*A humongous portrait of William Shakespeare that had been hanging in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania was taken down by students and replaced with a portrait of black female writer Audre Lorde in an effort to promote inclusion.
According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, a group of students removed the portrait from the walls of Fisher- Bennett Hall – where it had been hanging for years – and put it inside the office of English professor and department chair Jed Esty.
A few years ago, the English Department voted to relocate and replace the portrait in order to represent a more diverse range of writers, but Shakespeare had yet to be moved…until this week. Apparently the students got tired of waiting.
“Students removed the Shakespeare portrait and delivered it to my office as a way of affirming their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English department,” Esty wrote in an email to the school paper. He added that the image of Lorde will remain until the department reaches a decision about what to do with the space.
