Hamilton College Alumni for Governance Reform

AN OPEN LETTER

4654 Turnpike Road
Delhi, New York 13753-1422

July 15, 2005

To the Trustees of Hamilton College
And whomsoever else it may concern:

Re: The state of the College

This letter is prompted by two recent communications, one of them from President Stewart and the other from Trustee William “Mac” Bristol. In her letter, President Stewart referred to “the difficult situation we encountered this year” which

Mr. Bristol described as “some very unpleasant events,” both showing themselves to be masters of understatement.

Stewart went to some length to describe the administrative actions she has taken to correct this situation. Bristol declared that the “conditions which permitted these horrors are now under tight control.” He went on to chide those of us who have withheld our contributions to the Annual Fund, declaring that “You who have not given and won’t give have delivered your message” and “have been heard.”

I am not convinced that these “unpleasant events” are merely the result of someone’s poor judgment, a lack of sufficient oversight, or both. I do not believe that they are isolated happenings the repetition of which can be prevented by an administrative fix. They are, I believe symptoms of a far deeper condition involving the very soul of the College: its having adopted a radical ideology which now functions as a de facto religious establishment.

That the College presents itself as a place of “free inquiry,” “free speech,” “free exchange of ideas” and the other standard values of classical liberalism does not mask the presence of an essentially illiberal radicalism. That radicalism is institutionally embodied in the Kirkland Project and permeates that portion of the College curriculum which used to be called “The Humanities.” So it is that notwithstanding the College’s presentation of itself as a place of free debate, the arena for that debate is badly tilted with some ideas having official preference.

For instance, the College catalogue describes the Kirkland Project as “a campus organization committed to intellectual inquiry and social justice.” However, it seems clear that “social justice” is already ideologically defined in terms of “race, gender and sexuality.” Anyone holding to a different, for instance a traditional, framework is at an immediate disadvantage. One suspects that such persons as Camille Paglia or Oriana Fallaci would be automatically ruled out as resident scholars.

It would be one thing if the Kirkland Project were simply a free association of like-minded radical students on a par with, say, Young Republicans, or any number of other political or religious groups. However, the College has seen fit to give it pre-eminence, endowing it with funding and preferred status.

To me, and I suspect, to others as well, the Kirkland Project appears to serve as a “training camp” for aspiring members of a revolutionary vanguard whose aim it is to dismantle and reconstruct Western culture and society. It is, I observe in passing, that the analytical tools employed in this undertaking are ones bequeathed by white European males. The thesis – Eurocentrism – lives on in the antithesis!

It looks very much as though the Kirkland Project is a place where students can “operationalize” what they learn theoretically in such courses as 385F, Seminar on Theory and Politics of Education, including “the formation of communities of resistance in the academy.” (Catalogue, p. 319) Look out, Hamilton! That’s a game at which any number can play. As Jonathan Edwards once observed, “A community whose law allows in advance for its own breaking, is dissolving itself.” (Quoted in America’s Theologians, p. 60)

The “race-class-gender-sexuality” formula recurs like a mantra throughout the Hamilton catalogue. I stopped counting at fifty. Only math, the “hard” sciences, and a few courses of a technical or skills-related nature seem to have escaped. In reading through the catalogue, my son exclaimed, “They want me to spend $40,000 a year so that my kids can imbibe this?”

From the time of my graduation until just a year ago I have promoted Hamilton as a place of excellence to countless young people and their parents. I have made a practice of giving my annual Hamilton Calendar to people who, I thought, might benefit from a Hamilton education and, by their presence, benefit the college as well.

No longer am I doing these things. Whether or not I resume them, along with my financial contribution, will depend on what the college does to correct its disastrous trajectory.

Sincerely yours,

Richard J. Niebanck

Class of 54