Oxford dons should stop ‘throwing tantrums’ over statues, says Oriel’s only African tutor
- Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda is ‘perplexed’ over the fuss surrounding Rhodes statue
- She said academics should be promoting equality by ‘raising awareness about places…where there is still much more work to be done’
- She added that patriarchy in Victorian Britain was ‘in many ways still better than the conditions girls and women currently endure in several African countries’
Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda – from Morocco – said she was ‘perplexed’ over the fuss surrounding the keeping of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the college
Oxford dons should stop ‘throwing tantrums’ over statues and focus on fighting today’s inequalities, according to Oriel’s only African tutor.
Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda – from Morocco – said she was ‘perplexed’ over the fuss surrounding the keeping of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the college.
Writing for The Daily Telegraph, she said academics should be promoting equality by ‘raising awareness about places…where there is still much more work to be done than under the dreaming spires’.
Dr Daouda said: ‘I would be glad to see less emotivity in the way some members of the university deal with Rhodes and with the whole race craze in general.’
She added that patriarchy in Victorian Britain was ‘in many ways still better than the conditions girls and women currently endure in several African countries’.
Rhodes, a 19th century industrialist and imperialist who donated a huge sum to Oriel in his will, supported apartheid-style measures in southern Africa.
At the height of Black Lives Matter protests last summer, ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ protests sprang up outside Oriel.
At the height of Black Lives Matter protests last summer, ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ protests sprang up outside Oriel
Dons said his statue was a ‘source of shame’.
But in May, Oriel’s governing body ruled it will not be removed, which the Department of Politics and International Relations condemned.
Dr Daouda added ‘anti-Rhodes virtue signalling’ shows students that ‘even respectable academics… cannot see a statue without throwing a tantrum’.
She called the fuss a ‘dazzling sign of Western privilege’.