George Mitchell, The Clintons and, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor: The Trouble with Memorialisation
By Esther Kabwika
George Mitchell’s commemorative statue was removed from its place opposite the Mandela Hall on Tuesday, 3rd February 2026, upon the discovery of Mitchell’s relationship with the notorious abuser and sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. The Epstein files, of which Mitchell was named 310 times [1], as a whole, contain evidence of countless crimes, namely sexual abuse against children.
Over the past decade, in Britain, Northern Ireland and the US, there has been a trend of historical reckonings concerning who in history and what history should be immortalised. In cities like Bristol, waves of protest in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 emerged, culminating in a statue honouring slave trader Edward Colston being torn down and thrown into the harbour during an anti-racism protest. 4 years earlier, a former employee at Yale University smashed windows with art depicting enslaved people at Calhoun College, a building named after the United States’ 7th vice president, John C. Calhoun, who was a staunch advocate for slavery. In Northern Ireland, a place scarred with conflict and political, religious and social division, there has been discussion calling for the renaming of streets associated with the legacies of British colonialism. The BBC, for instance, reported that there has been interest in removing Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s name from street signs if it wasn’t a cost to the public [2]. Especially thought-provoking considering the man’s ties to Epstein and recent arrest.
The acts of protest, which were bold, loud and radical in nature, ultimately interrogated who deserved to be remembered and immortalised in stone, brass or glass. QUB’s reasoning for honouring Mitchell lies in his role in the 1998 peace process in Northern Ireland, co-chairing the all-party talks that led to the Good Friday Agreement. Interestingly, the Clintons are also involved in implementing the agreement. Because of the Clintons’ long-standing relationship with Northern Ireland, Hillary Clinton was made the chancellor of QUB in 2020 and inaugurated on the 24th of September 2021. The Clintons represent the interests of QUB abroad and provide an academic scholarship in their name, much to the dismay of a number of students in the student body, as proved by a number of protests against the chancellor’s role.
Given that Bill Clinton has also been implicated numerous times in the files yet denies ever knowing anything of Epstein’s crimes, it speaks volumes about QUB’s PR priorities and their reputation over reckoning and acknowledging their own complicity. The quiet removal of Mitchell’s statue, like a dirty secret, as opposed to the open condemnation and violent destruction of problematic memorials in places like Bristol, demonstrates that Queens is not entirely concerned with ensuring it is in good standing with its students but with its investors and future partners.
Although we might never see Hillary Clinton being removed as chancellor or Bill Clinton and George Mitchell being held accountable for their association with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, I do know that any meaningful change cannot be made if those responsible and complicit are not held to account whilst they are still alive. Jeffrey Epstein died in prison in August 2019, and as the media moves on to the next disaster, we must never forget that at an institutional and systemic level, these victims were ultimately failed by all those who had the power to hold him to account sooner. I hope QUB’s priorities will one day shift and cut ties with the Clintons completely, as they have done with Mitchell.
References
1 – Carroll, Rory. 2026. “Epstein Claims Cast Shadow over Legacy of Northern Ireland Peacemakers Clinton and Mitchell.” The Guardian. The Guardian. February 24, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/24/epstein-claims-shadow-legacy-northern-ireland-peacemakers-bill-clinton-george-mitchell.
2 – BBC. 2025. “Prince Andrew Way: Support for Name Change, but with Royal Caveat.” BBC News, October 31, 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgy2n2evqeo.
