THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY faculty’s library is called “the Seeley”. It has been in its current, James Stirling-designed building since 1968, and named after the eponymous Sir John (an eminent Victorian) since 1897. You will not be surprised to learn that these facts, which somehow left people in my time unbothered, are now distressing the current crop of undergraduates.
We all know the drill by now:
STEP 1: Activists discover that Famous Historical Figure After Whom Something Is Named (in this case, John Robert Seeley) held views that they do not agree with (to wit, the value of then-thing, the British Empire)
STEP 2: Cue outrage, and loud displays about having Strong Feelings About Bad Things
STEP 3: Initiate patently implausible claims about how the names of old buildings are causally responsible for perpetuating the amorphous (yet allegedly all-pervasive and overwhelming) evils known as “structural racism” and “colonialism” (never explain how or why this is so)
STEP 4: Issue demands for re-naming, trading on the fantasy that language is uniquely powerful, and by merely changing the words we use the social world will become more just
STEP 5: Imply (or just outright state) that anyone who disagrees is a racist
STEP 6: Repeat until targeted institution(s) capitulate from exhaustion and/or fear.
On the other side of the resulting shouting match, opponents are apt to reply that this is all terribly unfair. People in the past, you see, didn’t. Everybody thought like that back then, so we can’t blame specific individuals for thinking that way. Cut the past some slack; they weren’t lucky enough to be as enlightened as us!
