Controversial College Speaker

Parents Forum
1

<p>We all often read comments about how students pick a school by gut feeling - sometimes students on a tour won't even bother to get out of the car, because they just don't "feel" the place is right.</p>

<p>Well, a NY Times article today (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/31/nyregion/31hamilton.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/31/nyregion/31hamilton.html&lt;/a&gt;) gave me perilously close to the same feeling about Hamilton College, a top-ranked (#16 nationally, I think) LAC. It was about a speaker who had written the following remarks:</p>

<p>"Professor Churchill had written in a published essay that those killed in the trade center had ignored their role in American foreign policy. 'They were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants,' he wrote. 'If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it,' he added."</p>

<p>Now, I am a religious, politically progressive person that defends affirmative action, etc. I am a firm defender of free speech; usually I believe the answer to hate speech is more speech, not less (that is, more of the other side).</p>

<p>This, too me, is NOT about free speech. This is just nauseating. Just because something CAN be said doesn't mean it SHOULD be said. This is uncivil, irrational, and a host of other things. One might argue that America's actions play a role, say, in how others see us - but one can ARGUE that with reason. This is just ugliness - like passing wind or worse in public.</p>

<p>It gave me a very BAD "gut feeling" about Hamilton. This post is NOT about politics (I would argue that the babies dying were due to the theft of the oil for food money! but be that as it may...) but about simple wisdom. What kind of person uses this kind of langauge? What kind of college defends it? Not to mention that many of those who died were waiters, janitors, etc. Not that ANYONE deserves this language!</p>

<p>Sorry. Just venting. I JUST read this.</p>

2

<p>Hmph. </p>

<p>I didn't KNOW anyone killed in the Towers. But, at the time, I was working a deal with a managed services company that lost cafeteria workers to the event. Surely, those cafeteria workers were't arranging power lunches - they were serving them!</p>

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<p>Not sure I would hold it against Hamilton. How did he come to be speaking there?</p>

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<p>If you look long enough, I am pretty sure you'll find somone at any school who is offensive.You just hope your kids are not in the line of fire. I don't find the head of the school, admissions office or a crazy prof a detriment (unless he teaches a course your kid has to have). I am not fond of the principal of my kids' school, but what happens on a daily basis does not involve him, and other than waving hello/goodby and shaking his hand on some occaisions, I don't have to deal with him. If I were a teacher there, I would look elsewhere, and I have heard that some of the turnover is attributed to him, but if the overall feel and fit are good, I don't get too hung up about the particulars.</p>

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<p>Nedad, there's been quite a stink about the comments that Churchill has made....people are very upset about it......Rush Limbaugh basically devoted his entire program to it the other day..I'm sure that Hamilton's getting a ton of flack for inviting this guy to speak.......I would be interested in this guy's credentials.....don't know anything about him, but I also think that what jamimom says is true....Every college campus in this country will have speakers who are controversial. You can't judge a school by it or you'll run out of choices!</p>

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<p>The NY Times article goes on at some length about the Kirkland Project, which invited Churchill (who is a prof at U Colorado at Boulder, and is now being considered for "disciplinary action" by a review board there). Churchill is scheduled to speak on Feb. 3; his topic is prisons and Native American rights. His written 9/11 comments came to light after the invitation and have resulted in his talk being turned instead into a panel discussion and open forum for questions.</p>

<p>The Hamilton president has posted remarks here: <a href="http://www.hamilton.edu/news/more_news/display.cfm?ID=9011%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hamilton.edu/news/more_news/display.cfm?ID=9011&lt;/a> </p>

<p>"However repugnant one may find Mr. Churchill’s remarks, were the College to withdraw the invitation simply on the grounds that he has said offensive things, we would be abandoning a principle on which this College and indeed this republic are founded. Free speech is put to the test precisely in circumstances like these when the speech in question is abhorrent. As Justice Brandeis put it, 'If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.'"</p>

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<p>I agree with you, Jamimom. My other kids had a few teachers, speakers, writers, etc. that I didn't agree with, but it didn't matter - I believe in full academic freedom, and I trust my kids to see beyond bias, rhetoric, etc. Plus we can learn from those with whom we disagree - why just preach to the choir?</p>

