At Second Symposium on Witherspoon Statue, Speakers Call for Monument’s Removal

November 08, 2023 1 min read

Darius Gross
Princeton Tory

Excerpt: On Friday, November 3, the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) Committee on Naming held a symposium entitled “Monuments, Memory, and the John Witherspoon Statue.” According to a poster advertising the event, it was held to “explore memorialization, monuments in American art history, and the university campus as a space and a community” in relation to the ongoing debate surrounding a campus statue of John Witherspoon, the University’s sixth president and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The statue has lately been the subject of controversy, given Witherspoon’s participation in slavery. During the event, many of the invited speakers raised the possibility of removing or replacing the Witherspoon statue, which currently stands in Firestone Plaza.

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