Vince Foster’s
College Goes Full Woke
I graduated from Davidson College in
1965. President Bill Clinton’s deputy
White House counsel, Vincent W. Foster, Jr., who died violently and
mysteriously in 1993, graduated in 1967.
My senior year there I was the secretary of the Young Democrats Club and
Vince was a member. At about the same
height, we also matched up against one another in intramural basketball. I had known that the college had changed
quite a bit since our graduation, but developments in the past two years have
come down on me like a ton of bricks.
Had Vince lived, I don’t think he would recognize his old college. Unfortunately, from all I have seen lately,
Davidson is not all that atypical of colleges and universities around the
country.
Davidson, founded by and still affiliated
with the Presbyterian Church, was all male when we attended. In 1973 it became officially
co-educational. It’s beginning to look
like it made its most drastic departure from tradition when it appointed its
first female president in 2011 in the person of Carol Quillen, an administrator
and former professor of history at Rice University. Last year, she made the very disturbing
decision to appoint perhaps America’s biggest proponent of the ill-starred,
criminal invasion of Iraq, William Kristol, to an endowed
chair as Visiting Professor of Ethics in Society, after the perennially
money-losing magazine that he edited, the Weekly Standard, finally
mercifully closed up shop.
“Bill is one of the nation’s most widely
respected thinkers on policy and politics,” she said at the time. “He has a
deep commitment to education and public service. We are privileged to have him
as our inaugural Vann Professor.”
I was hardly alone among Davidson alumni dissenting
from that opinion. “This is, without question,
the most publicly humiliating event that has befallen Davidson, at least since
I arrived as a member of the Class of 2006,” wrote Matthew Bandyk
in a submission to the student newspaper, the Davidsonian, for which he had been a
reporter and editor during his time at the college.
“That Kristol
is to be a professor of ethics (ethics!) is so backwards it feels like a sick
joke,” Bandyk wrote further. “Any ethical person with an ounce of humility
who had been as catastrophically wrong as Kristol would be so embarrassed that
their only option would be to withdraw from public life and retreat to, say, a
monastery for a few decades of soul-searching.”
“What a profound embarrassment for Davidson!” he
concluded.
Disastrous
2020
But we were not yet up to 2020, when the embarrassments
would come quick and fast. There had
been something distinctly odd about the appointment of arch-warmonger Kristol
to the Davidson faculty by President Quillen, who flaunts the fact that she
attended private Quaker
schools in Delaware from pre-kindergarten through high
school. Quakers are known for their
pacifism and their penchant for left-liberal politics. Any antiwar bent that President Quillen might
have has not yet come into view, from the perspective of this alumnus, but when
it comes to left-wing fanaticism, Quillen and the college she heads up could
give Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez a run
for their money these days.
As a loyal alumnus and regular contributor through the
years, I am on Davidson’s email list. On
June 1 of this year, this message turned up in my inbox:
Davidson Friends,
These are painful times. In some ways, with a global pandemic, they are unlike
anything we’ve seen in our lives. And at the same time the deadly violence
against black people is painfully familiar. It keeps happening. Black people
killed by the police, as was George Floyd, or black people killed by those who
use the system to escape accountability, as did the killer of Trayvon Martin.
I share your grief. All of this is so much to handle. I care
about you all. I hope you can find moments of respite even in these days.
Systemic racism obviously affects different people differently.
White people like me can and must study systemic racism. We must learn about
it, call it out and work in a sustained way to dismantle it. White people like
me do not, day after day, experience it. It is a headwind that we white people
will never face because we ride with that wind at our backs. Day after day, I
jog, shop, drive, enter my own house, and answer my own door without fear.
To the black, indigenous and people of color in the Davidson
community, I respect you, I value you and I’m grateful for all you do. I will
actively work to keep these issues front and center for everyone. Racism is my
problem. I commit to educating myself, to listening and to working to dismantle
the structures and practices that sustain it.
Davidson as a community strives to honor the dignity of each
human being. We commit ourselves to the quest for truth and we seek to lead
lives of leadership and service. These values compel us, as individuals and as
a community, to understand and to fight against all manifestations of racism so
that, together, we can build a more just and humane world.
