By ALICE B. LLOYD, Weekly Standard
After a town hall meeting to process their post-election pain, students discard the Bard.
University of Pennsylvania students took down a large, centrally-located portrait of Shakespeare from the English Department to send a message of inclusivity, according to the department’s chair.
According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, a small but determined mob of English majors executed a swap of the artwork for a depiction of the black queer poet Audre Lorde after an English Department meeting on December 1. The meeting, presumably a fraught discussion, was a town hall focused on the presidential election.
Per the Daily Pennsylvanian:
“The portrait has resided over the main staircase of Fisher-Bennett — home to Penn’s English Department — for years. The English Department voted to relocate and replace the portrait a few years ago in order to represent a more diverse range of writers, according to an emailed statement from [English professor and Department Chair Jed Esty], who declined to be interviewed.
“However, despite the vote, the portrait was left in the entranceway until recent events.
“‘Students removed the Shakespeare portrait and delivered it to my office as a way of affirming their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English department,’ Esty wrote in the email.”
