 So welcome everyone. Thanks for joining us. My name is Jorge Otero Pailosam, the Director of the Historic Preservation Program, and it's a real pleasure to have you all here for our Historic Preservation lecture series. It's a real pleasure and honor to welcome Shelby Green. She's Professor of Law at the Elizabeth Hub School of Law at Pace University, where she teaches and writes in the areas of property, real estate transactions, housing and historic preservation. We're very fortunate to have Professor Green teaching a masterclass in our program this semester titled Historic Narratives from the architecture in and of public spaces. So students in that class will be more familiar with Professor Green's recent thinking on this subject, and this lecture will benefit the rest of our academic community and the interested public that joins us tonight. The Assistant Secretary and the Chair of the Legal Education Group of the Real Property Trust and Estate Section of the American Bar Association. She also serves as the American Bar Association, the American Bar Association as the editor of the Keeping Current Property column in the magazine Probate and Property. And she also organizes and occasionally presents and always moderates the monthly webinar Professor's Corner for the American Bar Association. She's a leading academic voice in Historic Preservation Law. And she is the co-author with Professor Nicholas Robinson of Historic Preservation Law and Culture, and also of Historic Preservation Stories and Law recently published in 2020. Her passion for Historic Preservation extends to her public service. And she is a member of the Board of Directors of the Jay Heritage Center, which manages the John Jay Estate, National Historic Landmark and Rye, which I think many of our students are very familiar with because they work there last semester in their studio. Tonight is titled Deconstructing Collective Memory in Public Spaces and collective memory is put in quotes in her title. And of course she will be unpacking this thorny concept of collective memory. In light of the recent debate surrounding public sculptures in public spaces that celebrate in a noble, what for many of us are ignoble historical figures. The notion of collective memory has a long history in historic preservation, beginning with the French sociologist Maurice Hallbox, who famously wrote about how what we would now in today's parlance called the values of Christian evangelism would be specialized in urban spaces in Jerusalem and the Holy Land he would he didn't use this term spatializing values but I think it's the way that we we we've come to understand his thinking on this. The course of collective memory has undergone a number of major revisions since the in the intervening century or so since Hallbox. And I think Hallbox would be quite receptive to Professor greens own deconstruction of the term collective memory, as I also anticipate that this audience will be. So without further further ado, let me welcome Professor Shelby green and please join me in welcoming her to our virtual podium. Shelby, the podium is yours. Thank you for hanging. So as Jorge just stated the concept of collective collective memory is certainly not my own invention, but it's been the topic of philosophers historians and social sciences for some time now. In my talk this evening, I intend to comment on the concept and the concept of the history of blacks and other non white groups in this country. In particular as it pertains to the ongoing dialogues about the memorials long constructed in celebration of the Confederacy. So in this discussion, I will borrow ideas and phrases from known writers on the topic, but offer some of my own insights into the stated context. Today, most societies embrace the role of remembrance as an element of being remembering past and its corollary, the memorializing of collective historical memory may even rise to a moral obligation. As collective memory served to orient us to our place in the evolution of humankind. It has also led us to less worthy positions like war and denigration of others to ranker and resentment, rather than to embrace of the other or accommodation. Memory has propelled us to determine to exact revenge for injuries both real and imagined, rather than to commit to the hard work of repairing and restoring old relations. The origins of the two World Wars readily come to mind in this context, when Germany under Hitler, feeling unfairly burdened by the responsibility of the cost of the first war, launched the second war that reached untold misery. Of course there are other animating forces behind Hitler's horrors. We can see some parallels in the Civil War. After the 1877 after 1877 when reconstruction ended with the compromise of the 1876 election results. And in Union soldiers withdrew from the Confederate States, the losing side of the state for war was left to inflict untold horrors on the newly freed slaves. Not in a formal war. There was a concerted effort by the Confederacy to regain its status and esteem to do so chroniclers of history and those in power created a memory of the south and the war. They strive to instantiate this memory into the culture through written text and emblems of the Confederacy that spoke the narratives of a wronged but honorable people. So in the work between memory and history, Le Lure de Memois, Pierre Nora stated that memory and history, far from being synonymous, appear now to be in fundamental opposition. Memory is life, born by living societies founded in its name. Memory remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting, unconscious of its successive deformations, vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived. History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction always problematic and incomplete of what is no longer. A perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present. History is a representation of the past. By this, it seems that Nora is speaking not only of memories that are constructed by individuals, their personal past, but also those that are commanded or propagandized by the existing power structure, or by powerful groups. The reconstructions of personal past often replicate and support collective faith in an overarching myth. People try to make sense of their experiences and places in the world by constructing explanations of their own histories, and part by drawing upon prevalent narratives and public discourse. Those held by other individuals within there to use a phrase Ocaron pod. Hale commented in the philosophy of history that history combines in our language, the objective as well as the subjective side. It means both the things that happen and the narration of the things that happen. Without memory of the past there is no history in the sense of the events that are meaningful to the collective collective consciousness presumes collective memory. Without it there's no justice, no political structure, and no collective objectives. While personal memory evokes different personal associations, this predicate for self identity cannot be removed from its social context. Self consciousness requires a social context by virtue of its very conceptualization. Memory, not even the most intimate or personal can be disconnected from society from the language and systems molded by the society over many generations. Memory is characterized as driven by a system of clear symbols, times, places, monuments, victory arches, museums, texts, customs and images. And to refer back to Maurice Halbach that Jorge mentioned in his historical memory and collective memory published after his death in the Nazi concentration cap. He insisted on a distinction between history and collective memory. History aims for universal objective truth severed from the psychology of social groups, while every collective memory requires support of a group delimited in space and time. Thus, our view of the past does not come primarily from professional historical scholarship, or from a match of much more complicated and interwoven set of relationships to media places, family tradition, and the spaces of our community that are springing with all their regional, ethnic and class diversity, to name just a few factors. Again, just as personal memory is now understood to be highly selective, shaped by needs and contacts. So is collective memory a product of social groups and their ever evolving character and interest. It might be said that collective memory is constructed, indeed curated, amidst a perpetual political background. Societies in fact reconstruct their past rather than faithfully record them in order to serve the