Roy Exum
Chris Patten, noted by some as Lord Patten of Barnes, is easily one of the world’s smartest human beings. He is the chancellor of Oxford University and, in the most delightful letter you’ll ever read on “Why Oxford University Will Not Rewrite History,” the term “Autres temps, autres moeurs” was used. The letter has been attributed to Lord Patten but not confirmed.
When I hurried to find out what those words mean, which is “other times, other customs,” it was an answer I have been seeking since South Carolina changed its flag and New Orleans removed four statues of Confederate heroes. Thank God the crazies were unsuccessful in an attempt to obliterate Nathan Bedford Forrest, who died in 1877, from Tennessee’s history. “Other times, other customs,” is exactly what it was and still is.
My forefathers owned slaves in Mississippi and fought in the Civil War – two things that we today would never do. I am certainly not proud of that, nor am I embarrassed by it. As Lord Patten pointed out in a recent interview on the BBC, “Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to our contemporary views and prejudice.”
All of this has come about after a sampling of about a third of Oxford’s 22,000 students – mostly BAME (black and minority ethnic) students raised all manner of hell that the statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) be removed from the building of Oriel College, which is part of Oxford.
At the time of his death, Rhodes bequeathed Oxford University with roughly $8.5 million. In today’s money that would be about $15,000 shy of $1 billion (with a ‘b’) and to be a Rhodes Scholar is considered the most prestigious academic award in the world. (Chattanooga physician Cliff Cleaveland is a Rhodes Scholar, as is Lookout Mountain and McCallie product Justin Mutter. Robert A. Fisher, a dazzling guy who graduated from UTC, is in his first year of the Rhodes Scholar program.)
They claim Rhodes helped form the policy of enforced racial segregation in South Africa. After all, Harvard just sanctimoniously removed the crest of the law school because it was also the coat-of-arms of former slave owner Isaac Royall. Forget the fact a huge bequest in Royall’s will (the man died in 1781!) actually built Harvard’s law school. Once again, “Other times, other customs.”
Earlier this school year some of the BAME students at Oxford heard that a different statue of Cecil Rhodes, who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa from 1890 to 1896, was just removed from Cape Town due to his racial beliefs at the end of the 18th century, so they started a ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ effort at Oxford.
Two months ago there appeared a letter that was sent to Oxford students and it was first believed Lord Patten may have written it. Then again, it wasn’t signed. So while it has been neither confirmed or disavowed, it is a fact the statue of Cecil Rhodes isn’t going anywhere. Oxford is firm on that.
Here’s the letter that has the Isle of Britain all astir and whoever is the author, this one is a classic!
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“Dear Scrotty Students,
Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.
This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilization (British spelling), from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks.
We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.
And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure, we’ll concede you the short-lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.
You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the #blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American mind”.
At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the world’s greatest university.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves.
Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.
That means, inter alia (Latin for “among other things”), that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!” No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea is worthless.
This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop?
As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India. Was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”
Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your #rhodesmustfall campaign, we understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”.
One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!”
Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.
Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.
Yours,
Oriel College, Oxford
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Now consider this: What could we possibly do to entice Chris Patten, A.K.A. Lord Patten of Barnes, to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as our next President, provided we could get around the citizenship requirement? It is apparent we have everything to learn from him, yet he has nothing to learn from us.
royexum@aol.com