About the Project

The IHJR's project on Contested Histories in Public Spaces is a multi-year initiative intended to address controversies over statues, memorials, street names and other representations of disputed historical legacies in public spaces. The objective of the Contested Histories project is to provide decision-makers, policy planners, educators, and other stakeholders with a set of case studies, best practices and guidelines for addressing historical contestations in an effective and responsible manner. As part of this project, the IHJR works with the International Bar Association in London, and the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria, on a series of in-depth case studies that was published in February 2021. For more information contact Marie-Louise Jansen, Director, Contested Histories Project (jansen@ihjr.org).

Background

Over the past several years there has been growing public controversy over contested historical legacies on university campuses and in public spaces in towns and cities around the world. The Rhodes Must Fall movement that began in Cape Town, South Africa, and the controversy over statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the United States, are but two examples (see below). Most contestations occur at the municipal or institutional level, where the physical representations of historical legacies are encountered on a daily basis, whether in the form of statues, street names, building names, monuments, memorials or emblems and symbols.

Conflict over interpretations of history span a range of issues including legacies of slavery, imperialism, fascism, communism, colonialism, inter-ethnic tensions, mass human rights abuses and other relevant subjects. In almost all cases calls for removal of statues, renaming of streets, and reframing of school or university curricula, are symptomatic of deeper divisions within societies.

Confronted with public protests, street demonstrations, and social media campaigns, decision makers have often responded in haste, sometimes in panic, and more often than not without the benefit of established principles, processes or best practices, resulting in remedies that are sometimes inadequate, ineffective or arbitrary with potentially long-term, unintended consequences.