Please take good care,
Carol
Carol E. Quillen
President
Now, high on the list of things included in a college
president’s job description is raising money for the college. A major source of such funding is the
contributions of the college’s alumni.
One has to wonder what sort of academic echo chamber President Quillen
lives in for her not to realize that such a message as this might have a
serious alienating effect upon a substantial portion of Davidson’s contributor
base. Certainly, the effect upon this
one alumnus was not what she intended. I
have compiled a pretty large list of the email addresses of my Davidson ’65
classmates, and on June 7, forwarding Quillen’s statement, I offered this
opinion:
The
"systemic racism" of which our current "dear leader" writes
is a pernicious myth. It was a part of the North Carolina in which I grew up,
and it no doubt continues among pockets of individuals here and there, but
systemically it is defunct, dead and buried, and we should all celebrate that
great accomplishment that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. Instead, we
get this utter and complete nonsense from the person who would have us believe
that the man who is probably the greatest warmonger in the country, William
Kristol, is some sort of authority on ethics, of all things, and is qualified
to mold the minds of those now walking in our footsteps at Davidson. For
shame!
The reaction that I received was generally favorable. I think that I was even able to bring around
one of the classmates who took issue with me in our ensuing exchange. I did not respond directly to President
Quillen at the time, though.
Then, in August, I ran across an article online that seemed to
put the nail in the coffin to the claim that there continues to exist “systemic
racism” in the United States, and I was moved to send the following email on
August 21:
Dear
President Quillen,
On
June 1, in a message to the Davidson College community, you wrote,
"Systemic racism obviously affects different people differently. White
people like me can and must study systemic racism. We must learn about it, call
it out and work in a sustained way to dismantle it. White people like me do not,
day after day, experience it. It is a headwind that we white people will never
face because we ride with that wind at our backs. Day after day, I jog, shop,
drive, enter my own house, and answer my own door without fear."
Unless
you can present a cogent rebuttal to Vasko Kohlmayer's article, "The Myth of
Systemic Racism: In America, Reverse Discrimination Is the Norm," which I am confident you can't do,
I believe you should retract and apologize for your statement. Contrary
to what you imply, systemic racism in the United States has long since been
dismantled, as I told my Davidson classmates at the time of your message.
To
my considerable surprise, Quillen actually responded just three days later:
Dear Mr. Martin,
I hope you and your family are well at this difficult time.
Thank you for sharing your views with me. I have read Kohlmayer’s essay as well as the writings of others who
question either the meaning or the existence of systemic racism. Respectfully,
while I have learned from these writings, I disagree with their arguments, in
part, I think, because we have differing definitions of racism and of system.
My own thinking about race, racism and structures/systems has been
shaped by my experience—growing up in a small town, in a Presbyterian church
and at a Quaker school, and in college as a US history major at the University
of Chicago—and then through studying these subjects later. The works of
historians C. Vann Woodward (The Strange Career of Jim Crow), Edmund
Morgan (American Slavery, American Freedom) and John Hope Franklin made
a huge impact on me in college. More recently, I learned a lot from
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow) and Richard Rothstein (The
Color of Law) and a book called The Long Southern Strategy. My
faith continues to shape my exploration of these issues.
My understanding of race and racism, shaped as it is by these
authors and my experience, is different from that of Mr. Kohlmayer.
Starting with different definitions as we do, it’s not surprising that Mr. Kohlmayer and I end up in different places.
There are specifics that I could point to—my sense is that, given
our different definitions, these would not resonate with Mr. Kohlmayer.
Thank you again for sharing your views.
Take care,
Carol Quillen
I responded immediately as follows:
Dear President Quillen,
In your response, you have done a very good job of putting your
finger on what was wrong with your initial "reaching out"
statement. You are talking about the past, invoking history, as though
nothing has changed, and this in the wake of our having elected Barack Obama to
be our president for eight years. Here's how Vasko
Kohlmayer addresses that question:
Today, however, no discriminatory laws or practices are cited by
the protestors. Lacking in specificity, therefore, their allegations of
systemic racism are empty and in-actionable. Rather than to rectify genuine
injustices, the main objective behind such claims seems to be the desire to
evoke guilt for the purpose of obtaining political power.