needs of contemporary culture, manipulating the past in order to mold the present. And collective memory then refers to how groups remember their past. To understand a country's memories is to grasp something essential about their national identity and outlook. A collective memory affects public understanding of the past and is promoted to that end. It implies that the meanings ascribed to various events will be taken as pronounced, without question or individual assessment. The collective memory presupposes a degree of homogeneity within the relevant community and a willingness to submit to orthodoxy and the power to put forth the narratives. So in this respect, the choice of narratives to promote publicly by proclamation to be representative of the collective memory is deliberate. Sometimes they reflect the memories that are in fact embraced and other cases they reflect those memories that are imagined to be true or thought desirable for the public to believe. They work to inculcate listeners to a preferred set of political and social values. They are to be sure a positive justification for creating collective memory, such as for social cohesion, respect for law. The collective memory is used more nefariously for the oppression of the powerless, such as former slaves. The curated memory is written by those with control over the recounting of history in public places, physical as well as literary spaces. The early Congress was reluctant to appropriate funds for monument to George Washington, and John Quincy Adams view monuments were anathema to democracy. True memory, it was claimedly not in a pile of dead stones but in the living hearts of the people. But commemoration has since become de rigueur deeply rooted in the cultural practices of the nation. We commemorate by flags, namings and statues, which become the physical embodiments of collective memory. The themes of public buildings and your monuments symbolize the power of the dominant groups and the class nature of social subordination, and they do much more. Their materiality prescribes an ordering of relations and society that they are erected in public spaces lens legitimacy and sanction to the asserted social and cultural power. For this point, let us focus a bit on the statues erected in honor of prominent members of the Confederacy of the Civil War. Most of the commemoration of Civil War heroes, quote unquote, were erected some 30 to 40 years after the war ended. People have been erected in the last several decades, all told there are nearly 2000 such memorials including statues, names of schools public buildings bridges and highways. Most statues were commissioned by state and local governments and placed on public spaces, courthouse steps, public squares and public parks. Others by private donation from heritage groups, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, but typically erected in public spaces with permission by the government. From the standpoint of collective memory, the constancy and omnipresence of a monument in a particular area makes it culturally imposing. The size, mass and materiality monopolizes the dialogue. The inevitability and immortality of these monuments is assured by a host of legal mechanisms, including state statue statutes that prohibit individuals and local communities from removing, altering and even contextualizing them. The laws of property and gifts also operate as impediments to their legal removal, ensuring that they will forever stand to speak their stories. So what do the Confederate monuments say they are owed to the lost cause narrative and apology, but not in a sense of asking for forgiveness but as a rationalization to be pardoned for thrusting the region into such a tremendously costly battle. The casualties from the war were untold and unrivaled but by all later wars in which this country is fought more than 600,000 between the two armies. The war wreaked unto economic devastation on the south. The vast portion of the Southern wealth was lost to burnings and military destruction and loss of labor of slaves. In general, William T Sherman engaged in total war, burning and ravaging Atlanta and parts of the south of South Carolina to put down the insurrection by trees in the states. He aimed not just to conquer the rebels but to demoralize and punish. Moreover, if the promises of the Civil War amendments, the 13th 14th and 15th were fulfilled, whites would lose the privilege of whiteness. The reconstruction ended and now deposed Southern power employed various measures to regain its place at the top of the hierarchy through legal tools like black codes that impose onerous conditions on work by newly freed slaves on where they might live, how they would travel and whom they may marry and literacy tests that prevented blacks from voting and also extra legal measures like the terror from the Ku Klux Klan. The former Confederacy reinstituted slavery by another name. This dominance was reinforced through monuments designed to speak for eternity. The monuments that commemorated selected heroes of the lost cause spoke a narrative that aimed to strengthen one community but weaken another. Those with political power organized the public spaces, thus to teach the public the desired political lessons. The flag, for example, is felt by many as a symbol of slavery and succession, yet the flag is proffered as a symbol of valor and sacrifice and reminder of a critical episode in the history of the state in which it flies. On the other hand, adopting the Confederate flag alters no rights on one hand rather adopting the Confederate flag alters no rights or privileges privileges of any contemporary. On the other, the flag honors a time when rights and privileges of many citizens were violated outrageously. So it would take many decades after the wars and before blacks could see any fulfillment of the promises of the Civil War amendments. You know, starting in 1917 where the Supreme Court struck down racial zoning laws in New Orleans. And then in 1948 with the Supreme Court rule that racial covenants and deeds were not enforceable. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown versus to Pica of Brown forces the Board of Education at the peak of Kansas, that overrule the separate but equal doctrine. And then another 100 years after the Civil War were statutes enacted to extend civil rights to blacks the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in the Fair Housing Act of 1968. So these gains were hard fought using a combination of protest and calculated legal strategy by the NAACP, but even with legal protection, the exclusions of blacks from the amenities and opportunities of society persist to this day. The legacies of exclusion from particular neighborhoods is still revealed in racial maps and of course, their disparate rates of home ownership and access to health care and other kinds of job opportunities in this country on account of race. So how did the story of the Civil War, more from a case of treason to one of honor. So the lost cause narrative was concocted to explain and justify the unlawful decision to succeed from the union. It was a false narrative. So the impetus to recast the war began shortly after the conclusion of the war. The celebrated Civil War photographer provided graphic accounts of the horrors of the war bodies rotting in the fields where they fell images of the results of crude medical surgery on the battleground. The devastation of the earth rocked by cannonball, but not accounting for the decision as to what to memorialize the photo is provided an objective narrative of the evils of war. At the time there was a chronicling of war from another vantage a Richmond newspaper editor, Edward Pollard began writing a history of the war, even as soon as it began, even before became history. His account began with an explanation of the reasons for succession, recounting at length reasons being the controversy over slavery, which had roots in the various compromises made between the north and south over which states would be slave and which free, important of expanded federal power. The story was a term used to characterize the north that it was impatient and dark. The motives behind the Confederate cause was admitted to be in the fence of slavery. When the war was lost, Southerners who wish to save something from the ruins needed to redefine their reasons for resisting so valiantly. The complete version of the account published in 1866. The lost cause the story had changed. He stated that slavery the slavery question was not to be taken as the independent controversy in the in American politics. It was not a moral dispute. It was more