Will context be enough on campus?
The University of Arkansas has declared it will not remove a statue of J. William Fulbright from its campus nor will it take the late senator’s name off its college of arts and sciences.
In the world that keeps score too often by simply looking at wins and losses, that might appear as a defeat for those students, faculty and members of the community who called earlier for the university to dismantle the homage paid to a man who once served as the university’s president.
Fulbright unquestionably achieved a great deal during his 30 years as the junior senator representing the state of Arkansas in Congress (Sen. John L. McClellan’s time in office overlapped Fulbright’s on both ends).
The albatross around Fulbright’s neck has been and will forever be his failure as a leader to get ahead of his constituents on the question of civil rights for Black Americans, especially given his ability to get ahead of them on global issues.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minnesota, advocates for change here targeted Fulbright’s high-profile presence on the university campus in the form of a statue at the western entrance to Old Main, perhaps the best-known building in all of Arkansas beyond the State Capitol. They also asked that his name be removed from the college of arts and sciences.
University officials decided to retain celebrations of Fulbright’s contributions to the campus and to the concept of global understanding. The activism about Fulbright, however, has created a new lens through which he will officially be viewed on the UA campus. As of last week, university officials referred to it as the “Fulbright Paradox.”
New signs will be installed next year near the statue to explore this paradoxical life of an Arkansas statesmen. Rather than sweep Fulbright’s entire existence under the carpet, the university will attempt to show his achievements and his failures.
“The hope of the university is that our community explores the full history of Sen. Fulbright, to better understand both why he is honored, and also why the use of his name and statue on our campus can seem troubling, so that together we can build a future in which every member of our community feels a sense of belonging,” campus officials said in a statement released last week.
Is that a realistic hope? Time will tell.
I suppose you could call it a victory for context. These days, though, there aren’t many people on any side of debate who get satisfaction out of context. Acknowledging deep flaws in one’s character or the shortcomings of his leadership still provides a more honest assessment that shouldn’t be ignored.
Is it better to place such a person’s achievements in context of relevant failures or to behave as if that person never achieved at all?
Who among this nation’s leaders can survive an all-or-nothing review of their lives? The Founding Fathers, after all, created a nation of liberty but, for convenience, ignored a moral question that struck at the very heart of liberty — that of slavery. I think they did so because to do otherwise in those formative years for the nation threatened hope of establishing a United States of America. They knew the issue would not go away and would have to be revisited, but at a time when this new form of government might be able to withstand the battle — a war, it turned out — required to resolve it.
I hope public display of this context-focused analysis of J. William Fulbright will enlighten visitors to the University of Arkansas campus with a greater understanding of the harm done by his wrong decisions as well as the good that came from his better ones.