You also assert that your difference with Kohlmayer
is essentially definitional, meaning, I assume, that you would differ over what
is meant by the term "systemic racism." But that's the problem.
You and lots of other people sling the term around as a sort of weapon without
explaining what you mean by it, as though you had no obligation to define
it. Since you premised your June statement on the George Floyd and
Trayvon Martin cases, Kohlmayer's framing of the
issue seems to address itself directly to your use of the current
"systemic racism" accusation: "The most frequently used argument
in support of the claim of systemic racism is the use of force by police
against blacks, which it is claimed, is disproportional and racially motivated.
This, it is said, is symptomatic of the intrinsically racist nature of American
society which uses law enforcement to harass and oppress
minorities. "
The question when we hear of the use of what seems to be the use
of excessive force by police against blacks is whether it is representative or
anomalous. Kohlmayer cites a Wall Street
Journal report of 2019 that blacks in the country account for 53% of
the homicides and 60% of the robberies, but they represent only 25% of the
people fatally shot by police. While this latter number is higher than
the 13% of the population that is black, it is very much lower than one should
expect in relation to their likely violent encounters with police related to
their crime rate.
Those numbers are in complete accord with a conversation I had a
couple of years ago with a local Fairfax County, VA, policeman who is married
to the daughter of longtime family friends. He said that police generally
are far less likely to use force against blacks than others because of the high
level of political sensitivity of the issue. It's really a pretty simple
matter of self-preservation at work. Like anyone else, white or black,
cops prefer to stay out of trouble.
Finally, I must say that my earlier communication to you failed to
point out what was most objectionable in your June statement. It is this:
"It keeps happening. Black people killed by the police, as was George
Floyd, or black people killed by those who use the system to escape
accountability, as did the killer of Trayvon Martin."
Now that we have Floyd's autopsy report and the body camera footage—inexcusably
withheld for a long time—the snap judgment that Floyd was "killed by
police" has been seriously called into question. Floyd is seen to be
behaving in a bizarre fashion, complaining of difficulty in breathing even
before being laid prone on the street beside the police cruiser. His body
showed an overdose of fentanyl and breathing difficulty is one of the symptoms
of such an overdose, I understand.
Your slandering of George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon
Martin to death, however, is far worse. The court records clearly show
that the much smaller Zimmerman was ambushed and sucker punched and stood a
good chance of being beaten to death by Martin had he not defended himself with
his weapon. Far from duly escaping accountability, Zimmerman's life was
wrecked by a court case that never should have been brought in the first
place. More recently we have learned that it was far worse for Zimmerman
than what came out in the trial. You will see that "Exposing the Trayvon Martin Hoax" was written more than eight months before
your slander of Zimmerman, so you really have no excuse for it. I would
also commend my recent song parody, "Trayvon's Fake Witness," to your attention.
Sincerely,
David Martin
And that, as far as my exchanges went with President Quillen, was
the end of that. I dare say that I was
presenting facts of a sort that are seldom heard at Davidson or many other
college campuses around the country these days, and she was apparently not
prepared to counter them.
Quillen Not Alone
What is typically heard at Davidson,
reflecting the sort of leftist echo chamber that the college has become, I
discovered soon afterwards. It came in
the form of something called the “Faculty Statement
on Systemic Racism and Injustice.” It had been made on June 10, but I did not find
it on the Internet until September 21.
Perhaps the faculty members behind it were a bit more prudent than
President Quillen and realized that it might not go over all that well with
quite a high percentage of its alumni.
It bore the following sub-headline: “A majority of faculty members
of Davidson College issue the following statement in response to systemic
racism and injustice. (emphasis added)
Outraged by the killings of
Black and Indigenous people and People of Color (BIPOC) at the hands of police
and vigilantes and by the lack of accountability and justice that these
killings highlight;
Mindful of the ways the
criminal justice system systematically devalues, dehumanizes, and disposes of
BIPOC lives, particularly BIPOC who identify as transgender, BIPOC with
disabilities, and Black and Brown non-citizens;
Disgusted by the gratuitous
violence against demonstrators in recent weeks;
But hopeful in the face of
the unprecedented massive engagement of people of all walks of life against
systemic injustices and police brutality,
We, the undersigned faculty
members of Davidson College, issue the following statement:
1.
