From the Chicago Maroon:
The statue of Carl von Linné, located on the Midway, has been spray painted with several phrases, including “death 2 amerikkka” and “death 2 academy.” The Midway is part of the Chicago Park District and the statue is not on University property.
– Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon, News Reporter
Now we can’t be sure that the protestors encamped here defaced this statue, but I haven’t seen it defaced in the 38 years I’ve been here. And the correlation with The Encampment, as well as the message, is striking. Defacing it makes no statement except “I am ignorant and hateful.”
If you don’t know who Linnaeus was (also called Carl von Linné after he became a nobleman), you can read about him here. He was a Swedish botanist and formulated the system of Latin binomials to identify organisms. (I visited his house, which still stands, when I lectured at Uppsala, but don’t have time to post the pictures.) He was amazingly productive, widely admired, and is known as “the Father of Modern Taxonomy.” Why some chowderhead would deface his statue defies me.
Here’s the lovely statue from the front, which I always admire when I walk by it on the Midway. It was created by Frithiof Kjellberg in 1891, installed the same year, and then relocated in 1976. And what a great thought to memorialize a famous biologist whom almost nobody has heard of!
NOOOOOOO!!! I love the statue of Linné. Protestots.
“Ignorant and hateful” seems to be the new normal!
How sad.
I think we need to know: Was he a settler-colonizer?
I mean, maybe the animals he named didn’t WANT to be referred to in Latin. Did he ask their permission before renaming them?
He’s a dead white male. I’ve heard that’s enough for the current kooks.
There’s another famous statue of him at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
https://www.chicagobotanic.org/sculpture
Note the Garden’s soft apology for Linnaeus’s “racism.” I seem to remember threats to remove both these statues of him but nothing has come of that…yet. I think his statues should stay up, in accord with Jerry’s view that the good he did much outweighs the bad. I can say that the one at the CBG has always inspired me.
Also in the crosshairs: Isaac Newton
https://www.science.org/content/article/historians-expose-early-scientists-debt-slave-trade
I was coming on to say the same thing. It occurred to me that I knew who he was partly because of the statue in the Chicago Botonical Garden. I looked it up on their website to double check. Unfortunately they decided to tell us his misapplication of his system to human race was “used to promote slavery and other racial injustices throughout history.” The Wikipedia article briefly touches on this topic with a less accusatory tone. I find presentism insupportable. It is being abused to justify ignorance about history. On the other hand, it is probably not accurate to give the vandals enough credit to be engaged in a critique of his life’s work. The student demonstrations are probably creating an environment that promotes mindless destruction.
If, in your view, the good did not outweigh the bad, perhaps with the statue of a different person, would you object to its standing in a public place?
Yes. Example: Robert E. Lee
Thanks. I thought about it and, and thus far I am for keeping them.
I’m not sure I follow this. If Good outweighs Bad the result equals a positive (although maybe a small one). If Good doesn’t outweigh Bad , then the result is a negative. I just don’t see what either side in this argument has against Linnaeus.
Jean, if you’re referring to the back-and-forth between Chetiya and me, I don’t see that as an argument, just a friendly disagreement. Concerning statues of Linnaeus, I have no problem with them. In fact, may they abound across the globe! I was merely pointing out that others have tried to “cancel” him, that is, remove his statues, because of his supposed racism. HTH! 🙂
And the disagreement is about the Robert E. Lee statue, not about the Linnaeus statue 🙂
And of course, negating the premise of a statement like
does not imply the negated conclusion. I know you didn’t put it that way, but I sought clarification through the question. Thank you.
I’ve always loved that Linnaeus statue. There was a time when idiotic parents were letting their kids climb all over the statue, until the Botanic Garden put a fence around it.
(So now, the parents take their kids to stores, which they regard as free sitters while they (parents) let the kids destroy the place).
Is there a connection with these now college-age students and the pro-Hamas demonstrators?
I don’t know what has come of it, but a while back my beloved Entomological Society was mulling over changing the name of a big social event which was named after Linnaeus. At the time commentary on their FB page was divided right down the middle.
