Comment by theossuary
5 days ago
Maybe they should just start again. Taking the name of a man who the state chemically castrated and drove to suicide and putting it on an institution being repurposed from public good to defense of the state seems grotesque to me.
Given Alan Turing's work in the defense field, I do not think it grotesque to put his name on defence work.
If he had done that work after they castrated him and drove him to suicide, sure, but that wasn't the order of events.
Had he not bothered with the work and the axis powers had been victorious, we would be executing homosexuals today. Modern threats from Russia and Iran hardly bode any better. Your reasoning that putting his name on an institution that does as much liberal arts as it does science is ok but not if it does defence work, is hard to fathom.
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Let's not forget just how much of Alan Turing's work went towards "defense of the state" before they discarded him. Even with the royal pardon, my biggest gripe is that they continue to use his name and likeness for anything government affiliated.