Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Hillsdale Statement Must Be Read
This letter from Hillsdale College needs to be published and read far and wide.
Amidst the events of recent weeks, a number of alumni and others have taken up formal and public means to insist that Hillsdale College issue statements concerning these events. The College is charged with negligence — or worse.
It is not the practice of the College to respond to petitions or other instruments meant to gain an object by pressure. The College operates by reasoned deliberation, study, and thought. The following observations, however, may be helpful and pertinent.
The College is pressed to speak. It is told that saying what it always has said is insufficient. Instead, it must decry racism and the mistreatment of Black Americans in particular. This, however, is precisely what the College has always said.
The College is told that invoking the high example of the Civil War or Frederick Douglass is not permitted. Perhaps it is thought that nothing relevant can be learned about justice and equality from the words and actions of great men and women in history. Instead, the College is guilty of the gravest moral failure for not making declarations about … justice and equality.
The letter shows courage in the face of bullying.
It shames great swaths of pusillanimous academia.
It gives hope, words, and voice to many who believe the same way.
Thank you, Hillsdale.
Published in Education
“passionate irrationality” This phrase alone makes it worth reading. They’re agin’ it, and so am I.
Yep, I found the story on the Washington Free Beacon site, and did a post over at RushBabe49.com.
Links: https://rushbabe49.com/
https://freebeacon.com/culture/hillsdale-unmoved-by-leftist-pressure-to-issue-black-lives-matter-statement/
Some ALUMNI are telling Hillsdale to make a statement? Did somebody’s time attending this fine college evaporate once outside the campus? Doesn’t seem they lost their resolve in the face of the screaming mobs…..
It happens everywhere.
My second sentence should say,”it seems they”. On rereading it, it wasn’t correct… but I wish it didn’t happen EVERYWHERE!!!!!
The petition gained at least 350 signatures (from alumni and current students) in two or three days, and it would’ve gained more, had trolling not forced the writer to delete it.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: Even Hillsdale isn’t immune. Each year, the campus grows more and more woke. The college will fall — maybe not this decade, but probably the next.
In the long run, even Hillsdale is doomed.
I wish the FBI were without corruption. I wish so many things. Due to humans being humans, I am bound for disappointment.
If the trolling is from those outside of Hillsdale college, then I would say there is no cause for alarm. If it was from Hillsdale alumnae or current students, then it is cause for alarm.
Many (most?) colleges are not shamed into supporting a socialist organization, they relish the chance to promote it and stop the pretense of academics. Good for Hillsdale for promoting their principles.
I’m actually disappointed by this one.
Most of the letter is quite good. Then there is this:
I don’t think that there is a justified public feeling in this moment, or that there are very real racial problems, at least not in the way that is implied in this paragraph.
There is a problem with disproportionate misbehavior among American blacks, most notably in the areas of illegitimacy and criminality. There is a problem with a racist attitude, on the part of many blacks and whites alike, that sees white racism everywhere, and behaves barbarously and hysterically to the presentation of empirical evidence disproving this assertion, as with the treatment of Charles Murray at Middlebury and Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna.
Larry Elder, Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, and Brandon Tatum are all informative on these points.
There is a very real racial problem, which is anti-white and anti-Oriental racism in college admissions and employment.
Excellent. This plus the Commentary letter make two responses that I consider appropriate in the midst of this debacle. Thanks for posting it.
Bets on which is the larger group. Or at least what I hope is the larger group.
Thank you so much. I fully endorse this statement.
Then there is this from the president of my alma mater (sigh):
Dear CMC Community:
In response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the persistent patterns of anti-Black racism, I write to express both my strongest personal support and the institution’s fullest commitment to our Black students, faculty, staff, alumni, and trustees. This extends to all Black Americans and all who are committed to the full and equal promise of our nation’s constitutionally protected freedoms.
I want to thank all of you for your insightful contributions, forceful statements, and constructive dialogue. This is a humbling, self-critical learning moment for me and for many of us. We reflect on our progress and recognize the gaps between our commitments and the realities faced by Black Americans within our own institution and the society more broadly.
We must all affirm that Black lives matter. Not only in our speech but also in what we do. We can’t rely solely on those who bear the burdens of racism. We can’t return casually to the old educational playbook of more endless studies, ineffective programs, and unmeasurable goals.
Most of all, we must develop a fresh vision, strategy, action plan, and accountable measures for how best to reinforce our values in action: through our behavior, our relationships, our community, our country. This means reimagining the future and charting the roadmap for getting there, together.
This is a moment for leadership to give greater resolve and focus to our collective efforts.
With this in mind, I’d like to introduce you to a new Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America commencing in the 2020-2021 academic year (the “Initiative”). By June 2021, the Initiative will develop a long-term, structural, integrated educational response to racism, inequality, and inequity…..
Before you review the early details, I want to emphasize four key commitments that will drive our priorities.
This is a shared responsibility within our College community—embedded and pervasive, personal, professional, collective. We learn best when we own it.
This is a learning experience, not just something to be studied, but a set of skills, fluencies, and capabilities we commit to support and develop in each member of our community. We learn by doing.
This is a fully integral educational response, not a separate department or center. Change is effective when centrally embedded in our daily work.
This is about outcomes, not just studies, plans, and investments. We commit to action and to developing a dashboard capable of accounting for our measured success or failure. What’s measured gets done.
