Category Archives: Memorials

Edwin A. Alderman

The University of Virginia Board of Visitors has tabled a discussion about renaming Alderman Library in honor of former UVa President Edgar F. Shannon until the Board’s February/March meeting.

John Nau, chair of the Buildings & Grounds Committee, told the full board Thursday that he had spoken to “every member of the board” about the measure but “there’s still work to address this issue.”

There was no discussion, and a presentation of the renaming proposal included in the board information packet was skipped.

Alderman was UVa’s first president, appointed after the job of running the university had proven too complex for the Board of Visitors alone. Serving from 1904 to 1931, he extended UVa’s outreach to a broader population, updated teaching methods, and admitted women to graduate programs at UVa despite resistance from faculty and alumni. Under his leadership, UVa entered a growth phase, growing enrollment dramatically, expanding the number of faculty, building the endowment, and increasing its budget more than ten-fold. Alderman has been criticized in recent years for his retrograde views on race and his embrace of the then-progressive enthusiasm for eugenics. Continue reading →

Attendees of the 9/11: Never Forget Project included Ian Solomon, dean of the Frank Barren School of Leadership and Public Policy (third from left), President Jim Ryan (third from right), YAF chapter Chairman Nickolaus Cabrera (far right) and other YAF chapter officers.

On the morning of Sept. 11, the Young America’s Foundation at the University of Virginia held a service to remember the 2,977 Americans who died in the wave of terrorist attacks 20 years previously. The conservative group planted 2,977 tiny flags in rows in the university Amphitheater. Dan Moy, a retired Air Force colonel, gave the address.

The event was supported informally by the UVa administration. President Jim Ryan was among those in attendance.

The event went as planned, but that evening, someone discovered that the flags were in disarray. Intruders had knocked over many of the colors, strewing them about, and had flipped over a table with a banner. Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

The University of Virginia Board of Visitors took another big step in purging its “white supremacist” past by voting Friday to take down the statue to George Rogers Clark. The Clark statue, critics say, perpetuates “the myth of brave white men conquering a supposedly unknown and unclaimed land.”

The cost of removing, relocating and storing the statue is estimated to cost $400,000. University officials expect the statue to be removed by the end of the summer. Then the university will start talking to students and the Indigenous community about what should replace it, reports The Daily Progress.

The removal, initially recommended by the UVa’s Racial Equity Task Force, advances the systematic extirpation of any names, memorials or statues that can be tangentially connected to “white supremacy.” The dismantling of the Clark statue is part of a larger set of recommendations to “repair relationships with Indigenous communities” by establishing a “tribal liaison position,” found a Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, recruit Native and Indigenous faculty. And, of course, it is consistent with the denigration of anyone associated with the slave-holding era. Continue reading →