an incident of sectional animosity. That is a pretext for the north jealousy of the South's greater power in the early Republic. He suggested that Southern slavery was really the mildest in the world. Pollard declared that slavery was gone forever that there was no need to discuss the moral questions about it, and as it would only serve to prejudice to north even further against the south. He claimed that it was significant only as part of the contest political power, and it represented not to moral theories but hostile sections and opposite civilizations. So slavery operated to elevate the South to an honorable position in contrast to the course and materialistic north. His book was immensely popular, as it purported to cast slavery as merely a side in the war that was really about northern aggression. The new narrative was critical to rehabilitating the failed Confederacy itself. This I think can be rejected absolutely as false that slavery and segregation and exclusion had any moral value. But should we continue to indulge in loss cause narrative. Not if it provides the predicate for acts of supremacy and racist dialogues or acts of violence by distorting historical truth and relevance commemoration tends to distort future social change. Cities like individuals are necessarily rooted in the past. Rational processes serve to develop the character of our society over the course of history with each generation contributing to a continually evolving sense of national identity and destiny. Unthinkingly clinging to frozen images of the past as they are revealed in these monuments, necessarily unnecessarily limits future change. Bearing past narratives through commemoration discourages critical dialogue commemoration as extends tries to monopolize and dominate collective memory. What the monuments do try to do is to freeze time, enabling one historical period or episode to control subsequent ones. They pretend dedicated attitudes, traditionally dedicated attitudes refer to original understandings of a tradition or social practice. Dedicated attitudes are attractive because they reject or limit the degree of reflective criticism, and therefore moral uncertainty and anxiety that such criticism may engender. More perversely, dedicated attitudes purport to resolve social conflicts and determine the appropriate amount of change, not by reflection on an immediate issue, but by rote application of prescribed attitudes. They seek to control time and future events by creating a fixed set of cultural meanings for future generations. The meanings and narratives would change only if those who write them allow, but they issue deliberative attempts to affect those changes. So, that said, about the inevitability of personal influence in recounting history. Let's consider for a moment what commemoration does. An idiosyncratic vision constructed by the dominant powers within the historical drama, without the chance for a bottle that is without the type of debate central to deliberative culture characterizes the commemoration of Confederate monuments. As such it limits cultural messages to its historical circumstances, and to a univocal uncontested message. It realizes fixes and prevents revision of contestable cultural messages. The messages are written in stone. A monument to Robert E. Lee as opposed to Clara Barton is not innocuous. It prescribes one narrative prescribing one narrative makes invisible, the other. The search diminish self much as was found in the Brown versus Board of Education case where the court found that separate but equal was not equal. If the message to one is that you may not enter because you are black and intrinsically different. The exclusion operated to diminish self worth by prescribing collective memory through commemorations of these ugly monuments. We also erase and deny others. So it's not, it wasn't just the south who engaged in retellings of narratives to serve a particular. And, and this calls in mind a recent story involving the battle at Pearl Harbor one sailor Dory Miller a mess attendant was collecting laundry aboard the battleship USS West Virginia when the Japanese attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. He vaulted to the bridge where he aided the ship's mortally wounded captain he fired on Japanese planes with an anti aircraft gun. That is a servant he had not been trained to use and then pulled men who would otherwise have died from the burning oil coated waters of the harbor. He was one of the last sailors to leave the Floundering ship. Well any other semen would have been given awards for this heroism Miller was not. And there were two reasons first as a black man and humble sharecropper son, he was not permitted to serve as a regular sailor as that would require a black men and white men share quarters. Indeed 15 sailors aboard the ship who wrote a letter complaining about their being relegated to this low status were jailed and dishonorably discharged from the Navy. The politics at the time did not encourage recognition of the contributions of blacks, but after the leading papers that cater to black audiences work to complete the record. The story more from a tale of racial exclusion into a false allegory of triumph over brand of institutional racism that long outlived him. Segregation persisted in the military well into the Korean War, diminishing chiefly because of manpower shortages, the campaign narratives of national leaders like Ronald Reagan in the 1970s included a thrilling account in which a black sailor confined to kitchen duties ended great segregation by firing a machine gun at the enemy. The story that completely erased the Navy's practice of racial segregation in its recent revisions of the narrative the Navy has owned up to the truth and decided to name a newly commissioned super carrier the USS Dory Wilson. And don't get me started with the, the story of clusters last stand until recently the monuments only celebrated customers soldiers but none of the Native Americans who fought to resist innovation into their territory. The commemoration of the Civil War helped to shape racial relations within American society, removing Americans from mainstream public memory through the last century defeating the dream of racial equality and advancing the cause of white supremacy. Some scholars have pondered the relationship between commemoration and tradition, and find that commemorative projects create core elements of memory that persist. So a recent controversy, evolving a suggested new narrative is revealed in the 1619 project, as stated, the lost cause was an apology and a transparent attempt to whitewash a desire to preserve the institution of slavery. Under this narrative, the claimed reason for war states rights, necessarily raises the question rights to what to own slaves to be free from the constraints of federal government. Some have pointed out that there was no logical connection between states autonomy and racial oppression, the two merely coincided as an accident of history. There's no total to the numbers of historical accounts of the Civil War, and highly respected historians for whom this topic is their life's work. James McPherson Shelby foot, Sean Willis Eric Foner immediately come to mind who writes stories that conflict head on with Pollard's 1866 account. But the recent project by the New York Times magazine called the 1619 project is an example that reports expose the idea of collective memory as it pertains to our slave history as being fallacious. The project historical analysis of how slavery has shaped American political and social and economic institutions is named for the year in which slavery was first introduced in North America. It is a collection of essays written with the aim of placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of our national narrative. To conclude from perspective of those historically denied the rights enumerated in the founding documents. The project reveals, or reports revealed a deeply flawed American narrative. One continuing theme is that the legacies of slavery persist to define race relations and deprivations. It is manifested in exclusion from housing, the legacies of racial covenants still mark the boundaries of communities. The presumption of criminality police officers shoot first and inquire. There's an idea of intellectual inferiority, which precludes professional growth and many fields. The project offers an assessment of slavery in the politics and the nation's development, not only as the cause of the Civil War, but also that it was a reason for fighting the Revolutionary War, as England at the time was moving toward abolition. It was met