Britain’s Education Secretary has blasted an “absurd” move by students at Oxford University to remove a portrait of the Queen from a common room because she “represents recent colonial history”.
A committee of graduate students from Magdalen College’s Middle Common Room voted overwhelmingly to take down the picture of Queen Elizabeth, the Guido Fawkes website first revealed on Tuesday.
The students agreed to explore replacing the portrait with “art by or of other influential and inspirational people”, and that any future depictions of the Queen or the royal family would be subject to a committee vote.
According to minutes of the committee meeting provided to Guido Fawkes, one student claimed “patriotism and colonialism are not really separable” while another denied it was about “cancelling” the Queen but rather “this is about our communal space and making people feel welcome”.
Opponents of the move warned it was “worth considering the reputational damage…