” The statue of Carl von Linné, located on the Midway, has been spray painted with several phrases, including “death 2 amerikkka” and “death 2 academy.” ”
Well, of course, right? It just makes sense. To some.
I do wonder though – why no .. you know,… the (ahem)..
Instrument of Reproduction?
One might expect that more… maybe a pistil, for example. Or stamen.
In the beginning of this travesty I thought the travestites were jocks, frats and “the guys in the back three rows” and who have a long record of being obnoxious and getting low grades(I know because I have kept track and the distance between the the back and the front was consistently low grades in the back and high grades in the front – I am an anthropologist with 35 years in lectures). The current idiocy is obviously a social movement by the back row people. It’s fun !!!. My solution would be to collect all ID cards and expel them all with an F for the semester. Then it would cease to be fun, and they might take it seriously, although they still would not understand what they were doing that was not FREE SPEECH which is not for free when you can shut down an entire institution and thereby mess up the lives of those who just wanted to go to class and graduate. These fun loving goons might be able to figure it out (or not) and will have quite a story to tell their parents if they are kicked out.
Good observation!
I must ask: Do you, as did Robert Pirsig, identify more closely with those back three rows?
I am nearing the end of my time teaching secondary STEM (I cut my teeth on an IBM 360 and in Fortran), identifying most closely with those in the middle, and this year has been the roughest ever for me. I have seniors that withdrew applications in November due to campus climates, and I have two that have rescinded their commitments to prestigious schools, so far, due to the last several weeks’ circumstances making them feel they would be genuinely unsafe. One school with several application rescissions is PCC (and my) graduate alma mater, and as of today, and as of today, a reconsideration of attending U of C.
A former student who WAS at USC came home early and may not return there.
But the climate in the secondary school is also disturbing.
It isn’t the kids in the back row that are the issue. It is the ones in the seats next to them. The ones in the back row, in my school, don’t know which side to join (they hate both sides), so they just look confused.
I, mostly, keep my mouth shut, as I am near retirement, and the current rules pretty much let my pension eligibility be revoked without appeal without needing clear or defined cause.
So I weep for some of the kids. And I keep my head down. I’m too old to eat from a dumpster again, I am too old to be beaten by bigots or cops again, and I am too old to be tear gassed again.
Very sorry. You deserve much better in the twilight of a very noble career. I too cut my teeth on IBM360 and FORTRAN IV (ansi 66 its first year out!). I taught high school physics and math for five years at the start of my career so I can identify with you quite a bit. Wish I could say something to perk you up.
I’m sure you are right, Michael, in general, yet these protests are heavily weighted toward neurotic young women and effeminate men who seem well-spoken enough that they probably got good grades. (And it is Columbia and Chicago, after all…. Diversity goes down only so far before it hits rocks.) Maybe the TV cameras try to find comely, slightly built women to interview so as to make the whole event come over as less threatening and less deserving of a response by burly blue-collar male cops. They aren’t going to interview real live thugs who might be recognized as unlawfully at large. And women do make up a majority of college students now, particularly in the Intersectionality Sociology of Victim Studies programs that feed these protests, so there may not be any frat boys and football jocks to interview at all. Not at Columbia anyway.
Whatever, those identifiable as students should be expelled. Any time you do something that your university has to incur a huge bill for policing — and you can bet the City is going to want to collect — out you go.
P.S. Gotta hand it to the NYPD. This obviously wasn’t their first rodeo.
“…a famous biologist whom almost nobody has heard of!”
Ooof, I don’t know which hurts more, the defacing of a monument to a fellow botanist or the reference to him being completely unknown.
Me thinks that teaching a Plant Taxonomy course to a premeds this fall ain’t gonna go so well. 🙂
“… a famous biologist whom almost nobody has heard of!” I’m sorry, but I should think anyone who ever took HS biology would know the name Linnaeus.
They should, but stop a bunch of high-school or college students who have taken biology and ask who he is. Ten to one that only about 10% or fewer could say more than, “Oh, I’ve heard the name.”
