Oxford v-c: ‘hiding your history is not the route to enlightenment’

Well done Louise! Nice balanced view, although you privately would take Ces down if you could.

Donors to the University of Oxford in 2018/19 includes many which do not look too salubrious. Not as nefarious as, say, Rhodes, but controversial nonetheless - and contemporary.

If we start tearing down statues because we don't like some of the ideas peddled by the person depicted, we might as well give up having statues at all. Everyone has flaws... and far too much of the time it's a case of the self-righteous imposing present-day values on historical figures, blithely ignoring that their views were acceptable in their day and age, whatever the current swell of opinion might be. What do we do and think today that our desendants will recoil from in horror? The rich tapestry of history is not something to be brushed aside just 'cos we don't like it. We can learn from it, we can resolve to do 'better' according to current opinion, indeed some would say that's at least part of the point of studying it... but to ignore it is sheer stupidity. If we see things that we feel are not right, surely it is more important to fix the problem than to fix the blame?