with both praise, many school systems incorporated it into their curriculum and castigation. In her letter to the New York Times, a cohort of noted historians challenge the cynicism of the project. Every essay tracing social racial injustice from slavery to the present day spoke to the endurance of a racial caste, and that it expressed a profound pessimism about white America. Critics also referred to matters of verifiable fact that could not be described as interpretation or framing at stated the project and stated the project reject reflected a displacement of historical understanding by etiology. One writer in the Atlantic monthly article fight over the 1619 project is not about facts found that underlying each of the disagreements in the letter was not just a matter of historical fact, but a conflict about whether Americans from the founders to the present day are committed to the ideals they claim to revere. The writer makes the point that there is still a reluctance to teach slavery in schools, and this reluctant stems from the deep abiding American need to conceive of and understand our history as progress as a story of a people and a nation that always sought the improvement of humankind, the advancement of liberty and justice, the broadening of pursuits of happiness for all. But clearly these privileges and hopes were not extended to all Americans as revealed in the legalized racial segregation and terror that persisted for nearly a century after the Civil War ended. The deep seated concern expressed by those historians demanding corrections was that placing the enslavement of black people and white supremacy at the forefront of our project somehow diminishes American history. Historical interpretations are often contested, and these debates often reflect the perspective of the participants. But is this preferred alternative conception of American history, not unlike the lost cause narrative. For decades a group of white historians known as the Dunning School portrayed the reconstruction as a tragic period in the words of the, in their words, a scandalous misrule of the carpet baggers and Negroes brought on by the misguided infringement of blacks, black men. As historian Eric Foner has written the Dunning School and its interpretation of reconstruction help provide moral and historical cover for the Jim Crow system. Dunning's casting of the era has earlier been challenged by the influential black sociologist W. E. B. W. E. B. the block in black reconstruction in America, where he describes reconstruction as an imperfect but noble effort to build a multiracial racial democracy in the south. Sean Willins, the historian at Princeton, who led the criticism of the 1619 project described the Dunning view as a southern racist point of view, but that the authors of the project were also a kind of ideologue since it had discounted objections raised by white historians since publication. So the Trump administration had no problem labeling the 1619 project as promoting a false narrative, labeling it reckless propaganda, properly, particularly to the extent that the project tended to cast America as evil. It urged patriotic education, the administration appointed the 1676 Commission. And on Martin Luther King Junior Day, that commission issued its 1776 report. And the report stated that its intent was to cultivate a better education among Americans in the principles and history of our nation, and in the hope that a rediscovery of those principles and the forms of constitutional government will lead to a more perfect union. It offered what it claimed was a nonpartisan review of American history. It was roundly rejected as purile and devoid of historical grounding. Among other things report you selected quotes of abolitionists and out of context. It excused the nation's founders for owning slaves and defended the racist three fifths compromise in 1787. The northern and southern states agreed to count black people as three fifths of a person for congressional representation as a necessary to form a durable union report listed progressivism, you know which concern had concerns about workplace safety, food safety and child labor, along with slavery and fascism in its list of challenges to America's principles. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a member of the commission denounced multiculturalism as not who America is implying that diversity in America distorts its glorious founding and what the country is all about. I think that is extremely telling about where America is, if, if Mike Pompeo represents America report especially condemned American universities, which he accused that accused as being behind a defamation of our treasured national statues of those whose main historical significance landed the fence of slavery or other forms of white supremacy. Most of the authors listed on the commission lack credentials as historians and report was missing citations bibliographies and scholarly references. The American Historical Association described the authors as calling for a form of government indoctrination of American students, and in the process elevate ignorance above the past to a civic virtue. The point of this colloquy within the Academy and the government is that what I take from it is that history is not embraced by all as an objective construct. The people who write history are that people who write history not simply objective arbiter of facts. Much of American history has been written by scholars offering ideological claims in place of rigorous historical analysis, but which claims are ideological and which ones are supported by objective evidence is not always easy to discern. That's to the to the problem of identifying elements of our country worth worthy of preserving and celebrating. You know what parts of our cultural heritage should be should be guarded and passed on the future generations. Our cultural past is the basis for collective self identity and is central to the metaphysics of a person. This means us individuals as social beings are instituted by their historical and cultural heritage, you both over and subliminal processes. We attain reflective consciousness through the narratives of the past. Our culture guides social and political transformation by reminding us of the worthy acts of prior generations. So the real test is determining the particular vehicle for expressing cultural memory in a democracy. I think as the recent movement to remove monuments Confederate monuments has revealed commemoration of historical event can be a highly contested process. It can be as contested as appropriate interpretation of the of the event itself, because it is an attempt to determine the character of the present by controlling our interpretation of the past. Just what a flag statue or monument stands for needs to be evaluated in public debate, I think, since the content of cultural memory is contested. Meaning and value we give to flags and statues and monuments. The question that arises is how should we express our cultural memory, so that we strike the right balance between constancy and cultural change. And it's also fair to ask where the democratic rules should be employed for making decisions on the elements of cultural memory. How we organize public space reveals definitive features of our cultural and political attitudes, and the idea of commemoration is inextricably connected to perennial vexing issues and constitutional law and theory, especially concerning government speech and government neutrality and culturalism. As I mentioned, a number of states have in place statue statutes, which compel cities and local governments to continue to maintain these monuments that continue to speak to its offensive narratives and a number of states that have rejected on First Amendment government speech principles. But recently in Virginia, in response to the protests in Charlottesville, the legislature gave local governments the authority to reconsider the value and merits in Confederate statues so they could remove them if the consensus is that they no longer serve any legitimate public ant. But if we were to submit the process to democratic process, I think it's fair to ask, you know, how should the government proceed in deciding which episodes are to be commemorated. You know, surely the government could not commemorate an historical epic in religious terms. And then there are challenges under multiculturalism as to how to assess the meaning of minority cultures within the dominant culture. Not all monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders were erected without anything nearly all the monuments to the Confederacy and