Hofstra University announced Wednesday that a statue of Thomas Jefferson will remain on campus despite the faux outrage of its progressive students.
JaLoni Owens, a junior public policy major, Black Lives Matter activist, and race-baiter-in-training, launched a Change.org petition in March calling for the removal of the statue, which sits in a prominent location in front of the student center.
“Jefferson’s values aided in the construction of institutionalized racism and justified the subjugation of black people in the United States,” the petition reads. It goes on to accuse Jefferson of raping his slaves and embracing eugenics.
It also condemns Jefferson for being “embraced as an icon by white supremacist and neo-nazi organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and online white supremacist chat rooms such as Storm Front and Daily Stormer.”
The movement gained more steam after a town hall meeting hosted by the Student Government Association on April 25. Taking a page from Rev. Jesse Jackson’s playbook, Owens stood up and asked, “What do we have to do or what do we have to say for students of color to finally be as valuable as our white counterparts?”
University President Stuart Rabinowitz didn’t take the bait, and after some students turned their backs and held signs saying “Black Lives Matter! Does Hofstra agree?” Rabinowitz actually spoke with more chutzpah than most university presidents.
“I think it’s a bit of a stretch to say Black Lives Matter applies to the Jefferson statue,” he said. “Secondly, of course black lives matter, and thirdly, this doesn’t add to the conversation. I am certainly dumbfounded as to what you really want to accomplish. If you really want to accomplish something, why don’t you talk to us and not turn your back on us and hold up a sign and remain mute? Free speech is free speech, but on a pragmatic matter … it’s not gonna get the statue removed.”
One can only imagine Owens and his fellow protesters were fuming at these words.
One month later, Rabinowitz declared that the statue would stay, but his statement lacked the same boldness as his response at the town hall meeting and sounds like a cautious attempt to appease social justice warriors like Owens. He defended his decision by noting that Americans celebrate the vision of our Founding Fathers, but focused more on the Founders’ failings in his statement.
“The Founding Fathers represent the duality of the American character and the difficulty of our history: freedom and oppression, equality and injustice, in issues of race, gender, religion and origin, that we have dealt with since our founding and will deal with for years to come,” his statement reads. “Yet in the documents most critical to our national character these men of their time laid out a vision of a world in which all people are created equal.”
Jefferson should be honored because his positive contributions were so important to the history of this country, not because he and the other Founders represent the difficulty of our nation’s history.
In the 19th century, abolitionists pointed to the Declaration of Independence in their fight against slavery, and a century later, civil rights leaders did the same in their battle for equal rights. Jefferson was not a perfect man by any means, but his words paved the way for much more than our country’s birth.
Rabinowitz also announced he would convene a task force to “consider further dialogue and education about our founding fathers, the Atlantic slave trade and Western expansion; to think about what freedom and equality mean at the University; and to consider how we use history to advance understanding and build a better, more just world.”
Translation: The task force will discuss how they can use American history to push the social justice agenda at the university.
Rabinowitz made the right choice by keeping the statue, but completely missed the mark in his sycophantic response to Owens and his fellow activists.