We stand in complete solidarity with our students, colleagues,
and other Davidson community members of color who face a litany of historic
systemic injustices and the heinous escalation of violence in the last two
weeks;
2.
We firmly support the legitimacy and historic importance of the
Black Lives Matter movement and pledge to uphold and to act in accordance with
its principles of justice for BIPOC in our professional and
personal lives;
3.
We recognize the right of all those on U.S. soil to protest and
to engage in various acts of civil disobedience against systemic injustices and
police brutality without fear of violent retaliation by local, state, or
federal authorities;
4.
We therefore strongly support and pledge to join or initiate
various forms of action to aid the BLM movement in its goals for an immediate
end to systemic racism upheld by racist and discriminatory laws, systems,
institutions, and practices, and manifested as racist discrimination and
violence by public servants in the United States;
5.
We affirm that the
dignity and integrity of human life are inviolable,
and that their safety and preservation are always and invariably more important
than the safety or preservation of any form or amount of goods or property;
6.
We absolutely and unequivocally condemn the violent response by
local and state police, by the National Guard, and by any armed forces
mobilized thus far or in the future to suppress a legitimate movement of their
fellow citizens;
7.
We abhor and condemn as unjust, unjustified, and unwarranted the
use of batons, tear gas, pepper spray, water cannons, police dogs, bullets and
projectiles of any form, or any other weapons used indiscriminately and with
impunity against unarmed or nonviolent protesters;
8.
We denounce as dangerous, indefensible, and illegitimate any
words or actions coming from our elected or appointed officials and public
servants, from political organizations, and from non-governmental organizations
that — intentionally or unintentionally — foment racial, class, political,
religious, generational, or regional discord, as well as their calls to
suppress protests through violent retaliation under the guise of protecting
property;
9.
We ask that Davidson College require and implement intensive and
ongoing anti-racism training for all students, faculty, staff, and campus
police after input from and consultation with BIPOC and diversity leaders on
campus;
10. We
ask that Davidson College investigate all accounts of racial profiling by
Davidson College Campus Police, and that it take
immediate and appropriate action to discipline those found responsible for
racial profiling;
11. We
recognize that the Davidson BIPOC community has long raised their voices in
denouncing racism. We, the undersigned faculty, pledge to amplify their calls,
and demand that the administration no longer make rhetorical gestures of
inclusion, but rather take action on transforming the institution toward its
stated values;
12. We
also recognize that the onus for educating White people about the effects of
racialization and racism on the lives of BIPOC does not fall on BIPOC, but on
those who benefit from the privileges that whiteness confers;
13. We
further recognize that as faculty whose primary role is to educate, it falls on
us as a collective to name injustice when we see it, to amplify the voices of
those who are not being heard, to reflect critically on our own privileges and
positions of power, and to engage with the academic and activist work of social
justice and anti-racism;
14. We
therefore pledge ourselves as faculty to learn and practice inclusive pedagogy,
design inclusive syllabi, and ensure that our pedagogical and research agendas
actively consider justice and fairness wherever applicable, and actively expose
and resist white supremacy, racism and antisemitism, as well as prejudice and
exclusion on the basis of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation,
religion or belief, political affiliation, ableism, or citizenship or
documentation status;
15. We,
the undersigned faculty, commit to continuing the ongoing work at Davidson
College, call on others to do the same, and urge for increased participation
and greater accountability. Racism and other forms of discrimination —
including xenophobia, anti-Black racism, antisemitism, homophobia, sexism, and
ableism — have informed in overt and subtle ways where the college is today,
and continue to inform how far it has come and how far it has to go in bringing
about reconciliation, healing, and a just community. Ongoing work by students,
faculty, and staff that addresses the history and consequences of
discrimination includes, but is not limited to The
Commission on Race and Slavery, FIRST, The Davidson
Microaggressions Project, Disorienting Davidson, The JEC Requirement,
the Faculty of Color Caucus, the E.H.
