Oxford v-c: ‘hiding your history is not the route to enlightenment’

The vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford has warned that “hiding your history is not the route to enlightenment”, as the institution’s Oriel College came under increased pressure to remove its statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes.

Louise Richardson told Times Higher Education that “we need to understand our history” and historical figures and “debate their role and…our attitudes towards them”.

The University of Oxford’s Oriel College has faced renewed calls this week to remove its statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes, after the statue of slave owner Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol on Sunday.

When asked what her response was to these calls, Professor Richardson said: “My general view about this is that hiding your history is not the route to enlightenment.”

She added that it was an issue on which “reasonable people can disagree” and said one of the interesting questions to explore was how to evaluate historical figures morally.

“Do you use the ethics of today to evaluate their past actions or do you put them in the context of their time and consider their actions vis-à-vis what the government thought, what other people thought, at that time?” she asked.

Professor Richardson also raised the issue of the University of Oxford’s own past, highlighting that for 800 years of its 900-year history women did not run, study or teach at the institution.

“We now know that’s preposterous, so do we pretend they didn’t think that and do we think they were bad people because they held those views?” she said.

“I often wonder, what’s going to happen a few hundred years from now. How are they going to evaluate us? How do we want them to evaluate us? Do we want them to evaluate us in terms of the ethics of the society in which we live or in terms of the ethics of the society 200-300 years from now?

“I have no answers to these questions. These are all just really interesting topics for debate.”

Professor Richardson was speaking to THE as the institution announced details of its first new college in 30 years.

She said that she would consider the new Reuben College a success “if I go in there a few years from now and there are lots of people sitting around tables – people from different disciplines, different nationalities, different races, socio-economic backgrounds – having robust debates about all these issues. That’s what universities are about.”

ellie.bothwell@timeshighereducation.com