U.K. University to Replace Portraits of Its Founding Fathers because They’re White It’s common sense that the people who gave a school the ability to be a school deserve to be recognized for that in the most prominent of ways. By Katherine Timpf
King’s College in London has announced that it will replace some of the portraits of its founding fathers from its main entrance because they are “white,” and that that might be “intimidating” to people who are not white.
The portraits will be replaced with those of “BME [black and ethnic minority] scholars,”according to a article in the Telegraph. All portraits of the school’s former deans will also be taken down from the main area and hung in other locations.
The replacement is being implemented by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience. The Institute’s dean of education, Patrick Leman, announced the changes, explaining that the old entrance was “alienating” because it was full of “busts of 1920s bearded men.”
According to the Telegraph, the “bearded men” represented in the busts that Leman is referring to are “believed to be” the British psychiatrist Dr. Henry Maudsley and neurologist Sir Frederick Mott — and the Institute “owes its existence” to these two people.
Yep. According to the Telegraph, there would be no Institute without a donation from Maudsley and 1896 course plans from Mott, and yet, they somehow still may not deserve to be honored in the main hall because they just so happen to be white dudes.
Now, to be fair, the Telegraph is reporting that only “some” of the King’s College founders are being replaced, so it isn’t absolutely certain that these two busts will be among the ones to go — although the fact that Leman brought them up specifically, and the fact that the Telegraph interviewed a descendant of Mott certainly does suggest that they will be, and that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I hate to sound petty, but if I ever found a damn school, if I am ever responsible for a school’s damn existence, then my face had better damn well be in the main entrance of it. Not in some other random hallway, but the main damn entrance. I’m all for representations of diversity, but why not simply add those sorts of representations?
It’s common sense that the people who gave a school the ability to be a school deserve to be recognized for it in the most prominent of ways, and that the race of those people is not a good enough reason to minimize their recognition.
One of Mott’s descendants, Keith Mott, told the Telegraph that although he personally isn’t “offended” by the Institute’s remove-and-relocate plans, he does find this general trend of minimizing colonial influences that’s been sweeping college campuses to be bothersome:
“Where I do take issue is where places were founded on the slave trade, for example, and attempts are made to eradicate that history,” he said. “I’m a great believer that if you don’t study your history you are bound to repeat it.”
Although Keith Mott certainly seems to be less petty than I would be, I do agree with him on this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for increasing diversity in the present and working toward a more diverse future, but this general push on college campuses to hide the fact that many were founded by white (yes, even colonialist) people really makes no sense to me. Ignoring the past doesn’t change it, and it’s always better to be aware of facts than it is to hide from them. After all, the actual past is the only one that has led to the actual present, and pretending that it didn’t exist only prevents us from examining everything honestly.
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