The College Fix

There’s no need to scrub away every complex, difficult vestige of the past

Washington and Lee University, a premiere institution of higher learning in Lexington, Virginia, should not scrub the name of the Confederate general from its title.

That’s the recommendation of a panel convened by the university to study its “institutional history and community.” Lest the commission be viewed as a stuffy, stubborn dinosaur reluctant to grapple with the university’s past, it is worth pointing out that the panel does recommend the school change the name of a campus building named after a slave owner who sold several slaves to finance its construction. The commission members deserve credit for being able to distinguish between a moral liability and a complex historical legacy.

Many people believe that naming a university in part after Robert E. Lee is strictly the former—a moral liability, the equivalent of naming a school after Hitler (good grief), an ongoing celebration of white supremacy. It is none of these things. Yes, Robert E. Lee did some terrible things: He owned slaves, and both advocated and participated in a system that subjugated blacks and placed whites at the apex of American society.

But of course so did George Washington. Both men did terrible things and participated in terrible atrocities. They have also come—and not without reason—to symbolize certain values and civic virtues that transcend their own significant moral failures. Were slavery all Lee was known for, it would make sense to change the university’s name. But, like Washington, Lee has more than one string to his bow. It would make little sense to scrub his name from the school’s books without doing the same to George Washington’s, something that of course nobody is proposing.

Reckoning with the past can be a difficult business, no more so than in America, whose terrible failures stand in stark contrast to our incredible accomplishments and even loftier ideals. But the right way to deal with the past isn’t to simply chip away at every complex and thorny historical legacy. The commission was right in this case. Let’s hope other schools take note.

MORE: Commission urges Washington and Lee University: Don’t change the school’s name

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