In the CMC way, let’s take on this challenge. Not just to support our Black community, but to expand it. Not just to study racism, but to find effective ways to end it.
That is how we seize this defining moment in our history.
Please join us.
Thanks in advance, be well, and very best,
Hillsdale College earned a donation from me for this letter alone. They were forced to take it down?
“pusillanimous academia” SWOON!
Is that the voice of Larry Arnn I hear??? I think so.
And, Jerry, I’m pretty sure there’s enough subtlety of thought behind this letter to have meant what you said while naming it “deeply justified public feeling” and “very real racial problems.” And most of the students and alumni know the college leadership well enough to know what was meant.
People are right to be outraged by the unnecessary and unjust death of George Floyd, whether Chauvin had malicious intent or was simply negligent and incompetent. That doesn’t necessitate riots by any reasoned argument and maybe not even protests, given the lopsided black on black murders in every major city on any given weekend. But, it isn’t wrong to watch that video and feel justifiably angry. And I bet there’s plenty of agreement with you among the college’s leadership about what the “very real racial problems” are. But, it isn’t necessary to stoke the fire when people calling for the college to “make a statement” are disinclined to listening at this point. Leave the space open for dialogue when passions have settled.
Larry Arnn is proof of the great man concept. He makes all the difference at Hillsdale. God bless him and keep him — alive and well for many, many years to come.
I dunno, if it were me I might be inclined to dismiss any current student who joined in with such a thing, and to revoke the credentials of any graduate who joined in.
Two pc bows here that show it’s only a matter of time before Hillsdale caves. Instead of black, the word is written with a capital b.
Then we have great “men and women” in history. Why not great people, great personalities, or great Americans? We should be going out of our way not to pander.
That’s not pandering, it’s rubbing a politically incorrect view into people’s faces. Men and Women? What about the other fifty-five “genders”?
We are both alumna of the LSU Law School. At the risk of showing my age, but, of course, at my age, what does it matter, I had, in my undergraduate days, the great honor of meeting and chatting briefly with the great WWII General, Lt. Gen. Troy Middleton, who was at that time President of the University. He figured prominently in the war in Europe and the General who gave the order to Brig. Gen. McAuliffe to hold Bastogne, which turned around the Battle of the Bulge and saved Bastogne and only God knows how many lives. Gen. McAuliffe, of course, is famous for his one word response to the Nazi generals who demanded that he surrender Bastogne — “Nuts”! In making his decision that Bastogne must be held, Gen. Middleton had the daunting task of convincing his superior, “Old Blood and Guts” Patton, who before Gen. Middleton persuaded him otherwise, was determined to surrender Bastogne in order to regroup. To say that he was one of the great Generals of WWII is, if anything, an understatement, and he was recognized by Gen. Eisenhower and Gen. Patton as being “a corps commander of extraordinary abilities” after serving 480 days in combat, more than any other American General officer.
While his bio is readily available to any who may wish to learn what a truly great man he was, of significant note for this discussion was the fact that he fought long and hard in the Louisiana Legislature to finally get funding for a new library for the Baton Rouge campus and it was named in his honor.
Recently, upon the urging of a group of black students, the cowardly, craven little worm of a person known as Tom Gallagan, the Acting President of the University, became the living, breathing example of the phrase so imaginatively coined by @jameshageman in this post, “pusillanimous academia”, and persuaded the Board of Supervisors to have the General’s name removed from the library to be replaced, one assumes, by some “community organizer” who would not have the stature to even stand in the shadow of the great man and dedicated American hero Gen. Middleton was.
As if to put a final touch of exquisite irony to the matter, workers removed his name yesterday, Juneteenth, 2020.
What sheer, total, complete madness and insanity has taken over our country, when the memory of men, and in this case, a man, who not figuratively, but literally, saved their country from Nazism and fascism.
And, as much as it pains me to say it, I must add the final question — did they?
One can only hope that alumnae donations dry up.
@jameshageman and other colleagues who may be interested in further reading about the Hillsdale letter, I highly recommend the article this morning by Roger Kimball –as I recommend any article by this word magician– entitled “Thank Goodness for Hillsdale College” which can be found here.
A sample:
Hallelujah, indeed!
Sadly, some of the alumnae and current student body don’t seem to have retained or learned that lesson.
Sorry, but I neglected to flesh out the “reason” the black students were so adamant about removing the General’s name from the library although it goes without saying in these crazy times that it was because he was seen as a racist. This was based on a letter he wrote to another University President in the days when segregation was an accepted fact.
Here is a brief account of that one letter which negated, in the red hot fevers of our time, the accomplishments and honors and contributions of a lifetime of service to the Nation he loved:
A lifetime — wiped away by a few words on a piece of paper.
Orwell himself would probably find it hard to believe what is being allowed — key word, by the way — to happen to our country.
Gen. Middleton was born in 1889 in Mississippi. Something I’ve wondered in other situations would seem to apply here. With its reverence for society’s victims, why is it so impossible for the left and those who follow the dogma to regard Middleton as a victim of his time and place–an entirely segregated society inundated with the rationales to support it? Undoubtedly, the General would chafe at the implication that a man of his accomplishments was a victim, but it’s a question worth asking without necessarily endorsing the words noted above.
Roger Kimball was one of the speakers on the Hillsdale Cruise to Hawaii in 2018, so we had ample demonstrations of his erudition and affinity for the college.
It seems to me that this could be said of Thomas Jefferson given his writings on slavery.