`DECISION TREE’ FOR DETERMINING THE
FATE OF MONUMENTS COMMEMORATING
BELIEFS LATER CALLED INTO QUESTION
Allen C. Guelzo and John M. Rudy
1. Does the statue commemorate an individual who inflicted harms on a living
person that would be actionable in a federal court? If so, remove the statue; if
not, move to the next question.
2. Did that individual order the commission of treason, capital crimes, slavery (or
human trafficking), genocide, or terrorism (as defined by the International
Court of Justice), or incur direct responsibility for them? If so, remove the
statue; if not, next question.
3. Did the individual have a specific connection to the location of the statue? In
other words, was the person born or raised there, or did a
momentous event in their life happen there? If not, remove the
statue. If so, think hard about what kind of event this was and
whether it merits a statue, then go to the next question.
4. Is the statue used as an active venue for promoting treason, capital crimes, slavery,
genocide, or terrorism? The police data should tell us, but if there is a
provable line of invocation connecting the subject of the statue and
the actions being conducted around it, then remove the statue. If not,
go to the next question.
5. Did the individual undertake specific acts to mitigate the historical harms
done? By this point, we are close to concluding that a statue could
stay. But only, after this question, with this caveat: Itemize those
mitigations on a plaque on the statue’s base and do it clearly.
SOURCE: Allen C. Guelzo and John M. Rudy, 2017