President Price recently announced the formation of a commission to review controversial monuments and names of facilities on campus, and recommend appropriate steps for those figures who might be deemed unsuitable of honor in modern times. Price appointed 16 members, citing the need for “every member of the Duke community” to have “a voice in this vitally important conversation,” as well as a “diversity of views about the best way forward.” These members are supposed to determine an approach to fostering an inclusive environment, as Price recognizes that some individuals honored by Duke espoused views that we would condemn today.
These issues are not new to Duke. If the commission hopes to both acknowledge that some honorees may be flawed and preserve their legacy, its members should consider lessons from the debates that took place on campus about how to recognize Duke’s most historically famous alum, President Richard Nixon. Nixon graduated from the law school in 1937, and the manner in which the university addressed his legacy in three particular instances offers crucial guidance for the new commission.
The most contentious proposal involved a plan to build a Nixon Library on campus. In 1981, seven years after he had resigned from the presidency in disgrace, Nixon began to consider locations for his library. Duke’s president at the time, Terry Sanford, promoted a plan to construct a library that would house historically significant Nixon papers, but many professors feared association with such a polarizing and dishonorable political figure.
They worried that the presence of a library would effectively serve as a shrine rather than as a historical archive. These concerns, combined with justifiable anger toward Nixon for his red-baiting in the 1950’s as well as his dishonest policies that expanded the Vietnam War, ultimately sunk Sanford’s bid to build the library. Instead, it was constructed in Yorba Linda, California.
Equally insightful is the fate of a portrait of Nixon. Given to the law school in 1969, it disappeared and was found years later in the law school’s moot courtroom. School administrators, fearful of vandalism, hid the portrait. In the 1990s, the law school agreed to transfer the portrait Congress, where it hung in a conference room of the House of Representatives. When the law school made plans to renovate the Goodson Library in 2008, administrators included a space for the portrait, where it has hung for the last five years.
In 2010, a few years before the portrait returned to campus, about 50 law students, professors and administrators wrote and performed, “Tricky Dick,” a cabaret that lampoons Nixon running for student body president. The play has since become an annual tradition. “It’s not a celebration of Nixon’s character flaws,” said Justin Becker, Law’12, who co-directed the play and starred as Nixon in 2011. “It’s moreso a celebration of the acceptance of the fact that there was this individual in our past, whether we like it or not…You can’t pick and choose, but you should always have a full conversation about the individuals who are a part of your history, and that’s what we did.”
What can our community learn from considerations about how to remember Nixon?
Fundamentally, it is important to determine how we should recognize historic figures who are recognized for both achievements and blemishes. This task is difficult when we evaluate historical contributions and morality based on 21st-century social outlooks. Objections to Lee monuments are understandable, given that he rebelled against his country to preserve slavery— and perhaps even more importantly—that many of these monuments were intended to intimidate African-Americans and signify resistance to civil rights.
Yet, while Lee and Nixon did terrible things and may represent easy cases of this dilemma, is it always appropriate to judge the beliefs of those who served our country according to contemporary attitudes? Do Nixon’s red baiting and resignation in disgrace outweigh his political achievements, including his historic reopening of relations with China and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency? Other universities—such as Princeton, which houses the Woodrow Wilson School—have debated how to grapple with the complex legacy of a president with school ties. Wilson’s segregation of the federal government and his endorsement of the racist film “Birth of a Nation” are deplorable.
Yet is it wrong to celebrate some of his signature accomplishments, such as his establishment of the Federal Reserve, his leadership during World War I, and his promotion of a rules-based international governance system that became an intellectual foundation for the creation of the United Nations?
MIT historian Craig Steven Wilder’s critically acclaimed work, “Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” chronicles how the founding of many of the nation’s earliest, most prestigious colleges and universities was closely intertwined with human bondage. The Brown family, who founded that great school in Rhode Island, were slave traders—as was Elihu Yale. A simplistic approach might suggest that these schools should be renamed, even though these figures contributed significantly toward education in a new America.
When considering whether to remove or construct a monument, it is important to candidly assess the figure’s accomplishments as well as shortcomings. Faculty members rightly worried that the Nixon Library would be a monument of honor more than an archive for historical research, a concern we should think about as we consider who to honor. Price’s task force must maintain this same commitment to constructive dialogue and understanding, rather than glorification or vilification, as it undertakes this work.
Understanding what the Confederacy fought for and remaining aware of the period in which Confederate monuments were erected are important when the commission considers the fate of Lee statues. Such context will also be vital for decisions about naming a building or constructing a monument.
There is no simple blueprint that members of the commission, or we as members of the Duke community, can follow to determine whether a statue or portrait should remain on our campus. Only through a commitment to nuance and historical truth, and an understanding of historian Jon Meacham’s words (“It is ahistoric to judge figures from the past by our own moral standards) can the Price commission satisfy competing demands for both inclusivity and historical preservation.
Max Labaton is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.
Max Labaton is a Trinity senior and a Managing Editor of the Editorial page. His column runs on alternate Tuesdays.