its leaders were erected without anything resembling a democratic process. Regardless of their representation in the actual population in any given constituency, neither African Americans who are particularly offended, nor other citizens had any voice and opportunity to raise questions about the purposes are likely impact of the honor accorded to the builders of the Confederate States of America. And of course I just taught, as Jorge mentioned, you know, cause me to reflect on why we preserve history, you know what underlies our historic preservation policies and programs. So it's certainly it's not solely to celebrate beautiful things, but also to remember some things that are ugly to remind us where we failed in our humanity. But by preserving these ugly monuments in situ, we simply mark them where they stand. We don't erect monuments to them in public places. None is erected elsewhere to create a story create a story but stays where they are to tell the story as it is or was the Japanese American internment camps immediately come to mind. The monuments are irrational fear and prejudice against those we perceived as others, not celebrations of that event in our history. But the celebration is is what Confederate statues flags and other emblems do. Some of them are even on the national register of historic places and others are national historic landmarks. They were erected to celebrate supremacy and subjugation. You know, should all are some are all the monuments be destroyed. The Mellon Foundation recently announced a plan to spend more than $250 million toward projects for the removal of Confederate monuments and for rethinking what forms monuments can take and what communities want from them. That is what stories do they think should be told. I think all this raises the question of, to what extent the state should have any role in erecting statues, you know, whether the whole process of commemoration itself is defective and should be revised or abandoned. I think we should refrain from investing in artifacts that meaning who's meaning that is discerned from the respectful committed interactions among fellow fellow citizens is a democratic process amenable to this endeavor though, you know, how do we determine who counts as a member of the deciding group. What issues are susceptible to majoritarian decision making. And what should be the design of and the rules for this democratic forum representative or direct initiatives. Nonetheless, deliberation on the merits and values of commemoration from a range of constituents should be done to evaluate the impacts of the narratives. Will there ever be total agreement, not likely. But there must be a commitment to collective resolution of conflicts through new deliberation and avenues for revisiting decisions as discoveries are made about the merits thought to be questioned unquestioned earlier. Perhaps the only measurable tests for an assertive narrative is in the sense of plausibility and objective offense. It's not simply a matter of inaccuracy willful or otherwise, when states political parties and social groups appeal to collective memory, the motors are far from trivial. Modern commemorations were invented to make up for a lack of organic unity within modern nations and societies, and to force a conception of the past and acts that could not be justified by objective fact. In other words, however important a role it may play in the life of groups, and whatever moral and ethical demands it responds to carries rest that at times also has an existential. Excellent since it's your character and impact during war so social and political crises the danger is not what the American historian. You set him your, your help me call the terror forgetting, but rather the terror remembering too well to vividly. It's that there are cases where forgetting may do injustice to the past remembering doesn't injustice to the present when collective memory condemns communities to feel the pain of the historical wounds and the bitterness of the historical grievances. It is not the duty to remember, but a duty to forget that should be honored. Memory like democracy is not a material natural and internal essence, but a contingent amorphous and bias construct in constant revision and recasting eyes run one writer has stated the shadows of the past stretch into the present, and much like statues and public parks, they loom darkly over public consciousness. I'll take questions. Thank you, that was fantastic and I. I'm going to have us imagine this thunderous clapping. Since we. We've now learned that zoom allows you to silence everyone in the room but does not allow you to let everyone speak at the same time in the room. There is some of what you're saying of that kind of forced forced unity and forced silence that in the very, in the very medium that we're using to have this discussion, which is quite quite unfortunate but it's the reality of it and I want to ask questions as best we can using the chat or the, you know we have some instructions here you can raise your hand, you check the chat box for for some for the instructions on how to do that. And I'm also going to encourage those of you that would like to participate more fully in the, in the, in the discussion to go ahead and turn on your, your, your video because it's nice to see everyone. So if you don't turn it on that's okay, but it we would, we would be very, very pleased to have you to have you turn on your, your screen so I see that Erica has volunteered the first question and I'm going to turn to Erica then. Hi, Professor Green. Thank you so much for very, you know, thoughtful and compelling talk. I'm another faculty member full time faculty member in the historic preservation program. And I wanted to try and push on this idea of discursive deliberation as a form of policy, because, you know, fundamentally whether we are adding to heritage rosters or subtracting from heritage rosters, you know, taking monuments down or adding things to it. So how do you see existing policy structures, which are so much geared toward, you know, just kind of adding to the list, changing within the preservation enterprise to afford the kinds of deliberation. You know, consider over time, what decisions about the things we have called heritage mean, you know what kinds of effects they've had distributive effects on communities. Well, I think certainly listening to the people in the streets, you know about the issues that concern them is is a first step. I'm not sure that the process of putting things on the National Register is fully embraces the views of of many sectors in society it's it's very narrow and a lot of discretion be given to the keeper. The nominations come from the states, through the state or preservation officer and I'm not sure that's a really broad process either. But it doesn't it's not so I don't believe it's susceptible to the same democratic process as is involved in in electing people to office. Even on the local level when local landmarks preservation commissions decide on landmarking there's a hearing held and members of the public are invited to speak. But I'm not sure to what extent the, the commissions respond in a really deep way to the objections by those who attend the hearing. I think they're more guided by the criteria that they are charged with applying so it may be revisiting the criteria with some initial requirement that that the merits of the of the proposed work meets a certain test and I suggest it may be a test of, you know, plausibility of whether it's it's it's could be supported by objective fact but also just extent to which stepping out of one's own skin to see whether or not it might somehow offend but I can't see that to be any kind of monument or that wouldn't be taken differently depending upon their, their world views and history and that sort of thing but I think it may be starting with revising the criteria that the decision makers are charged with applying, but also inviting, you know, true. Having true input by members of the public might help as well. But I'm not sure about that I think that that because there's still such pushback even as to the Confederate monuments it may be hard to find consensus on just about anything as thinking about the New York City's efforts to broaden the the kinds of statues and New York City parks and there was one actor complained that we didn't celebrate Mother Cabrini. And there was one monument to the women's suffrages, Stanton and Anthony and it didn't include a black person. And so they added. So during a truth to it, I'm not sure whether or not those associations were historically accurate. But I think