Dive Brief:
- The University of Mississippi has announced that it plans to relocate a Confederate monument at the entrance of the campus after faculty, staff and student groups called for its removal, The Washington Post reported.
- The statue has long been a point of tension on the campus, including last month when pro-Confederate demonstrators rallied around the monument. In response, the university's Faculty Senate, Associated Student Body, Graduate Council and Staff Council all passed resolutions in favor of relocating the statue to a Confederate cemetery on campus.
- Before moving the monument, the university must get approval from various groups, according to The Associated Press. Interim Chancellor Larry Sparks said in a statement that the approval process will "require some time."
Dive Insight:
The university's decision to relocate the statue marks its latest efforts to distance itself from Confederate imagery on its campus. In 2010, the university replaced its mascot Colonel Reb, a Southern plantation owner, with a black bear. And in 2015, it removed from the campus the Mississippi state flag, which features the Confederate battle emblem.
The university's decision comes amid a national movement to remove Confederate memorials from public spaces. Most recently, a debate over a Confederate monument on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus came to a head in August when protestors toppled the statue. Following disagreement over what to do with the statue, the university's then-Chancellor Carol Folt gave orders in January to remove the remaining base and tablets, effectively squashing plans to return the statue to its previous location.
And in 2017, the University of Texas at Austin took down multiple Confederate statues days before the fall semester began. University President Gregory Fenves said in a statement to the campus that the statues were erected "during the period of Jim Crow laws and segregation" and "represent the subjugation of African Americans."
Universities are also reexamining other works that contain racist or sexist imagery. This past fall, Dartmouth College announced it was removing murals with offensive depictions of Native Americans. Likewise, in 2018, the president of the University of New Mexico recommended covering murals dating from the 1930s that present "a very racialized perspective" of race in that state, according to one professor there.
Officials at Yale University, Stanford University and the University of Pittsburgh have also moved to rename facilities named after racist or oppressive figures.