Students at Princeton University are petitioning to remove the statue of John Witherspoon on the campus.
Students issued the petition to the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming and university president resident Christopher Eisgruber for consideration in July 2022.
The statue in question was added to the university in front of East Pyne Hall in November of 2001. It is one of a pair made by Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart. The statue’s twin is located at the University of Paisley in Scotland
The petition claims that the statue’s presence on campus is “inappropriate” and opts to have it replaced by a plaque that would show both the “positive and negative” sides of the man’s history, particularly to acknowledge his role in slavery.
“We believe, first, that the statue pays great honor to Witherspoon, and encourages members of the University community to honor Witherspoon,” said students in the petition.
“Second, we believe that paying such honor to someone who participated actively in the enslavement of human beings, and used his scholarly gifts to defend the practice, is today a distraction from the University’s mission,” it continued.
Over 300 students at the university have already signed the petition.
Students Waner Zhang, Kathryn Rech, and Brendan Kolb, who drafted the petition, explained that they had started the petition after hearing concerns from other students in the philosophy department and in the wake of an opinion column published in The Daily Princetonian in the fall of 2021.
John Witherspoon was Princeton’s sixth president and a founding father of the United States. Witherspoon was also the only clergyman to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation and served during the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Despite having tutored several African Americans in Princeton, history reveals that he owned two slaves and voted against the abolition of slavery in New Jersey.
Peter Hegseth, an alumnus from Princeton University and co-host of Fox and Friends Weekend, opposed the idea of removing the statue, arguing that its removal would erase history.
“The idea that his statue would be removed is completely antithetical to history, antithetical to what the university says it stands for,” said Hegseth.
“It would be bending to a really noisy, tiny percentage of radicals who try to get their way on any college campus,” he continued.
The CPUC Committee on Naming is still in the process of reviewing the petition and considering public comment.