Advocates Continue to Undermine Our Education
This article appeared in the Spectator of Dec. 8, 2006, and was sent in by a reader requesting that we post it.
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by Benjamin Noble ’08, Insights & Ideas Editor
Over the past couple of years, Hamilton has not been able to stay out of the news. Currently, there is a tremendous buzz over the recently cancelled Alexander Hamilton Center for the Study of Western Civilization (AHC) in academic journals, web sites and blogs.
With the derailment of the AHC goes the opportunity for students to pursue and develop their intellectual curiosities in democracy, capitalism and freedom. Yet once again, the administration and trustees cower at the demands of the radical faculty and deprive students of a great educational opportunity. The faculty significantly undermined the scholarly mission of Hamilton just to maintain their monopoly over the academic pursuits of the students.
Everyone on and off-campus has lost out; even the professors who killed it. Yet the students lose out the most because they are denied an opportunity to explore topics rarely discussed at Hamilton or in any other elite liberal arts college. This begs the question, why does the College exist? From the results of the AHC debate, it is clear Hamilton exists for the pursuit of activist professors’ ideas and ideologies.
How odd. I thought our college upon a hill existed for the students to pursue their intellectual interests and encourage their community members (including faculty) to do the same.
The AHC would have significantly enhanced the students’ educational experience at Hamilton. There would have been lectures, scholarships, fellowships and internships available for students. The Center had raised millions of dollars and millions more would have been obtained if programming commenced. The Center would have been explicitly nonpartisan. The founders never meant it to be a counter to the Diversity and Social Justice Project (DSJP). It would have instead only concerned itself with the scholarly topics of Western Civilization and its unique contributions to humanity.
Yet again, many professors, because of their ideological biases, personal vendettas and politics, have deprived students of this great intellectual opportunity. They have ideological blinders on and cannot see that this center would greatly benefit the students, Hamilton and the larger academic community.
Many people knew about the activist professors’ destructive activities towards the AHC. Originally, even The Spectator knew of the personal and ideological conflict between the faculty and the founders of the center. In its October 20, 2006 article, The Spectator realized that, “A faction within the Hamilton community feels that the current tension stems from personal disputes rather than what is best for the College.”
However, in last week’s editorial (December 8, 2006), The Spectator disregarded professors’ personal ideologies and grudges. Instead, it took a highly favorable stance towards the faculty and blamed the AHC’s demise entirely on the administration and lack of compromise. Why did The Spectator switch its stance on the faculty? Let us first correct the misperception that The Spectator’s editorial board is completely impartial.
A posting on the Hamilton College Alumni for Governance Reform website said that “The Spectator, as the voice of the students and the primary source of unfiltered information about the Hill for alumni all over the world, plays a key journalistic role in this process.” It is true that The Spectator is the voice of the students and plays a key journalistic role on campus. But, sorry alumni, The Spectator does not provide “unfiltered information.”
I believe that activist professors have great influence over some Spectator editors and reporters. These professors essentially used them throughout the debate over the AHC to forward their own personal agendas despite my continuous objections throughout the semester. While I feel that the editorials have been influenced by the faculty, I do not imply that the News articles have been anything but factual and bias-free.
If the activist professors influenced and worked through students, you better believe that they have also lobbied and exerted force on the administration, trustees and alumni. The activist professors will never admit to their back channel efforts to destroy the AHC; even if hell does freeze over.
In public, these professors said that they really wanted to see the AHC succeed, but that they just had problems over its governance. When they said they have problems with the governance, what they were really saying was that they themselves did not have enough control over the Center. More faculty control over the Center would have meant the endangerment of the Center’s scholarly goals. If the faculty as a whole controlled the Center, within five years it would have changed from a scholarly program into just another radical advocacy group such as the DSJP.
What Hamilton needs is a center on campus that promotes scholarship (not activism) in the main ideals of the United States and Western Civilization. Honestly, I do not see what is so catastrophic about providing students with a new opportunity to pursue academic interests no matter who is running the program (as long as those administrators of the program are completely dedicated to its goals of scholarship).
The radical faculty are advocates, not scholars. These professors need to be reminded what this institution is meant to accomplish. The continued pursuit of their personal agendas and the constant pressing of their ideologies have no place at an institution of higher learning dedicated to scholarship. How much longer will the administration and trustees allow them to continue their advocacy?
By pursuing their personal agendas, activist professors prevent themselves, their colleagues and students from the true benefits of this College. They actively silence all other dissenting viewpoints and maintain their radical monopoly on campus intellectual discourse. Due to the activism of radical professors, the Hamilton community will miss out on an intellectual program that would significantly benefit Hamilton and the larger academic community.
For the well-being of Hamilton, it was essential to expose the activities of advocates who have the audacity to call themselves scholarly professors.
