[3][4] On June 4, 2020, following national movements to fight systemic racism and police brutality in response to the murder of George Floyd, one of the Lectureship award committee members, Daniela Witten (UW), started a discussion on renaming the Fisher Lectureship on Twitter as R. A. Fisher was a eugenicist.
[3] A petition to "Rename The Fisher Lecture After David Blackwell" was initiated by Miles Ott (Smith) on Change.org.
Harry Crane (Rutgers), Joseph Guinness (Cornell) and Ryan Martin (NCSU) posted a comment arguing against the renaming on June 13, 2020.
On June 15 the Executive Director of ASA, Ron Wasserstein, notified its members that the leadership has recommended changing the lectureship name to COPSS.
In their statement, the COPSS mentioned that they retired the previous name of the award "to advance a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive statistical community.