that there should be some efforts to, again, put in, you know, some regard for the impact of a celebration or a landmarking or listing on people and that can only happen by inviting I think a broad across section of views and attitudes. Other questions or follow up to that. I've got a follow up. I can ask questions all day. So, as as a lawyer, then, you know, how do you see some of the legal tools that have been put in place both to challenge some of these issues the way in which spatial claims have been made based on these these narratives in some cases very private narratives, but also the way in which the law has been used to protect them. And I'm thinking specifically of the Alabama monuments Memorial Act, which basically made it illegal to take down any monument more than 50 years old in the state. You know, and so that the mayor of Birmingham basically built a plywood wall around the Confederate monument to try and skirt around and can you, you know, from the legal perspective how do you see this playing out through the courts. Well, I think that the Alabama Supreme Court just recently rejected a claim of a First Amendment violation and even an equal protection violation finding that the city's vis-a-vis the state had no constitutional rights that could be asserted. So in those stats some of the statutes prohibits not only removing or altering but even contextualizing a monument. So it may vary from state to state as to what the attitude is. I think in Tennessee, the mayor, Memphis, tried to camouflage a monument as well, which would sort of in violation of the Tennessee statute and the state decided to withhold appropriations or allocations of funds for public services and punishment for that. So it never ruses that cities engaged in like where a monument was on public land and the statute prohibited alterations to monuments on public land. The city sold the land to a private entity and therefore was able to move it. And then that met with, you know, some consternation from the city. So, but as I was saying, Virginia, you know, heard the protest from Richmond and Charlottesville and the statute was amended to allow cities to rethink the monuments and they did. So the governor Northam did order the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, finding that there was permission to do it, but it wasn't just the statute that so there's an obstacle to removing them. Some of the terms under which they were donated or erected prohibited removal as well. Some of them had came with covenants that prohibited any changes and the law would enforce the covenants, but only on the grounds that covenants do not offend public policy. So at the time, of course, you know, being racist and white supremacist or not, didn't offend public policy but in Virginia just recently they decided found that public policy has changed. Among other things that the state decided to recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday and that's the day when slaves in the south heard about the Emancipation Proclamation they couldn't remember the exact date in June but sometime in that month. And also, the governor referred to the amendment of the statue and they had removed the Robert E. Lee statue from the US Capitol. I mean these monuments stood in the US Capitol even because the agreement was that each state could erect a monument or two monuments as of their choosing and of course Virginia had Robert E. Lee there and they decided to remove it. So, you know that the main impetus or movement of the statue may come from people on the ground, you know, not waiting for the states to amend their laws or not waiting for the courts to see the impositions, but just to get out there and knock them down and that's what's been happening throughout the country. First of all, thank you so much Shelby. Not only for the talk today, but also for your incredible contributions when Jorge and I did this fall studio and we have several of those students here to see you again and and so that relates to, I actually have two totally distinct questions so the first one relates to that which is you were there not only because of your involvement in these issues but also because you were on the board of the John Jay Heritage Center and and that's another in kind of flipping flipping those coins. Here's someone who was deeply involved in issues of abolition of abolition but also as we said all throughout the semester also did own some slaves and that's a it's a very complicated history. And that's what we were trying to engage in the fall studio and you were very helpful in helping us think through that. So that relates to the question of contextualization. In other words, if now we're not talking necessarily about removal but what is it to keep something in place or even to move it and contextualize it because given I'll go ahead and just say it as clearly as I can, given the way in which narratives are able to be narrated without any verifiable history to them. I think that's what people in the Congress now they're doing so. If if we then open up the democratic process and say yes okay we're going to contextualize this and every side can tell their story, then there would, I assume you would say need to be a process by which the some of those stories can become part of that. That democratic matters not just anything goes but but there are some measures to do that so that's the first question what do you what do you want to say about contextualization and then totally unrelated or maybe actually related which is, you also talked about how Union General went in and just, you know, did horrific things in the south is either I could look it up but I just very quickly are there calls to bring down the statues for Sherman, and rename the schools that were named for the hero Sherman because of the terrible things that he did. So sure was on the right side of a war, I think it really has to do with perspectives, and you know that the south thought the north were aggressive and treacherous people and wasn't about slavery at all but just about being free from oppression. In the, I see the first question, you know, I think contextualization would work only so much. I think in some places there where there was been resistance to remove a statue, then the response was to erect a counter narrative and a statue across the street. So, if anyone wanted, you know, some context would have to walk across the street, or, you know, putting up a plaque, you know, may offer some more information but I think that the large presence of this monolithic thing this thing made of stone and granite, you know offers a compelling narrative, it speaks more loudly I think than a small plaque. If we know what the monument to whom the monument is devoted to. But I think it is important, I think in the case of the John Jay site as well, I mean he is celebrated for what he did but also, there's so effort to camouflage the things that we don't like in his past but you know I think it would help. I think, you know, having, you know, some story associated with a monument but I'm not sure that that'll work so much with the monuments in the public spaces, these are, you know, huge things, you know, with soldiers atop horses and, you know, and some of the monuments themselves describe, you know, why we celebrate this like, I guess the, it's a pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, which is the site of that march on Selma, and that was named in honor of a staunch white supremacists and one of the leaders in the Ku Klux Klan. There's some movement down to rename that bridge in honor of say John Lewis, not even, but I don't know how you contextualize, you know, that honor. It's just there as an immovable thing and yes. Thank you. So, you know, you're giving us so much to think about. Please feel free to, you know, raise your hands turn on your screen with whatever you you may like. Just, I wanted to follow up on that a little bit. And go back to, to the your, you're thinking about the whether commemoration should be abandoned or the function of commemoration in the public sphere. And to kind of maybe take a little bit of a different tack to to talk about ideas and the ideas that these monuments represent, but also the confidence that we have on those ideas. So the confidence of our ideas and if you look at psychologists they will tell you that the confidence that we have on our ideas, depends greatly on on the degree of an of encounters with other people in in society that we tend to, we tend to be as a whole consensual in the ideas that we have come not in our ideas but the ideas that we really have a lot of confidence on. So those