Oxford Rebukes Idiot Activists! This letter is a response from Oxford to Black Students attending as Rhodes Scholars to remove the statue of Oxford Benefactor, Cecil Rhodes.

 "Dear Scrotty Students,

Cecil Rhodes's generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort  

and well being of many generations of Oxford students - a good many of  

them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.

 This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in  

his lifetime - but then we don't have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a  

century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs. If you don't understand what  

this means - and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the  

case - then we really think you should ask yourself the question: "Why  

am I at Oxford?"

Oxford, let us remind you, is the world's second oldest extant  

university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th  

century. We've played a major part in the invention of Western  

civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through  

the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham,  

Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus,  

Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel  

Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison,  

Cardinal Newman, Julie Cocks. We're a big deal. And most of the people  

privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we  

are. Oxford is their alma mater - their dear mother - and they respect  

and revere her accordingly.

And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts,  

mainly. Sure we'll concede you the short lived Southern African  

civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let's be brutally honest here. The  

contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as  

near as damn it to zilch.

You'll probably say that's "racist". But it's what we here at Oxford  

prefer to call "true." Perhaps the rules are different at other  

universities. In fact, we know things are different at other  

universities. We've watched with horror at what has been happening  

across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of  

Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the  

"safe spaces"; the? #?blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural  

relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom  

rightly called "the closing of the American mind" At Oxford however,  

we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty  

grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day  

we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the  

world's greatest university.

Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time  

at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns.  

(Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is  

these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela  

Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates - or,  

in your case - postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don't  

expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You  

may be black - "BME" as the grisly modern terminology has it - but we  

are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from  

our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many  

generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed.  

We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.

That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up  

with fatuous ideas, we don't pat them on the back, give them a red  

rosette and say: "Ooh, you're black and you come from South Africa.  

What a clever chap you are!"  No. We prefer to see the quality of  

those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That's another  

key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue  

any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with  

facts and logic - otherwise your idea is worthless.

This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes  

should be removed from Oriel College, because it's symbolic of  

"institutional racism" and "white slavery" Well even if it is - which  

we dispute - so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that  

they can't pass a bronze statue without having their "safe space"  

violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were  

to remove Rhodes's statue on the premise that his life wasn't  

blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has  

pointed out, Oriel's other benefactors include two kings so awful -  

Edward II and Charles I - that their subjects had them killed. The  

college opposite - Christ Church - was built by a murderous, thieving  

bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves:  

does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had  

unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was he then the wrong man  

to lead Britain in the war?"

Actually, we'll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign  

is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree  

with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here  

is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to  

artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.

And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it  

should order its affairs? Your ?#?rhodesmustfall campaign, we  

understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black  

activist who told one of his lecturers "whites have to be killed". One  

of you - Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh - is the privileged son of a rich  

politician and a member of a party whose slogan is "Kill the Boer;  

Kill the Farmer"; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford  

as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need  

for "socially conscious black students" to "dominate white  

universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!

Great. That's just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural  

enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an  

AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference  

and ignorance, one of the world's highest per capita murder rates,  

institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a  

collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think  

will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.

And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing  

campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent,  

more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those  

22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the  

irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little lollipops on scholarships they  

clearly don't merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to  

ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.

Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to  

learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.

Yours, Oriel College, Oxford