Dive Brief:
- Students at the University of Missouri at Columbia and the College of William & Mary have placed yellow sticky notes on their campuses' statues of Thomas Jefferson, writing critical notes about his record on race.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that students at William & Mary have not asked for the statue to be removed, but students at Missouri are circulating a petition to do so — though they have some opposition from others demanding the statue stay, uniting with a #standwithJefferson hashtag on Twitter.
- Scholars have mixed opinions about Jefferson, some saying his record on race and slavery were awful, even for his time, and others focusing instead on the idea that his contributions to the country during the writing of the Declaration of Independence and his presidency outweigh that behavior.
Dive Insight:
Harvard Law School's Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Annette Gordon-Reed, makes a distinction between Jefferson and historical figures that have been honored for their association with the Confederacy or Jim Crow. Yale and other schools have grappled with their memorials to John C. Calhoun, who was a vice president and senator but made his mark for his defense of slavery and his encouragement of the South’s secession. Gordon-Reed told Inside Higher Ed that Jefferson cannot be lumped in with historical figures such as him.
One big criticism about this movement, which picked up speed at Princeton recently with organizing against that school's honoring of Woodrow Wilson, is that removing statues and changing names on buildings is historical revisionism. No one, however, is suggesting these men get removed from the history books. Campuses decide who to honor by naming buildings and commissioning statues. The question, now, is who is still worth honoring.