are ideas that are other people, you know, reinforce we hear those ideas all the time or maybe the spaces that we inhabit reinforce so there is an area of psychology that is that research is high confidence errors. Ideas that were very, very convinced about that are absolutely wrong. And they, they, they, they research, you know, how do we change these ideas, how, how do we go about changing these ideas and it turns out that of course, you know, the presumption is that it's very difficult to change our ideas but in fact what they're finding out is that it's not so hard. We, we, we are capable of changing ideas but that it requires the source has to be a certain source we trust. And so this is my way of looping around to the law and the way that we trust or don't trust the law. Because of course what we've seen. I mean the way I think that part of your argument if I understand it correctly is that there is something about the law that still stands as a kind of theater of, of rational discussion and debate. Into which certain evidences admitted on the grounds that it is valid or not, you know, there is a kind of forensic dimension to it back to what Mark was saying. And so the law stands in a way. As the place in which we can imagine that there is, you know, we're going to get that that view that is going to change our view, because it comes with a high degree of authority to us. I wanted to ask you how you felt therefore about the fact that a lot of the movements to remove these statues were paralegal, or, or, you know, they happened outside of the law, they were demonstrations, who in fact were you know, expressing a kind of frustration with the law and the legal system and the policing system that it upholds and enables. And so if we are seeing, I mean, I am wondering whether this calls in any way to question your upholding of the law as that as that last kind of refuge of of rational dialogue and of a place where we can do away with our high confidence errors. Well, I think judges have the same sets and varieties of biases as everybody. And I think we sort of see that in the sense that the courts didn't act to help blacks right after the Civil War. And for nearly a century after the courts step into, or at least were receptive to complaints about injustice, courts don't reach out. The cases have to come to the courts, but, but courts are influenced in a very real way by things happening on the streets social process protests and public opinion does inform judges and I think judges have a responsibility of advancing the law to be consistent with, with where society is but within the confines of established principles but the principles aren't written in stone. The law grows law evolves, and I think in connection with prevailing sentiments. But it took, I think, advancing civil rights in the United States, it took very creative arguments on the part of the NAACP to win the ear of the courts. And then as the courts move to protect these rights which are guaranteed in the Constitution and in statutes, the court met with some protest that it was being an activist court. Advancing society beyond the point where society should be. But the reason for moving forward was, you know, the public sentiments I had had been had changed. So, just as what happened I guess with a recent election, President Trump, you know, tried to, I thought he thought he appointed judges who would rule in his favor irrespective of law or principle. But I think I have high regard that in our society, you know, we do still have an independent judiciary, but they're individuals with their own print elections and their own biases. The case in which the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court decision declaring that segregation on public transportation and Montgomery, Alabama, which got to the court after blacks decided to launch a boycott. The majority decided that public transportation segregation public transportation was illegal because the Supreme Court had ruled that it was illegal in education brown case. A vigorous dissent, you know, who said that because the Supreme Court that case brown talked with educate talked about education. It didn't apply to the case of public transportation that adhering to precedent was more important than I think a result that seemed to be more sensible and and more just, but fortunately the majority thought thought differently. But that judge didn't seem to care a whole lot about the social impact on those who are relegated to giving up their seats, just because they're black. Only that the prior ruling the Plessy versus Ferguson ruling in 1896 said that separate but equal was perfectly fine. In the brown case the court was receptive to the idea that exclusion in and of itself makes the status of the blacks and whites on equal, because it's states you may not enter because of your race, not because there are any other objective reasons for not allowing entry. And so it and think of what a Supreme Court now is in terms of rights to LGBTQ people. Just thinking, you know, 20 years ago. The courts wouldn't wouldn't hear it, but because I think states took the first step in legalizing same sex marriage and the court heard what was happening the movement in terms of public sentiment, then it was open to new, new ways of equal protection. But I think much of the movement has to come from citizens on the ground and offering creative arguments to the courts as to, you know why I knew view of rights and limits ought to be embraced. Going back to john. You said you mentioned. Who was who thought monuments were anathema to democracy I had not heard that before that view. That was very interesting. And, you know, how in light of what you just said about where we are in society today. How do you read that. How do you read that. How do you read society in relation to that version of what would could imagine the law you know the federal government shouldn't pay for monuments you know shouldn't have a policy to make, you know, monuments. Is that even possible today to for somebody to argue that. Well, I think the government has, you know, broad discretion and finding, you know, a public purpose for its expenditures. I think it was just this attitude that it brought us a little closer to monarchy as we had just freed ourselves from in England so we buy monuments we would and I think they offered the George Washington the role of King, but he refused that and also refused, you know, serving forever. But he was just the idea of that we're all equal here that he thought that a monument or statutes Washington, you know would be contrary to that that notion. I just think there was there were there were talks about carving an image of the former president in Mount Rushmore. I'm not sure how far that's going to go but but yes, and we came just this close to losing our democracy I think I think but for the independence of our judiciary, we might have been there. It's a sobering thought. And certainly in relationship to the the report that you've mentioned, you know, and you're reading of the 1776 report. And it's and it's tendentiousness as you as you describe it, and the way you you spoke about ideology standing in this history. The report was performing in the same manner as monuments had been performing in the south as an ideology standing in this history. And it led me to think a little bit about the way you know if you think of a monument as a as a as a medium for communication for public communication, which is how you presented it. You know the way in which these these kind of edicts and reports are our media for a kind of communication that is in a way segregated. It's, it's the segregation seems to be in these kind of echo chambers, where these are not intended to convince anybody of anything new but to reinforce a kind of ideological position. That is that is that is seen as intractable you know this is a kind of. Again, I kind of something we have high confidence in, but but it stands in opposition to what other people have therefore we don't talk to those other people. There's does seem to be sort of what seems to be an unbridgeable chasm, you know between sectors in our society, you know those who are open to embracing differences and all peoples and fairness and justice and, and those who are just don't even in liberalism at all. And those who even question the validity of court decisions and and our democratic processes. So I don't know whether, you know we we explored whether or not there was any way to anything we could say to you know these people who might might call populist, and whether or not they would hear anything about it, and I'm very doubtful. So