12 Options
Develop a range of options for dealing with the underlying non-symbols issues as well as options for adding to, removing, combining, transforming, and explaining the contested symbols. Consider new approaches, such as creation of a new common space.
POSSIBLE STRATEGIES
Ask a series of questions to surface options:
- What commemorative approaches might help each group achieve its goals? Can the commemoration involve multiple groups who then learn from and support each other’s tragic histories?
- Would a new location help (see e.g., the example of Soviet statues moved outside Budapest in Options)
- Does an educational approach re-purpose the symbol, as with the new focus for tours of Montpelier (discussed in Process Design).
- Are there hierarchies among the degrees of offense felt by various symbols of concern? Does this suggest creating options first for the most offensive?
- What do existing resources permit? What are sources of additional resources, including ongoing resources for upkeep and staffing?
Changing the framework:
- Changing the perspective by learning about analogous situations and the solutions selected may allow contending participants to “reset” and think about their own issues with new eyes.
- If the group is stuck about the resolution of contested symbols, focus the conversation for a while on whether more significant changes can be made. With momentum from progress on the more significant changes, return to the contested symbols, which then may be something more easily resolved.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Beginning with a collaborative focus on whether more significant non-symbols changes should be made
In 2017, David Faigman, newly-named as Chancellor and Dean of the University of California/Hastings College of the Law, read in a local newspaper about what he later called “horrific,” “atrocities,” “terrible crimes,” and “genocide” perpetrated against Native Americans by the college’s namesake and founding dean and donor.[1] That spring he organized the Hastings Legacy Review Committee, comprised of Hastings faculty, staff, alumni, and students and commissioned a historian to provide research. Though changing the school’s name became an issue, Dean Faigman also asked the committee to look into as well providing restorative justice for these acts to the descendants of those harmed, the Yuki People. In consultation with the Yuki People, the college became involved in providing a number of services responsive to what some of the Yuki People identified as needs.
These programs, some still in planning, included facilitating help with broadband access, hiring professionals to record their elders’ stories, establishing summer fellowships to offer pro bono legal services, and working with the high school debate team. Although some originally resisted removing the college’s name, by November 2021, the school’s board, including the original Dean Hastings’ great-great grandson, unanimously supported a request to the state legislature and governor to change the college’s name.[2] By January 1, 2023, following the unanimous vote and legislative approval, the institution officially became the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco (UC Law SF). A lawsuit filed by descendants of the founder attempted to reverse the name change, but it was dismissed in February 2024, reinforcing the legal authority of the renaming decision.
Using a new location
In 2021, the City of Bristol, England, moved a statue of a 17th century slave trader that Black Lives Matter protestors dumped in a harbor in 2020, to the M Shed, a museum where people would not have to confront it while there could be a discussion about what should happen next. This temporary display, titled “The Colston Statue: What Next?” was designed to facilitate a city-wide conversation about its future. The exhibit ran from June 2021 to January 2022, and featured the statue in its damaged and graffitied state, accompanied by a timeline of events. After receiving more than 14,000 responses, the city recognized that the discussions that emerged related not only to the statue but multiple institutions in Bristol named for the slave trader.[3]
Following public consultation, the statue is now on permanent display in the M Shed’s “Bristol People” gallery.[4] A plaque was installed at the site where the statute once stood. Together, the plaque and the new exhibit aim to provide context about Colston’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and the history of protest in Bristol.
- David Faigman, Addressing the Wrongs of Serranus Hastings, Letter to the Hastings Community (October 27, 2021). ↵
- Joe Kukura, UC Hastings Will Now Move to Change Its Name After Saying It Wouldn’t, San Francisco Chronicle (November 3, 2021). ↵
- Nora McGreevy, Toppled Statue of British Slave Trader Goes on View at Bristol Museum, Smithsonian Mag. (June 7, 2021), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/protesters-throw-slavers-statue-bristol-harbor-make-waves-across-britain-180975060/. ↵
- M Shed, “The Colston Statue: What Next?” (2021), https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/. ↵