Little Library’s Anti-Racism Resource Guide, Justice,
Equality, and Community Archives, and community-based
projects, programs and scholarship in partnership with our communities;
16. We
call on our extensive network of Davidson College alumni to support those who
are fighting for liberation through financial and material assistance,
political action, refusal to uphold racist laws or to carry out racist or
violent orders, and, most importantly, by joining in protest and by
unrelentingly acting to expose and condemn racism in their lives and in
respective communities;
17. Confident
that this statement is in agreement with the Davidson College Statement of Purpose, with its Commitment to Diversity and
Inclusion, and with its principles of community, we respectfully call on
the Davidson College administration and its Board of Trustees to join us in
this collective statement and the actions called for herein;
18. We
request that this statement be posted prominently and in its entirety on the
homepage of the Davidson College website, that it be posted and linked to
permanently on all its social media accounts, and that it be emailed to
students, staff, faculty, alumni, and to any other networks affiliated with
Davidson College.
With an honest
acknowledgment that what we are saying here means nothing if actions do not
follow, and that if the actions that BIPOC are already always taking are not
supported or, at the very least, amplified, we have failed or will have
continued to fail;
With the knowledge that
true, honest, genuine, helpful support for anti-racist work requires
risk-taking, deep self-reflection, and the de-centering of
whiteness (which for those of us who are White means de-centering
ourselves and listening);
With the promise that what
we say here and what we are signing our names to does not only live in this
document and is not just a performative act of allyship;
In solidarity,
A long list of names and titles
followed, which we shan’t repeat here, including two faculty members who didn’t
want the public to know that they had signed on and expressed a wish to remain
anonymous. But for the fact that
Davidson does not yet call itself a university, I might dedicate my “Timorous
Eunuchs” poem to these
last two:
In the universities
You’ll find our finest minds.
The problem isn’t with their brains.
Oh no, it’s with their spines.
Now, going over the statement
critically, one might conclude that I would be a bit generous in this case to
conclude that the problem is not with their brains. If they are actually intelligent, with good
brains, it would appear that this fairly large number of people are not using
them very well to absorb information. A
Rip Van Winkle, emerging from his sleep and reading this would get an
impression of what has been going on in cities around the country recently that
is 180 degrees opposite from the actual facts of the matter. As for the ongoing situation, I must refer
readers once again to the soberly fact-based analysis of Vasko
Kohlmayer’s “Myth of Systemic Racism” article.
What we see on display here, I would
offer, is not stupidity, though, but a form of mass insanity. It is a form of insanity, unfortunately, to
which those who people the groves of academe are particularly vulnerable. Members of America’s so-called intellectual
class were always the biggest supporters of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union,
wanting so badly to believe that he was creating a workers’ paradise instead of
the virtual hell on earth that was the Soviet reality. It is also a sort of mass insanity that
sweeps over people of a left-wing bent periodically around the world, from
France in the late 18th century to Russia, China, Cuba, Cambodia,
etc. in the 20th century.
Reading this crack-brained,
self-righteous screed I am reminded of nothing so much as an anecdote from
Richard Wright in his contribution to the classic Richard Crossman collection
of essays by disillusioned former Communists, The God that Failed.
It turned out that one of the prominent members of his Communist cell in
Chicago had to be committed to a hospital for the insane. The man’s clear insanity, Wright offers upon
reflection, was not at all noticeable in the context of a typical gathering of
his Communist group, however. That is
the sort of insanity that seems to have swept over my alma mater’s faculty and
administration. In some ways, it’s not
all that far removed from Washington’s Evergreen
State University, it
would appear.
My response upon making my discovery was
to send out this generally well-received notice to my class mailing list with
the subject heading, “BIPOCs of the World, Arise”:
For just $70,000 a year you can have your
son, daughter, or non-gender-specific offspring indoctrinated by this
crowd: https://www.davidson.edu/news/2020/06/10/faculty-statement-systemic-racism-and-injustice
President Carol Quillen, unfortunately, is
not an outlier.
More evidence of Davidson’s rampant
wokeness emerged in August. On the 11th,
the college made this announcement: How to Be an Antiracist author
Ibram X. Kendi to deliver
2020 Reynolds Lecture. This was a
decision that rose up to bite them when Kendi became
somewhat notorious with his suggestion on Twitter that Supreme Court nominated
Judge Amy Coney Barrett was just another “white colonizer” for having
adopted two black children from Haiti.
