DUBLIN: Ireland’s oldest university has named a campus building after a woman for the first time — 433 years after it was founded by Queen Elizabeth I.

The main library at Trinity College Dublin, previously named for a slave owner, is now called the Eavan Boland Library after one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature.

“It’s taken us since 1592 to get here, but after 400 years and a bit thank God we have kind of got it right now,” Mary McAleese, Trinity’s chancellor, said at the unveiling of a plaque marking the name change.

The library was previously called after the 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley, who bought enslaved people for a plantation he owned in America. But the university removed Berke­ley’s name in 2023 in the wake of global Black Lives Matter protests.

At the time, the university said the use of Berkeley’s name was inconsistent with its core values of human dignity, freedom, inclusivity and equality. It then annou­nced the library would be renamed after Boland who published many acclaimed poetry collections, and taught and lectured in Ireland and the United States.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2025