Caltech's revered Robert Millikan favored forced sterilization. Can the university come to grips with its past? : To the ever lengthening list of institutions facing a reckoning with their racist pasts, add the California Institute of Technology. A petition calling for the removal of the name of Robert A. Millikan from buildings, programs and open spaces on the Pasadena campus has gathered 862 signatures since June 28, according to its originator, Michael Chwe, who received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Caltech in 1985 and is now a professor of political science at UCLA.