One can get a good idea of the sort of wisdom that Kendi
(birth name Henry Rogers) shared with his
virtual Davidson audience by reading Coleman Hughes’s review of his book, How
to Be an Antiracist, which Hughes entitles, “How to Be an
Anti-Intellectual.” Even better, you can just listen to the man
directly on YouTube and make up your
own mind about him, or perhaps let your mind be somewhat influenced by the
1,790 comments, by current count, most of which are quite negative.
Then, on the 19th, WFAE in
Charlotte carried this headline on its web site: Davidson College Apologizes for Support of Slavery and Other
Racist Laws.
Davidson College
issued a public apology on Wednesday for its support of slavery and other
racist laws and policies, while announcing plans to consider renaming
university buildings and commemorate the contributions of enslaved people.
The public apology coincided with a report from the college's
Commission on Race and Slavery, which was convened in 2017 to investigate the
college's legacy of slavery and racial inequity, and
suggest possible amends. The commission was headed by Davidson alum and former
Charlotte mayor Anthony Foxx.
And here Davidson’s founding Presbyterian fathers thought they
were making a contribution to civilization, not realizing what vile creatures
they were all along. How much luckier we
are to have Davidson headed up by such devotees to truth and justice, so
willing and eager to ask forgiveness for the sins of others!
Most recently, with students back on campus, I found this announcement
in my inbox on October 7: An Evening with Sarah Bellamy. Bellamy
is not as well-known as Kendi, but she is apparently
cut from the same cloth. This is from her Paris
Review article, "Performing
Whiteness":
White folks, you must dig
into your embodied racism, even—especially—if you think it’s not there. And
this is not just to shift what you say and how you shape your arguments,
questions, Facebook posts, tweets. It’s not about performing your wokeness.
This isn’t about what you say—it’s about how you act; how your body might be
predisposed to rely on a racial inheritance that endangers the lives of others.
What’s in your guts, in your muscles, in your blood? What are you carrying dormant
in your body that springs up when confronted with Black joy, Black power, Black
brilliance, Black Blackness in the world? How can you train your bodies to
respond differently when you are triggered, when you’re in fight-or-flight
mode? How can I help you stop yourselves from killing us?
What a contrast this Brave New Davidson is with the one that Vince
Foster and I attended! In spite of the
fact that we had mandatory assemblies three times a week at which we often had
very good, stimulating visiting speakers, it is really quite remarkable,
looking back on it, how little interest seemed to be paid to current
politics. Social life dominated, and on
that front a groundswell of change was taking place that we were hardly even
aware of. All the best music was
performed by black bands—in our area it has since come to be called beach
music—and I imagine that at virtually
every fraternity party that Foster attended, one of those bands would have
furnished the entertainment. But by the
time I graduated, there was still not a single American black student
enrolled. We had admitted a student from
the Belgian Congo my sophomore year and another my junior year. When President D. Grier Martin held his one
and only question-and-answer session with the students at assembly in the
spring of my junior year, it was left to me to stand up and ask him when we
would admit our first American black student.
President Martin responded that they were actively attempting to recruit
American blacks, but they had not yet had one to apply who measured up
academically.
My graduation yearbook the next year begins like this, “This year
has been a year of change and desire for more change…,” and it proceeds with a
list of ten areas of such change. The
question of race makes no appearance.
The college still had just those two foreign black students when I
graduated.
Davidson has certainly changed drastically from what it was when
Vince and I were there, but it is very hard to say that going from too little
politics to way too much represents an improvement. I thought of myself as something of a dissenter
from what I saw around me when I was there, and I’m pretty sure I would be one
now, but for very different reasons.
Back then, it was right wingers like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms who
stirred the racial pot and whipped up racial animosity for their own career
benefit. These days, it’s primarily left
wingers who do it.
David Martin
October 15, 2020
To comment, go to Heresy Central.
Now
available: The Murder of Vince Foster: America’s Would-Be Dreyfus
Affair
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