement — announced that it would cut ties with Mitchell, who previously served as the school’s chancellor for a decade.
“While no findings of wrongdoing by Senator Mitchell have been made, the university has concluded that, in light of this material, and mindful of the experiences of victims and survivors, it is no longer appropriate for its institutional spaces and entities to continue to bear his name,” the university said in a statement.
And earlier this month, the U.S.-Ireland Alliance removed Mitchell’s name from its scholarship, writing that evidence of Mitchell remaining in contact with Epstein after his 2008 prostitution conviction is what “made our case.”
Mitchell is a 1954 graduate of Bowdoin College, where the library’s special collections and archive bears his name. Doug Cook, a spokesperson for the college, said in response to a question about whether the college was considering renaming the collection that Bowdoin was “actively reviewing the information that has become available.”
“We are deeply troubled by the harm caused to the many victims,” he said.