I don't know whether things in society will have to change that may affect them in a very personal way that will cause them to rethink some of the positions is but I'm not sure that taking down the monuments or offering alternative narratives or narratives based on objective fact or verified fact will make any impression on this group. So I'm just hoping that it won't take another generation for us to get to a point where we can engage in true dialogue and grow from each other but. And as far as the monuments I think, you know, because they're there and they're loud and they're monolithic, you know I think removing them from the view from the consciousness you know may cause us to be more expansive I think in our thinking about other things and different stories and different histories and different values. And I wonder, you know, in light of this I mean certainly for example in academia, you know I'm thinking of you as the scholar of the law right I mean you're you're. There are checks on on the reality that you might propose through peer review through a kind of taking a broad sample of people in the profession and the you know in the discipline that are going to evaluate and judge. Blindly, and that that kind of fair sample of society doesn't really I mean really exist let's say in the channels of communication that we that we consume because everything is so let's say targeted to the audience to begin with. So the monument offers an opportunity it doesn't it to to have to be there by happenstance on your in your life, you know to not be something that's algorithmically pre programmed for you to actually encounter. But to just to be something that you happen upon and in that sense I wonder whether there is some potential for a new kind of monument that would be able to help. Begin that kind of. Let's say broadening of the sample with which you talk, you know if you're not going to talk to people maybe you just have, you know, and you avoid them in your car or what have you right tools you go to and every and in every aspect of your life at least there is some aspect of your life in which you might have to encounter. And that in that regard I you know because you ended on a note that that seemed to kind of suggest that. I mean, not to be too blunt but that you were you weren't, you didn't see a lot of possibilities for monuments and so I'm trying to push a little bit to to see whether there is some hope there for it for. For the, for a monument in space, or that you see any hope for it, or it's, or it's you just see it as a, as a medium that is obsolete and of another, another era and it should just be done away with like, you know we did with away with steam engines and what. Well the, the range of statues and monuments that are being challenged these days is just very vast. Teddy Roosevelt, close to Columbus was Winston Churchill. I'm not sure about George Washington but it just may be that the next one. So I don't know whether there's any bigger. Most people or, or all would choose to celebrate without some kind of question so it may be that we may need to just mark places where things are marked an event. This is where this happened, and then leave it to the audience to develop their own stories or take their own meanings from it. Because an event is indisputable, you know we know the Twin Towers were knocked down and we know that this this thing happened here, but if we venture to assign labels like winners and losers and heroes and villains. I doubt that will ever come to any agreement as we are now seeing or evaluating past events in light of modern sensibilities. And I think that's that's inevitable. But I don't know I'm, I think the, again, the whole process of the whole thought of some democratic process of commemoration is something has a lot of obstacles to carrying out in a way that would make sense but certainly I think, offering the opportunity for broad, a broader dialogue is a good way to go if we are committed to commemorating I think there's really a value or role in society to say things to society that encourages respect for institutions expect respect for communities and communities and that sort of thing but I guess deciding, you know what the vehicles for those messages is the real challenge here. So, do you take another comment and question or I mean I mean. Yeah, but Erica is, I saw you gesturing, did you want to jump in. You know, I was, I know it's so close to eight o'clock that I think that I would take us down a rabbit hole if I start to go down this, only because there is. There's been a conference going on this week on on decentering narratives in relationship to preservation and one of the terms that was used was commemorative justice. You know these this the claim the ability to be able to claim space for commemorative purposes is something that is sought by many groups who have been excluded. And so, you know, there is a certain irony and saying well but you know the problem is, you know, this kind of commemoration is so fraught it's been so abused it's it's you know we see histories bias. And so we have to be a lot more careful now about who gets to commemorate and how they get to commemorate, and that in and of itself, there seems to be a procedural justice question that I, you know, I think, compels us to consider, you know, what are we willing to kind of give up in this process. And I, as students who are on know I constantly go back to the Smithsonian debate surrounding the enola gay. And it's interpretation, which speaks to your, you know, kind of, this is, you know, if you just give the facts. Well, you know the enola gay sits in a large airport hangar now with just information about its manufacture, you know, it's this long it has this long a wingspan factured in Indiana or whatever but but up and up and that's it. So, you know, it seems to me there's something horribly lost, you know, in in in this idea that well, if we just, you know, stick to the facts ma'am, you know, that somehow it's okay that we this encounter with this object still has meaning. And it's just we're just going to let everyone else ascribe meaning to it. I sort of feel that there are some, you know, where's the edge of what is acceptable or not acceptable and in narrative. I think that's that's that's a very insightful. For sure. I mean it has all kinds of significance on what we did during that time and the decisions that were made that we may think differently about. And now and all that would be lost at right without some kind of story. And, you know, some avenue for criticism. And I don't know what that would be in the context of a fixed monument, but you know maybe some multimedia. Or installation associated with monument in the museum that offers various views on or angles from the from the story you know might might be something that may be useful. And it makes me think about the, the namings of streets in honor of Martin Luther King junior and there is often a lot of pushback by communities that are white. They're not the association with a black man because they think that it's going to reduce property values. So, and that the names of those of the streets in his honor tend to be in deteriorating neighborhoods around the country. And I think that those are the places where they're least needed I think they need more needed in the broader society for people to understand what he did for the country and not just for black people in terms of rights but I get a lot of deep seated biases that still animate us in in all these decisions and I think that's a, you know, in a commemorative justice is, it's a really important movement if it is a movement it ought to be something that should, you know, drive decisions and dialogues as we go forward. I want to thank you for this stimulating talk really the best that we can hope for you know is for for having our ideas challenged and having us really rethink our own presuppositions you've done that. You brought us into a world that that we thought we knew about you know preservation law and you've made us discover it in a new way and also I really appreciated the fact that from the law you got us to the appearance of things to the way that preservation looks and how it matters and how we think about justice. And so I really, in the name of all of the faculty and the students and the academic community thank you deeply for for the talk and for joining us with your masterclass which has been transformative for for us as well. So we hope that you'll come back many other times and and thanks again and thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you. I enjoyed it tremendously learn a whole lot.