Here’s what else we all pay for 50 k to move a boulder because of a name it had over 100 years ago.
https://blavity.com/university-of-wisconsin-students-force-school-to-remove-boulder-previously-named-nrhead-rock/
As long as they don’t get Linnaeus confused with Lamarck as to who got it wrong, we’ll all good I’d say. (Given the present times.)
What a stupid and pointless thing. Now there are crude motivations for going after a statue of this person, but it could also be just a random tagging of a convenient landmark.
Humans are smart, damn us. We observe examples of an action and extend that example to similar actions. Tear down or deface statues that you don’t like and the principle is statues I dislike are fair game too. I may dislike it for no reason at all but the principle is I can deface it because defacing and destroying statues is fine if some powerful group dislikes them. And together, our group is powerful, so take that, statue. Simple but human. Damn us.
This is how civilization ends.
Please post the photos of Linnaeus’ house some day.
These spoiled idiots are just smart enough to intentionally spoil our country and culture. I told my mom this would happen a decade ago and it just keeps getting worse.
OK, that’s the last straw.
Send in the dogs.
So cool that there’s a statue of Linnaeus in Chicago!
Sadly, the idiots have landed in Chicago, too. Related to the protests? Not clear, but could be. After all, the same people who would chant about a river and a sea that they can’t identify would also be likely to deface the statue of a person they can’t identify. The same MO.
On a positive note, the tribute to Linnaeus will outlast them all. A beautiful and stately statue.
Well Norman, I think Douglas Murray might say an opportunistic attack on western ideals in general: enlightenment, science, historical western personalities. This is more than hamas, Israel, Gaza…the termites are now dining throughout the U.S.
Yeah, The Enlightenment was an idea born from White Supremacy, no?
Don’t tell anyone but yes it kind of was. We should own that idea, wear it with pride to prevent it being used as a knock on the Enlightenment. Or at least when the progressives say, The Enlightenment was born from White Supremacy we can answer, “So? Your point?”
The idea should be to not let them dictate the terms of the debate. Because then you get drawn into an argument about white supremacy and what it even is, or was, instead of the original discussion about the benefits of the Enlightenment and what will happen to all people if it is destroyed.
I do the same for colonialism. When people say the success of colonialism was carried out on the backs of the indigenous people I say, “So? Your point? What’s done is done, we’re all here now. We’re not giving you the country ‘back’ just because you wish we had stayed starving in Ireland.”
“Death to Amerikkka?” Is that some kind of big brush characterization that America is somehow the KKK now? I’m sure it’s not a warning about another Trump Presidency, and then I’d give them a snicker…but I know it’s not. How else can you interpret it other than genocide-Joe? And if that is the intent, wtf? Have the Hamas lovers and apologists stooped to such inanity? Anarchy always seems to appeal to the young, (I liked the idea for a brief time in HS) and if you’ve had a comfortable life, you take that for granted and think Anarchy is freedom! As if tearing everything down is a good idea; even the cell towers? Nothing has moved my needle on blaming the lion’s share of this on social media. The truth can’t penetrate that peer-based, confirmation biased worldview. I’ve disowned a couple friends based on their pro-Hamas views, and it wasn’t that difficult since their arguments were all social-media, Elders of Zion-driven drivel. A frustrating conundrum, for sure.
Meanwhile, Hamas is basically the KKK on steroids.
It’s just still amazing to me that someone might not know who Linnaeus is. Wow. But to deface his statue. What a world we live in.
Brad
It is an old trope of academic pop-Leftism to blame Linnaeus for racism. The Systema Naturae did indeed mention four geographically based “varieties” of Homo sapiens: Europaeus, Americanus, Asiaticus and Africanus. It also described them briefly in terms that were conventional notions in 18th century Sweden—where evil white society did not yet incorporate DEI statements into everything, let alone into the then innovative system of taxonomy.
I think that pop-Left hostility toward Linnaeus is deeper. His offense, after all, was that of including the human species in Biology. But today, the modern (or postmodern) insights of Critical Victim Studies teach us that everything about humans (including their sex) is Socially Constructed—and thus can be changed.