A Monumental Question

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | July 23, 2018 | Shannon Watkins

[reaganaut1]

Today’s radical left has embarked on a quest to purge college campuses of their controversial histories. These “social justice warriors” not only believe themselves licensed to tear down statues—they view it as their sacred duty to rid universities of monuments that do meet their standards of political correctness.

But merely removing statues they deem to be offensive is not enough for these activists. Instead, they are demanding that campuses be remade according to their radical vision. This includes calling for the installation of new monuments and memorials to be erected that are more in line with the updated values they insist universities embrace.

But what are these values? For modern campus activists, the overriding value for any social institution—including the university—ought to be diversity, which is defined entirely in terms of group identities such as race and gender. As part of their mission to implement this value, modern partisans of diversity seek to ensure that all favored identities are equally represented in campus statuary.

But is the purpose of campus monuments merely to reaffirm one’s own race or gender? Surely more enduring principles ought to guide both the preservation and installation of campus monuments. Traditionally, they have been the transcendent ideals of the pursuit of wisdom and truth.

But with today’s radicals, such transcendent ideals are targets, not goals. There is no better example of the activist crusade on campus memorials than at Duke University in North Carolina. In a recent report entitled “Activating History For Justice at Duke,” several students, staff, and faculty members documented the history of Confederate or “white supremacist” statues and mapped out their locations on Duke’s campus.

The project’s goal is two-fold: First, the authors of the study hope to expose past and ongoing inequities at Duke

[reaganaut1]

There are hardly any statues of Asians at our universities, which must explain why they get bad grades and drop out. /s

[\/\/ayne]

A statue of Mao Zedong on the campus of Fudan University

[ClearCase_guy]

I think higher education is a bubble. It needs to burst. Anything which highlights this silliness and uselessness of higher education is fine with me.

Some career fields need people to have advanced education.
Most jobs do not. On the job training is sufficient.

[Chickensoup]

All public education is a bubble that needs popping

[robowombat]

“Why are they here? What do they have in common? Number one: none of them have any affiliation to Duke University or the Duke family. Number two: they were all proponents of white supremacy. Robert E. Lee was an extremely cruel slave owner; Thomas Jefferson also owned a ton of slaves, but he was supposedly “less cruel;” Sydney Lanier was the least bad because he didn’t own any slaves—he was just a white [man] in the Confederate army.”

These people are both vile and stupid. Lee owned few if any slaves in his entire lifetime. Sidney Lanier is (or used to be) hailed as one of America's greatest literary voices. Ralph waldo Emerson regularly repeated hi ‘Ode to the Confederate Dead’ at his public readings. Those who wish to dishonor their or others noble ancestors are themselves evil and merit only contempt.

[ClearCase_guy]

I've heard a lot of adults talking about a million topics, and if they don't know the specifics they just say "I'll Google it."

Aside from the political aspects of Google, the point is pretty good -- you can learn almost everything online.
You need to repair your dishwasher? I bet you can find a YouTube video that tells you how.
Never quite figured what the Crimean War was all about? The answer is a few clicks away.

Why do we warehouse kids in government schools? It's not about education. It's glorified daycare. Families would be better off keeping their kids at home and focusing on actual parenting. The "education stuff" can almost take care of itself today.

[FLT-bird]

Lee didn’t own any slaves. His wife inherited some from her father - just like Grant’s wife inherited some slaves from her father. Lee was the executor of his father in law’s will which called for all the slaves he passed down to his daughter to be emancipated once Arlington’s debts were paid off in a few years which is exactly what happened. Lee executed the will and freed all the slaves as the will called for.

Of course just as one would expect from PC Revisionists, they are massively historically ignorant and filled with hate for Southerners.

[CogitoPatriot]

The foolishness and seditious idiocy that we see at our colleges is something worth fighting against. We need to consider a different and I believe more effective approach than just complaining...dragging the trustees into the daylight and forcing them to deal. For instance, at this link: https://trustees.duke.edu/board-trustees-2018-2019 you can find the trustees for Duke. While the monument issue may not rise to the level of some of the more egregious problems we have seen (denial of conservatives the right of free speech, denial of freedom of religion etc.), you can see from the link who these people are. They and others at colleges across the country have been in the shadows too long. Time to out them and have them deal with what’s going on at their universities. At many colleges, these guys have the power to discipline and sometimes, fire the college president. I believe this is the approach we now need to consider. And while I’m on a roll here, let me put on the table of our national discourse something else that needs to happen to turn academia around - to ultimately purge it of the loony leftist 3rd world egg head bed-wetters who are indoctrinating our kids....tenure has to go.

[Delta 21]

One of todays parents and a recently college edjumacated yoot.

Caution! Contains graphic splodeyhead footage at the 2:00 minute mark.

https://www.facebook.com/viralhumorNET/videos/843905592458435/?t=27

[CondorFlight]

The Methodist church in North Carolina has to approve
about a third of Duke’s trustees. They never do anything but rubber-stamp the list they are given.

But,the residual power to make a change is there, if ever they choose to do so. I doubt they will, given the MC’s
radical left bent. But, it is possible.

Otherwise, since no one can become a Duke trustee without having his/her name submitted by the rest of the trustees,
Duke has a self-perpetuating oligarchy.

[Altura Ct.]

The longer we allow this to go on the worse it will be. It won’t stop unless we make it stop. They want nothing less than a complete purge of anything white they deem offensive and complete destruction of the West. It won’t stop with the Confederacy or even with the likes of Washington or Jefferson but any white leader whom they care to target particularly any prior to 1965 although anything current day is also game.

There is only one way to stop this but that will require whites to gain a political voice as whites. Not sure whites have it in them anymore to do that even if it means the left destroys all that our forefathers fought and died for.

[gnickgnack2]

I am reminded of a cartoon I saw in a 60’s-era Playboy of a man and his son by a statue of a group of people. “There are no great men, son, only great committees.”

[robowombat]

It really doesn't matter if REL owned a slave or two for family purposes at some time in his life. He came from a slave holding society. The endless screaming about slavery non pluses me. I realize it is just a shill by blacks to try and get ‘reparations’ and by cultural marxists to deligitimize US history. The mindless crap I hear white young people spouting is what is amazing. If you talk to them about the issues and antecedents of the WBTS they know nothing and just retreat into the ‘its about slavery ‘ mantra. I have gotten to where I point out a few statistics on the human costs of the war to Southerners white and black (vide ) about one in three white males in South Carolina seems to have been killed or died of disease or wounds during the war or it is very likely as many freedmen died from disease and epidemic illness both during the war in the wretched ‘contraband’ camps and in the immediate period after the end of the war as white casualties in the South from the war. I pose the question that was such massive destruction of both material culture and human beings justified by the outcome. What difference would it have made if slavery lasted another thirty or even in some places fifty years? This leaves the snowflakes stunned and I hope gives them something to ponder on.