Erasing the Past
2024 Edition
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This is a riff on a College Fix Micaiah Bilger article from December 2024.
Q: What do Myles Standish, Geoffrey Chaucer, Woodrow Wilson, and Christopher Columbus all have in common?
A: All were the targets of campus cancel culture in 2024.
They represent a trend over the past decade in higher education of removing or slapping “trigger warnings” on historical figures and items, supposedly because the oh-so-sensitive students chanting “death to Israel” and burning flags get the vapors when exposed to these evils-doers and their concepts.
Some examples:
Johns Hopkins University remove US President Woodrow Wilson's name. The university has a special Name Review Board that considers whether to strip historical figures’ names from its buildings and programs. In Wilson’s case, the board decided an undergraduate research fellowship should no longer bear the president’s name because of his racist views. A native of Virginia, Wilson was no great lover of persons of color, but is that a reason to remove a former Commander-In-Chief’s name?
Boston University cancels Myles Standish. The first military leader of Plymouth Colony is no longer worthy of recognition as a name for a university dormitory because of his “terrible acts against the native people.” We could probably say that about everyone who sailed on Mayflower, but let’s not give them any ideas.
Universities hire staff to return Native American artifacts. The California State University system, University of California system, and Southern Illinois University created staff positions to “repatriate” artifacts from their museums and art collections to their original tribes or nations. The institutions pointed to state and federal regulations as reasons for the change, but it will ultimately ruin archaeology…aside from being impossible to perform such “repatriation” when there aren’t any of their tribe or nation left.
Columbus Day canceled over and over again. The Italian explorer has been the target of cancel culture for years, and 2024 was no exception. Several universities hosted activities for Indigenous People’s Day but did not recognize Columbus Day, a federal holiday. No doubt they also complained that the mail didn’t come that day. President Trump, however, has announced his intention to reverse this trend…somehow.
Michigan State University may remove lawmaker’s name from building. The late US Senator Justin Morrill (R- Vermont) sponsored and championed the land-grant acts that helped establish 106 public universities like Michigan State. Colleges around the country established under a Morrill Act have named a 'Morrill Hall' in his honor. However, his supposedly “harmful” actions toward Native Americans have prompted calls for his name to be removed from MSU’s Agricultural Hall. Let’s all bite the hand that fed us, shall we?
Warning about ‘Christian’ themes added to the Canterbury Tales. Nottingham University in Great Britain put a “content notice” on Geoffrey Chaucer’s most famous work to alert readers about the “expressions of Christian faith” found within. The collection of twenty-four stories that run to over 17,000 lines, written in Middle English, may be obscure, but…dangerous because of Christian expressions?
Harvard to remove governor’s name because of slavery connections. The dormitory named after Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop and his great-great-grandson Professor John Winthrop, a pioneer in mathematics and astronomy in early America, has a “problematic” name. But because both owned slaves, the Winthrop name has become a target for cancelation by several student groups. “Problematic name?”
The University of Alberta may remove a mural. The Alberta History mural depicts a group of Native Americans in loincloths in apparent prayer around a clergyman holding up a cross and a flag. Some say the imagery is causing “harm.” Do pictures really hurt people?
‘Anglo-Saxon’ is out. The University of Nottingham recently deleted the term Anglo-Saxon from several programs as part of a larger effort to “decolonize the curriculum.” The Anglo-Saxon, a cultural group of Germanic peoples who were a mix of tribes from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands, “colonized” the British Isles to help defend against the Picts and Scots. Tell me again which humans just popped up out of the ground and didn’t “colonize” somewhere else.
Merchant donor’s name replaced with slave’s on a Boston street. According to The Crimson, Bussey Street is named after “a merchant who donated the land for Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum and who amassed his fortune trading goods produced by enslaved individuals.” The new name is Flora Way, named after a female slave who worked on a farm near the Arboretum. Gotta ask how many tax dollars were spent doing this.
UVA board strips former president’s name off library. The change drew backlash from a black University of Virginia trustee who ripped into cancel culture during a debate about the name removal. Despite the criticism, the trustees still voted to remove former university president Edwin Alderman’s name from Alderman Library because of his views on race and eugenics. Good thing Margaret Sanger, an infamous eugenicist, didn’t hang her name on the organization she founded—Planned Parenthood.
Med school removes portraits of ‘old, white’ former deans in the name of diversity. Dalhousie University Medical School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, took down portraits of its former “old” and “white” deans because they are “no longer representative of the school’s student body.” Not that they were “representative” of the former deans; one wonders what images replaced them or are the frames just left on the wall, empty.
College removes painting of duke with black servants. The reason for the painting’s removal from Oriel College at Oxford University isn’t certain. Some say college leaders feared the 18th Century portrait would offend students (when they came in from protesting Israel and screaming at Jews), but the institution insists it moved the painting as part of a renovation project.
University of California Berkeley considers renaming a library. The school formed a committee to consider changing the name of The Bancroft Library. The Daily Californian reports that critics say historian Hubert Howe Bancroft wrote “disturbing” and “hateful” work that “is anti-Black, anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous and anti-immigrant.” If he were also an antisemite—fashionable these days—would his name be safe? Incidentally, Bancroft’s book collection (60,000 volumes) started the institution.
The Fire Blitz: Burning Down Japan
One could say that The Fire Blitz erased a great deal of Japan, but it also started a new and horrible chapter in history.
At the beginning of 1945, the USAAF had yet to cause significant damage to Japan. By the end of July, it had made over five million people homeless and brought Japan’s economy to a standstill.
And Finally...
On 17 May:
1804: Merriweather Lewis and an unclear number of other men in the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery depart Camp Dubois, Illinois, in three wooden boats. They joined Clark and the rest of the Corps in St. Charles, Missouri, before beginning their 862-day odyssey to the Pacific and back. They lost only one member (of acute appendicitis that August) on the entire mission.
1943: Memphis Belle completes its 25th mission, landing at Bassingbourne, England after attacking Lorient, France. The B-17 bomber was the first to complete the USAAF’s mission goal in the Eighth Air Force and, after one more mission to Kiel, Germany, on 19 May, flew back to the US to sell bonds and train new crews. This goal became statistically impossible by the end of the year, though a handful of aircraft did. The goalposts kept moving back during the war because of shortages of aircraft and crews in-theater.
And today is WORLD COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY DAY, observing the display of the first color photograph at the Royal Institution in London, England, in 1861.
"Good thing Margaret Sanger, an infamous eugenicist, didn’t hang her name on the organization she founded—Planned Parenthood."
Oh, but her name WAS hung on abortion clinics. In Cincinnati her name just kind of disappeared off the abortion clinic a few years ago. Yet the abortion clinic remains, doing exactly as Sanger intended. I can smell the hypocrisy, every time I drive by.
It would be interesting to delve into the political leanings of the people that progressives have cancelled. It might not be so much that they are cancelling people based on principle as that they are erasing the evidence of their own sordid past.