Image: Tejvan Pettinger [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Increased pressure to take statue down leaves University of Oxford unmoved
The University of Oxford has refused to remove a statue of the Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes despite renewed protests and calls from the city council for it to go.
Organisers of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign held a protest in the centre of Oxford on 9 June to put fresh pressure on the university to remove the statue, after it first refused to take it down in 2016. On 9 June Oxford again said it had not plans to remove the statue.
A petition calling on Oxford to take the statue of Rhodes away has attracted almost 150,000 signatures since it was set up on 8 June. It states: “As long as the statue stands the University is only alienating those of whom Rhodes’ beliefs have persecuted and oppressed to this very day.”
Calls to remove the statue at Oriel College were reignited after protesters in Bristol toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a prominent 18th century slave trader in the city, on 7 June. There have been widespread protests in the UK as part of the Black Lives Matter movement following the murder of George Floyd by police in America.
Oxford City Council leader Susan Brown said she had “a great deal of sympathy” with the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, and said it would be “better for the statue to be placed in a museum…to ensure this noteworthy piece of the story of our city isn’t lost to history”.
“I have today written to Oriel College to invite them to apply for planning permission to remove the statue, as it is a Grade II listed building,” Brown said.
She added: “Typically such actions are only allowed in the most exceptional of circumstances. But these are exceptional circumstances, and as a City Council we are keen to work with Oriel to help them find the right balance between the laws that protect our historic buildings and the moral obligation to reflect on the malign symbolism of this statue.”
But the governing body of Oriel College has refused to take the statue down. While it said it “abhors racism in all its forms” and promised to improve its practices “to ensure that Oriel is open to students and staff of all backgrounds” in a statement released on 9 June, the body did not commit to removing the statue.
“As a college, we continue to debate and discuss the issues raised by the presence on our site of examples of contested heritage relating to Cecil Rhodes,” the governors said.
A spokeswoman for the college confirmed there had been “no change to the college’s position on the statue”. The University of Oxford also hosts the Rhodes Trust, which runs the Rhodes scholarship programme. A spokeswoman said the trust would not comment at this time.
Deborah Gabriel, founder and director of Black British Academics, told Research Professional News that universities had “done little to address white privilege” and pointed to a lack of black staff at senior levels, pay disparities and Eurocentric curricula. Gabriel stressed that statues publicly honouring slave owners “speak volumes about the fragility of Black humanity”.
“Yes, the statues should be removed, they should not have been there in the first place,” she said. “The higher education sector needs radical change, and this will not happen without resistance, without political and economic pressure, which will continue long after journalists cease coverage of race.”
Kalwant Bhopal, director for the Centre for Research into Race and Education at the University of Birmingham, said universities “should seriously consider the symbolic meanings of statues and other ties to the past”. “Real change must follow the taking down of statues, she said. “Universities must address institutional and structural racism such as the BAME attainment gap and the representation of BAME academics at senior levels.”
According to data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency in January, there were no black academic staff as “managers, directors and senior officials” in 2018-19, compared with five in 2017-18.
Meanwhile, a petition calling for racial justice in UK Higher Education Institutions has been set up by three academics. King’s College London lecturer in economics Richard Itaman, University of the West of England, Bristol political economist Keston Perry and Soas, University of London outreach fellow Glenn Lauren Moore said universities “have not addressed thousands of racist incidents and have structures that work against properly tackling racism”.
“Racism in UK universities is systemic, and UK universities are failing to address racism against students and staff,” they wrote. “As such, we think that significantly more ought to be done than acknowledgements of support for #BlackLivesMatter. Much greater effort is needed on racial equality through secure, full-time employment, equal pay, access to support and resources, more equitable workloads, and closing the BME attainment gap in HEIs.”