Hey Hey, Western Civ Has Got to Stay

Back in 1989, amid the first flush of what was then known as “political correctness,” a troupe of ardent feminists had famously infiltrated the roof of Columbia University’s Butler Library the night of commencement to hang a homespun painted banner of more diverse and ostensibly relevant female writers above the maler, staler, and slightly paler names inscribed upon the building’s front facade: Sappho, Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Bronte, Dickinson, and Woolf over the boring and apparently chauvinistic names of Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Virgil chiseled into the stonework. Those attendees who’d spent their college years chanting, “Hey ho, Western Civ has got to go!” were thrilled, traditionalists either seethed or rolled their eyes, and most of the celebrants were probably more bemused than anything. Over time, the stunt became fondly remembered, and a ritual photo-op Columbia would periodically reenact with ever more diversified rosters, but notably without ever quite bothering to resurface the offending limestone.