Ivy League Students Tear Down Shakespeare Portrait In Name Of Diversity

Students at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) have removed a portrait of William Shakespeare and replaced it with a picture of a black, lesbian poet for the sake of having greater diversity.

The large Shakespeare portrait had resided near a staircase in Fisher-Bennett Hall for years, until a gaggle of activist students removed it and placed it in the office of English department head Jed Esty. In its place, they taped up a photograph of Audre Lorde.

The portrait won’t be moved back, according to a statement from Esty, because as a white male, Shakespeare didn’t embody the value of diversity.

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“We invite everyone to join us in the task of critical thinking about the changing nature of authorship, the history of language, and the political life of symbols,” Esty said in a statement.

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