Well, now that I have revealed the radical activist professors, their devious activities, and their connections with impressionable Spectator editors, I hope readers will understand what some editors failed to last week: no one can know for certain what goes on behind closed doors. We can only hope that these actions in the future remember the ultimate goal: a better education for the students. The fight over the AHC is clearly not over.
hb
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Reader Comments (4)
1. The article does not sustain the view of an identity of interest between the Kirkland Project and the administration. I would surmise instead that the Kirkland Project is not particularly enamored of Hamilton's president. That raises the question of how much of the hostility toward the AHC is really meant to be an attack on the president.
2. The article does not sustain the view of an identity of interests between the Kirkland Project and the trustees. College boards are typically composed of a wide variety of characters and personalities linked together by affluence. It could be the case, however, that someone powerful on the board was reached by a particular faculty member. One powerful person, perhaps also better prepared than the others, could have stopped the process or convinced others on the board that renegotiation was necessary. Don't jump to the conclusion that at meetings of the board everyone has done their homework. It may also be that with all the hubbub the dean and the president during the second round went beyond the trustees demands in redrawing the charter to incorporate the majority faculty interest.
3. The article does suggest why the founders of the AHC insisted on a limited faculty role in their project. Hence the charter is not "flawed" but rather suggestive of a minority trying to protect itself from a majority.In such campus struggles, the administration usually sides with the majority, not necessarily for idelogical reasons, but because of expediency.
Your thoughtful and accurate article clearly indicates that the one thing we do not have to worry about is the generic quality of the current students at the college...I feel badly you have to share the campus with some faculty, administrators and trustees who are unworthy of leading you...Sometimes I wonder who should be teaching whom!!!!
Thank you very much for an observation that given the evidence is clearly on target..
Benjamin Noble ’08, says “The founders never meant it to be a counter to the Diversity and Social Justice Project (DSJP).” But of course it was just that. It is a counter to the courses on sexism, Marxism, racism, feminism which are disguised in various formats as English literature, political science or whatever.
Mr. Noble goes on, “It would have instead only concerned itself with the scholarly topics of Western Civilization and its unique contributions to humanity.” But that is exactly what the modern day college professor does not want.
Multiculturalism is a cultural communism meant to destroy Western Civilization. It methods are total control of the student body’s academic and social life, suppression of free speech and political trials for offending diversity taboos.
Claiming that AHC is not a counter to DSJP is more denial than anything else. The first thing that has to be grasped is the depth to which Hamilton College has sunk. Need I remind everyone of the ethnic cleansing of the fraternities, the plagiarist President, the stripper-artist, the criminal invitee to teach or the infamous Ward Churchill?
It is not that Hamilton in the political orientation of the faculty is worse than anyone else; it simply has worse luck and more flagrant, public displays of its inner direction.
Hamilton College has gone down a sink-hole from which it will never recover as a liberal arts institution. The faculty controls the college. The Trustees that encouraged, applauded and approved this mess are in deep denial. The Alumni for the most part don’t care as long as they keep the “equity” in the college’s elite rankings they won’t vote in trustees that will really put an end to this nonsense.
It is time to abandon the rat-filled ship. The rats are running it and there is little hope for anyone on-board.
The AHC was to a great deal a delusion that those in control would allow a foothold of Western Civilization back on their turf. “Yes, they said. We will allow you start it, if we control it, so we can later kill it. We will tie you up in endless disputes. Eventually you will get tired and go away. And you will lose all your money.”
As I stated in a previous post, the Puritans in England could not live with the Protestant church and aristocracy. They realized that as a minority they would always be controlled and harassed by the majority who was in power. So they left. We should all be thankful, because our Anglo-American civilization is a direct descendent of these Puritans.
Again, I urge that those who have raised the money consider starting a liberal arts college that is actually a liberal arts college. “Alexander College?”
$3.5 million is a good start. And now that upstate New York industry has been ravaged by the economic policies of free trade and globalism, buying up several contiguous farms would not be difficult. May I suggest the hills on the West Bank of the lake at Cooperstown?
Or, continue a fight against an entrenched enemy that controls the reins of power, and has no intention of giving up.
Paul Streitz ‘66
The founders of the AHC are scholars who promote scholarship, not advocacy. The AHC would not promote conservative activism to counter the DSJP’s liberal activism. Instead, the AHC is strictly a scholarly endeavor to study Western Civilization. The subject may be a counter to the usual college courses on sexuality, multiculturalism, racism, feminism, etc., but it does not mean that the AHC would counter the DSJP through activism.
I guess Noble was not clear enough in his wording in the paragraph Streitz cited, but the article still gets its main point across. There are many activist professors behind the scenes suppressing scholarship and free speech through any means possible by influencing, controlling, and spoon-feeding students, Spectator student editors, administrators, alumni, and trustees. And more importantly, these back-door politics ultimately hurt the students' education.