Paul Kengor: Tearing down Columbus — and Western civilization

I have fond memories of my first days at Pitt. I began attending in the summer semester of 1987 as a transfer student. I remember sunny afternoons sitting under the giant statue of Christopher Columbus at Schenley Park reading my various books for my first-semester course on Western civilization. That course was required.

At the time, I had never given much thought to what Western civilization was, though I knew I should, even as a pre-med/science major. As a young American in college, I was standing on the shoulders of the intellectual patrimony of those who came before me — the architects of the Western tradition. This was the very core and fabric of the country and culture. This is where we came from and what we needed to know, for better or worse, and from figures always imperfect, as we all are as human beings.

That was 35 years ago. Now, that required Western civilization course at Pitt is gone. And so is that statue of Columbus. I happened upon it a few months ago, covered and bound, looking gagged, as if hiding some giant disgrace — what you’d expect to see of, say, an old statue of Stalin in Moscow or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The comparison is apt, as Columbus is being relegated to the level of moral reprobate by modern cultural revolutionaries committed to removing him entirely, not only from our parks but our history.

Local activists and assistant city solicitor Emily McNally demanded the statue be removed. The Pittsburgh Art Commission followed suit, unanimously recommending the removal of the statue that has stood for over 60 years. Pittsburgh’s proud Italian-Catholic community resisted, but to no avail. Mayor Bill Peduto (who hails from an Italian Catholic family) sided with the bulldozers.

It’s a shocking thing when you think about it: What kind of a country literally tears down its discoverer?

Of course, Columbus — whose Columbus Day comes up Oct. 10 and likewise is targeted for cancellation — has become a cultural whipping boy. His statue serves as an altar at which to lay down the litany of the ideological left’s perceived sins of America. Early America’s evils are laid at his feet.

Of course, this attack on Columbus is a culmination of what began at the universities. I saw the seeds of it in the late 1980s.

Pitt is a case in point. The Western civilization requirement is gone, off to the warehouse well ahead of Columbus, replaced with general education requirements in “Diversity.” These are courses, states Pitt, that provide “diverse activities … including those that introduce you to the city and its cultural resources.”

That’s a city cultural diversity that does not extend to Christopher Columbus.

According to Pitt, its required freshmen “diversity” courses relate to issues of “race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religious difference and/or economic disparity. All students must complete one course (3 credits) that is designated as a Diversity course.”

Pittsburgh’s Italian Catholics might figure that that diversity umbrella ought to extend to old Chris. Nope.

The political left long ago sounded the battle cry at the universities: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!”

On Pitt’s campus, it’s gone. The statue of Christopher Columbus is the latest casualty, and a big one.