Letter to the editor

Re: Vige Barrie’s letter to the editor regarding Scott Milne

In chastising Scott Milne '14 for sins of commission in referencing the Susan Rosenberg and Ward Churchill fiascoes, Vige Barrie’s letter to the editor (11 November issue of The Spectator) unintentionally provides a trenchant teaching moment. Let me start by picking a nit. Why at an institution that pronounces itself (without any supporting comparative data) “A NATIONAL LEADER in teaching students to write effectively, learn from each other[,] and think for themselves” do administrative officials persistently begin their letters with the passive voice and the indefinite “it”? Thus, Ms. Barrie’s: “It is well documented” or former Dean Urgo’s: “It is understood in the academy that,” etc., etc. Well, to follow this kind of style in discussing Mr. Milne’s piece, in 2004-2005, mistakes, it seems, were made.

About once a year, Hamilton “employees” receive an official communication that reminds faculty that only designated representatives of Hamilton’s Communication & Development Office are “authorized to speak officially for the College.” Perhaps, like Steven Spielberg’s John Quincy Adams in the movie Amistad, the powers that be at Hamilton think “whoever tells the best story wins.” A few weeks ago, a high-ranking member of C&D pointed out to me in no uncertain terms that its primary duty was to “protect the president.” OK, so now we know it. But as a professional historian who happens to be also a philosophical conservative I have other obligations than to be one of all the president’s men. I teach my students, for example, that in reconstructing historical events, they must dig quite a bit deeper than the readily available court narrative to obtain evidence that they will configure into a compelling interpretation of some historical event. Ms. Barrie’s letter speaks to an official account of those heady days of which I was a part, and her letter, in fact, contains sins of omission as well of commission.

In the case of Susan Rosenberg, a convicted felon hired to teach a course at Hamilton as an “activist-in-residence” (sic!), Ms. Barrie neglects to mention the national furor that led, for example, in December 2004 to a gauntlet of angry, protesting, placard-carrying police officers lining up in front of the New-York Historical Society to greet Hamilton trustees and other invited guests at the kick-off of the Excelsior fund-raising campaign. That same day, as I recall, the Wall Street Journal published a scathing op-ed “Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty,” which, shall we say, “raised awareness” nationally about the Susan Rosenberg case and Hamilton College. Now tis true that a federal court sentenced Ms. Rosenberg to 58 years in prison for possession of a cache of weapons and dynamite, not for complicity in the murder of police officers and others. But if anyone has doubts of Ms. Rosenberg’s complicity in murder, then they should have a look at Paul Castellucci’s The Big Dance (1986) or, better yet, at the 6 December 1999 filing by my friend Andy McCarthy, then a federal prosecutor in New York, who argued in 58 pages against Rosenberg’s motion for reconsideration of an order of nolle prosequi. (I have a copy of the memorandum should anyone care to see it). Without the national furor that resulted from the Rosenberg hire, including the withdrawal and threatened withdrawal of alumni support for the College, would Susan Rosenberg have been put into a position of considering her own “withdrawal” from a teaching position at Hamilton?

The Ward Churchill business has its own mysteries and complexities. Official stories will undoubtedly try to portray Hamilton’s leadership at that time as standing tall in absolutist defense of academic freedom against the onslaught of benighted reactionaries on and off campus. (Curiously, in contrast to the Rosenberg and Churchill cases, the administration has been quick enough to qualify academic freedom when it involved the words and behavior of a certain conservative professor I know.) In truth, Hamilton’s leadership blew a chance to show the world that as an allegedly elite institution of higher learning, it could draw meaningful distinctions not only between academic freedom and freedom of speech, but between activism and scholarship as well. Judge Dennis Graham of the Colorado Court of Appeals drew such a meaningful line a few weeks ago in an eloquent opinion that denied Churchill’s appeal for reinstatement at the University of Colorado. I hope Hamilton’s trustees and administrators peruse Judge Graham’s edifying opinion because as President Joan Hinde Stewart and others well knew from the get go, some of us regarded the Churchill matter not as a matter of academic freedom at all, but rather as a blatant case of academic fraud with Hamilton College in the position of, in effect, subsidizing it. As I and others had pointed out to President Stewart in 2004, she had backed herself into a corner at the very beginning of the mess by publicly staking out absolutist ground in defense of Rosenberg and Churchill on campus. On this point Ms. Barrie speaks compellingly about the difference between theory and reality: “The safety of our students superseded all else.” Indeed, pace President Stewart, some things do trump academic freedom.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Paquette
Professor of History