by Eric Lendrum
At the University of Virginia, the student-run newspaper issued a public call to remove the name of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, from campus.
According to Fox News, the op-ed in The Cavalier Daily claimed that Thomas Jefferson “glorifies racists, slaveholders and eugenicists,” while offering no evidence to support this assertion.
The op-ed, titled “To create ‘citizen leaders,’ U.Va. must do more,” the student paper’s editorial board declared that “we reject how the University’s physical environment — one that glorifies racists, slaveholders and eugenicists with statues and buildings named in their honor — upholds an enduring culture of White supremacy.”
The article referenced the 2017 “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, where peaceful right-wing protests marched in support of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, only to be viciously attacked by far-left rioters; the resulting skirmish led to an accidental car crash where one of the Antifa rioters was killed. The piece directly compared statues of Thomas Jefferson – the author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States – to statues of Confederate leaders.
“Our physical environment — from statues to building names to Jefferson’s overwhelming presence — exalts people who held the same beliefs as the repugnant White supremacists in attendance at the ‘Unite the Right’ rally,” the piece falsely states. “These buildings must be renamed and memorials removed.”
“The University has a long way to go in creating the learning and physical environment that would truly enable its students to become citizen leaders,” the article continued.
Since the Unite the Right rally five years ago, there has been an ongoing nationwide movement to destroy or remove statues and monuments to Confederate figures, either through official government action or violent acts of domestic terrorism. During the race riots of 2020, the destruction of statues by rogue terrorist elements increased exponentially, and the mobs soon moved on from Confederate statues to target other monuments dedicated to the Founding Fathers, Civil War veterans, and emancipators.
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Thomas Jefferson Statue at University of Virginia” by Kipp Teague. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
