There is a growing movement across the globe regarding the names of universities who are more often than not named in commemoration of colonial figures with problematic legacies. Griffith University is a prime example. Fiona Foley, Bronwyn Carlson, Fiona Nicholl and me cowrote a chapter titled Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations About Re-imaging Samuel Griffith’s University.
Our chapter published in The Palgrave Handbook on Rethinking Colonial Commemorations (2023) emerged from a 2022 symposium ‘Reason and Reckoning: Provocations and Conversations” held at Griffith University and orchestrated by Fiona Foley as a response to Henry Reynolds 2021 publication Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty, and the Uluru Statement. Various speakers from different disciplines each engaged with the problematic public figure of Sir Samuel Griffith and the naming of universities commemorating colonial figures in general. Our chapter largely focusses on Sir Samuel Griffith, the namesake of Griffith University, and comprises contributions presented by the authors at the symposium. There is much to engage with in terms of Queensland’s race politics historically and its legacy left for us today. As Henry Reynolds rightly points out, “the violence of the frontier has flooded back into the national story” (2021, p. 199). The above picture depicts my presentation and hence my section in our chapter.
Our chapter can be accessed here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-28609-4_15
