Washburn University, a public university in Topeka, Kansas, removed the statues of two of America’s greatest Founding Fathers last month, declaring them to be a “source of embarrassment,” as reported by Fox News.
The bronze statues of Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Benjamin Franklin, often considered one of the wisest Founding Fathers, were removed by university officials in July, with the university only recently finally addressing the matter.
University President Jerry Farley spoke about the issue to the family of the donor who first donated the statues to the university; as the donor has since died, their family made the decision and agreed that the statues should be removed. As such, Farley claimed that “it was the donors’ decision to have the statues returned,” since “they didn’t want the statues to become a source of embarrassment.”
The move comes over a month after a tumultuous period of mass vandalism all across the country, with far-left terrorists tearing down or vandalizing statues and other federal monuments, ranging from Confederate figures to the Founding Fathers.
The worst of the vandalism peaked in June, and then gradually died down in July, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order expediting the process by which such vandals could be pursued, arrested, and tried for their crimes. However, some statues across the country have still been removed by more “official” means, such as local authorities deciding to have them removed and hidden in storage.