As noted last month, my alma mater, Cornell, had removed from display at Kroch Library a bust of Abraham Lincoln, as well as a handwritten manuscript of the Gettysburg Address. A professor who noticed the removal was told by librarians that the display had been removed pursuant to a complaint. Cornell administration, on the other hand, claimed that the display was intended to be temporary. But the “temporary” display had been up for nine years.
Cornell’s new chief librarian has ordered reinstatement of the bust — this time in Uris Library, the university’s main library. More than a few of my fellow alums, some of whom are rumored to have relatively healthy bank accounts, had expressed “concern” about the removal of the display from Kroch. I’m going to stop by Uris to verify reinstatement during a reunion of my football teammates the weekend after next.
A tiny victory against the tide of cancellations, but a victory nonetheless. If it can happen in the ultra-woke Ivies, it can happen anywhere. As Ernest Borgnine’s grievously wounded character shouts to his prohibitively outgunned comrades during the climactic gun battle in The Wild Bunch, “Keep fighting!”