Oxford faces pressure to change as universities confront racism

A statue of Cecil John Rhodes at the University of Oxford. The institution has been locked in a battle with anti-racism campaigners over the statue. PHOTO: AFP

LONDON (BLOOMBERG) - If the University of Oxford thought it could avoid a real reckoning with its colonial past, the example set in London by one of the world's most celebrated business schools has suddenly raised the stakes dramatically for a UK institution that has educated many a leader over the ages.

On Monday (July 6), City University in London's financial district dropped the name Cass from its business school because of the link to an 18th-century merchant and proponent of slavery.

It is the latest, irrefutable sign that colleges around the world cannot look away from their historic ties to racism in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

London Metropolitan University and the University of East London will likewise drop the name Cass from their faculties and that only serves to shine an uncomfortable spotlight on Oxford, locked in a battle with anti-racism campaigners over a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the British colonialist who donated a fortune to his alma mater in his will.

For Oxford, it's an intensely political fight too.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who went to the university, is vocally opposed to tearing down that symbol.

He told the Evening Standard last week that "if we go around trying to bowdlerize or edit our history in this way, it's like some politician sneakily trying to change his Wikipedia entry."

For more than a century, anyone entering the university's Oriel College will have passed under the statues of two English Kings and above them one of Rhodes.

This limestone image in recent years became a symbol of Oxford's historical ties to colonialism and a failure to reflect Britain's diverse modern day make-up.

Last month, as thousands of protesters demanded its removal, Oriel's governors for the second time in four years said they'd get rid of it.

In 2016, discussions over the statue's fate simply faded away, it's not really clear why, and campaigners have vowed to keep up the pressure to ensure the governors follow through this time.

This week, they're expected to announce further details of an independent commission that will examine key issues surrounding the statue, including Rhodes' legacy and boosting diversity, and seek ways for the college's future to sit more easily with its past.

"By setting up this commission, Oriel governing body is demonstrating that it is willing to be guided by all its stakeholders," it said in a June 17 statement.

As the oldest English-speaking university in the world, Oxford holds a special place in the global debate and should be setting the example, says Simphiwe Laura Stewart who's studying for a PhD in Human Geography at Oxford and is an organising member of Rhodes Must Fall.

Keeping the statue, she says, "perpetuates the erasure of the histories of those that Rhodes oppressed and those that his money silenced", including academics who opposed the monument when it was erected.

"Oxford as it stands is something like the final frontier of colonial Imperial England," Ms Stewart says.

Elsewhere in the UK, a college at Cambridge University agreed to remove a commemorative window to the eugenicist, Sir Ronald Fisher, while the University of Liverpool said it would rename a building named after former Prime Minister William Gladstone due to his links to the slave trade.

In the US, Princeton University in June announced it would scrap Woodrow Wilson's name from its public policy school and one of its residential colleges after trustees concluded the 28th US president's "racist thinking and policies" made him "an inappropriate namesake".

US schools, colleges and cities with statues of Thomas Jefferson are also coming under scrutiny.

Jefferson was the primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence, the country's third president and the founder of the University of Virginia, and although he wrote that "all men are created equal", he held more than 600 slaves throughout his life.

London's City University is among seven UK educational establishments to have benefited from large donations from the Sir John Cass' Foundation, set up 300 years ago with money earned by Cass who served as director of the Royal African Company, which traded in enslaved people.

The foundation has removed a statue of him from outside its headquarters in London's financial district, and has also decided to change its own name.

It says that it will undertake the legal applications to make that happen after consultations on a new name with Trustees, partners, and stakeholders.

Oxford anti-racism campaigners are seeking something similar.

In addition to demanding that the university decolonises its curriculum, brings Black British undergraduate student numbers in line with the British population and doubles the number of Black faculty, they want the Rhodes scholarship to be renamed, arguing that it celebrates imperialism.

The scholarship was established as one of Rhodes' legacies in 1902 to educate young men to carry out a "civilising mission".

The Rhodes Trust, which stewards the scholarship - famous recipients include former US President Bill Clinton, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and TV host Rachel Maddow - says it rejects its racist and sexist origins and encourages scholars to openly criticise its past.

It argues that its name is "a daily reminder of the moral obligation to engage" with its legacy of racism and oppression in order to move forward.

Today, Rhodes' 100,000 pound donation to Oxford would be worth millions, but calculating the exact value of all the bursaries and awards is virtually impossible.

In 2018, the University of Glasgow, Scotland, published a report that tried to put a present-day value on the donations it received throughout its 600 year history linked to the profits of slavery. It came up with a range between 16.7 million pounds and 198.7 million pounds (S$29 million - S$345.5 million).

Glasgow concluded that it benefited from the profits of racial slavery, and found a way to move forward.

The university will open a new building in November named after James McCune Smith, the first African-American in the world to graduate in medicine.

Born a slave in New York City, McCune Smith had been freed by the state's emancipation act, and after being denied entry to American medical schools on account of his colour, he applied to and was admitted by Glasgow, graduating in 1837.

"When we started on this we didn't know where the historical evidence was going to lead us," says David Duncan, the university's chief operating officer. "So we put ourselves in the hands of historians."

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