The
letter (below) is a
response from Oxford University to black students attending as
Rhodes Scholars who demand the university removes the statue of
Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.
Interestingly, Chris Patten
(Lord Patten of Barnes), The Chancellor of Oxford University, was on
the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 on precisely the same topic. The
Daily Telegraph headline yesterday was "Oxford will not rewrite
history".
Lord Patten commented: “Education is not
indoctrination. Our history is not
a blank page on which we
can write our own version of what it should have been according
to our contemporary views and prejudice.”
"Dear
Scrotty Students,
Cecil Rhodes's generous bequest has
contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations
of Oxford students - a good many of them, dare we say it, better,
brighter and more deserving than you.
This does not
necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime
- but then we don't have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago.
Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don't understand what this means
- and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case - then
we really think you should ask yourself the question: "Why am I
at Oxford?"
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world's
second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here
since at least the 11th
century. We've played a major part
in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century
intellectual renaissance through
the Enlightenment and
beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William
Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher
Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert
Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman,
Julie Cocks. We're a big deal. And most of the people
privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big
deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater - their dear mother - and
they respect and revere her accordingly.
And what were your
ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure
we'll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of
Great Zimbabwe. But let's be brutally honest here. The contribution
of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn
it to zilch.
You'll probably say that's "racist".
But it's what we here at Oxford prefer to call "true."
Perhaps the rules are different at other
universities. In
fact, we know things are different at other universities. We've
watched with horror at what has been happening
across the
pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia
and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the "safe
spaces"; the? #?blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural
relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom
rightly called "the closing of the American mind". At
Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to
petty
grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty
sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right
to call ourselves the world's greatest university.
Of course,
you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford
on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns.
(Though
it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these
days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes
scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates - or, in your
case - postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don't expect
us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be
black - "BME" as the grisly modern terminology has it - but
we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted
undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth
and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex,
race, colour or creed.
We do, however, discriminate
according to intellect.
That means, inter alia, that when our
undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don't pat them
on the back, give them a red rosette and say: "Ooh, you're black
and you come from South Africa.
What a clever chap you
are!" No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas
tested in the crucible of public debate. That's another key part of
the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn
thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and
logic - otherwise your idea is worthless.
This ludicrous
notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be
removed from Oriel College, because it's symbolic of "institutional
racism" and "white slavery". Well even if it is -
which we dispute - so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded
that they can't pass a bronze statue without having their "safe
space" violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides,
if we were to remove Rhodes's statue on the premise that his life
wasn't blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan
Hannan has pointed out, Oriel's other benefactors include two kings
so awful -
Edward II and Charles I - that their subjects
had them killed. The college opposite - Christ Church - was built by
a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas
Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution?
Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India:
was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?"
Actually,
we'll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not
merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with
Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no
different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to
artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering
history
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University
on how it should order its affairs? Your ?#?rhodesmustfall campaign,
we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a
black activist who told one of his lecturers "whites have to be
killed". One of you is the privileged son of a rich politician
and a member of a party whose slogan is "Kill the Boer; Kill the
Farmer"; another of you, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary
of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for "socially
conscious black students" to "dominate white universities,
and do so ruthlessly and decisively!
Great. That's just what
Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of
Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost
entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of
the world's highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised
corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing
economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance
the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And
then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing
campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more
urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of
those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the
irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they
clearly don't merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to
ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.
Understand
us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us;
we have nothing to learn from you.
Yours, Oriel College,
Oxford
