An advisory panel recommended Monday that one or more statues of Confederate leaders on display at the University of Texas be moved — with a history center on campus the favored destination— or that explanatory plaques be added to their current and more prominent outdoor setting.

Doing nothing with the bronze likenesses of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and three other leaders of the Southern cause is not a viable option, the task force on historical representation of statuary said in a report to UT President Gregory L. Fenves.

The statues stand along the South Mall, a long and gently sloping promenade of live oaks, lawn, benches and sidewalks that is in many ways the main entrance to the university. They were commissioned in 1916, during a period when the Ku Klux Klan was on the rise along with violence against people of color.

"A significant portion of the campus community views the statues’ presence and placement as deeply offensive and unrepresentative of the university’s mission and values," the report said. "Confederate statues negatively affect campus climate, minority recruitment, faculty recruitment, and national image."

Fenves charged the 12-member panel last month with recommending alternatives for the statues, especially that of Davis. Of five options deemed viable by the UT panel, four involve moving one or more statues to some other site on campus, such as the Blanton Museum, the Texas Memorial Museum, the Harry Ransom Center, the Littlefield Home or the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. A majority of the panel believes the Briscoe Center is "the most natural solution for relocation," the report said.

Fenves is free to come up with some other plan or do nothing, although the latter seems extremely unlikely.

"We’re confident President Fenves will carefully consider the options and make a decision fairly quickly," said Gregory J. Vincent, UT’s vice president for diversity and community engagement and chairman of the advisory panel.

Pressure to do something has intensified since the slaying in June of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in what authorities say was a racist attack by a white gunman who sympathized with the Confederacy. Three of the UT statues were tagged with graffiti after the attack. Protests against the statues date back decades, and UT’s Student Government adopted a resolution in March calling for moving Davis’ statue to a museum.

But in establishing the advisory panel, Fenves was also responding to changing sensibilities well beyond Austin. The decision in South Carolina, "at the epicenter of pro-Confederate sentiment," to take down the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds last month "signaled a profound shift in the nation’s tolerance for displays of Confederate pride," the report said.

There is a strong and understandable tilt in the report toward moving them, said Sanford Levinson, a law professor at UT and the author of "Written in Stone: Public Monuments in Changing Societies."

"Leaving them in place with plaques turns into a nightmare," Levinson said. "They would continue to occupy places of honor. Moving them would solve many more problems. The question is how many of them. Moving just the statue of Jefferson Davis would not end the controversy."

The other leaders of the Southern cause whose likenesses are shaded by the South Mall’s live oaks are Albert Sidney Johnston, a Confederate general; Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s chief general; and John H. Reagan, the postmaster general.

The four relocation options describe various combinations of statues, but all include moving an inscription on a stone wall just west of the fountain that glorifies the Confederacy without mentioning slavery. The inscription refers to "the men and women of the Confederacy who fought with valor and suffered with fortitude that states rights be maintained."

The report’s analysis of the historical context underlying the statues includes a reference to Texas’ declaration of secession from the Union, which cited "maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery — the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits."

Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center, told the American-Statesman last month that the center could house the Confederate statues if Fenves decided to move them.

"We are the obvious, most logical choice because the statues were executed by Pompeo Coppini, and we are the home of the Pompeo Coppini archives, and the statues were paid for by George Littlefield, and we are the home of Littlefield’s archives," Carleton said at the time.

Littlefield was a Confederate veteran and UT regent who donated funds for the statues. The Littlefield Fountain, named for him, anchors the South Mall. Besides the four Confederate figures, Coppini created statues of two other Southerners admired by Littlefield: President Woodrow Wilson and James Stephen Hogg, the 20th governor of Texas. A statue of George Washington was added to the South Mall in the 1950s.

The advisory panel received comments from more than 3,100 people in the course of two public forums and an open invitation for emails and phone calls. Sixty percent favored removing one or more statues, while 33 percent said they should be left in place.

Although the question has not been put to all students for a vote, there is no doubt that a majority of them favor removal, at least of Davis’ statue, said Rohit Mandalapu, vice president of Student Government, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts and a member of the advisory panel.

Jerry Patterson, a former Texas land commissioner and descendant of Confederate veterans, said a push to remove the statues ignores nuances such as Lee’s denunciation of slavery.