<p>I really don't know why this affected my gut so profoundly. I certainly don't blame Hamilton, when I consider it rationally (although I just read a number of recent articles about a woman they hired who was a felon, convicted of some gun charge that sounded faintly terrorist, and who was peripherally involved in a crime that left police officers dead).</p>

<p>Perhaps it was because this isn't a matter of intellectual disagreement - this just seems like a sociopath speaking, not a reasonable person. The man wasn't trying to persuade by reason, but by the nastiest, lowest form of ugly insults - not something I would expect from someone supposedly trained in critically thinking (though not at Hamilton). </p>

<p>I have worked on enough campuses to know that there are crazy bad people there too, as in every profession. This man should look at his OWN life before tearing to shreds innocent people whom he doesn't even know anything about. It's a level of judgmentalism (is that a word?) that is beyond the pale...</p>

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<p>Once again, mootmom, I already stated that I agree that the answer to falsehood etc. is MORE speech - no one need quote Brandeis at me: I am the recipient of several Human Rights Awards.</p>

<p>I instead question the man's mental state. Again - it seems like he was spewing venom irrationally, from some other agenda than an intellectual one. As I said, not EVERYTHING we think in our most pathological fantasies deserves to be said out loud.</p>

<p>I don't advocate censorship; but just as we don't let our kids belch in public, some things are just distasteful personal expressions (in this case, of hate and rage) that are best said in the quiet of one's room, not in public. I question his sanity (let the flames begin!)</p>

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<p>nedad. I hope you will come to your senses and realize that this speaker should not be lumped together with Hamilton College as some sort of package. Quite a fair share of Hamilton grads have gone on to successful careers on wall street. I assume that the school is proud of this record and happy to have the financial support of these contributors to their endowment. I rather think you should give the school credit for having the open mind to tolerate diverse viewpoints.</p>

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<p>Hamilton College was one of the schools my daughter and I visited, and she would have definitely applied there if she had not been admitted to her ED school. I am not sure that I have sorted out my thoughts on the "free speech" issue enough to express them coherently here, or whether this incident changes my impression of Hamilton College, but reading Churchill's outrageous remarks is very upsetting to me. The father of a classmate and good friend of my daughter was killed in the Trade Center, and his funeral was the first funeral my daughter ever attended. I had never met the person who died, but I have learned that he was a wonderful husband and father and a wonderful person, too. The Boy Scouts from the troop which he helped lead attended the service in their uniforms. For a long time after 9/11, we could not help but notice the constant reminders, postings, and talk about it, and we often remarked how hard it must be for the families of the victims (including the classmate) to deal with their grief, in contrast to the more usual cases when a family member dies but it is not constantly talked about in public. I feel very sorry for the Hamilton student who lost his father who is mentioned in the NY Times article.</p>

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<p>Doesn't look like a "diverse viewpoint" to me, but merely "spewing venom" (as nedad said). I think nedad's posts - not just the original but the others as well - make it clear that he would gladly "tolerate" reasonable debate - but were those kinds of remarks "reasonable debate?" One can certainly put forth warranted evidence on the other side of every issue, but saying these innocent people deserved to die, and to describe them as he did, seems to me to have zero to do with articulating a "diverse viewpoint."</p>

<p>Agree though - and I wouldn't be surprised if nedad didn't too - that it should not reflect on Hamilton. But then, he was only speaking of a gut reaction.</p>

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<p>veronwe point well taken. Wrote in defense of Hamilton before reading the article. Hamilton is a great school with a wonderful foundation in place to support applicants from underprivileged backgrounds among other programs. Hate to see the whole school trashed because of this wacko person.</p>

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<p>I just read the article, and can see why this would touch off the gut feelings. It is unfortunate that this guy was associated with what I find is a great school. I would not have invited him, as I agree with Voronwe, that his spewing is really more of an angry vent than an opinion on an issue. Still there are other things more directly pertinant to a student or families' direct experience with a college.</p>

<p>I guess the post that really hit me was the one from a mom whose son was attending a school featured in the famous "Colleges That Change Lives", and the son was expelled after his first term for academic failure without so much of a "let's talk". Being a small school taking kids at an academic range where some transition is expected, I would have expected a bit more from such a school as it is a private school that seems to be a nurturing environment, a great choice for sending a kid away, many hours away to make this transition. Those kind of policies are what can directly affect your lives, as no kid is immune from a bad semster due to depression, academic overload, wrong choice of courses, etc. </p>

<p>There were some real stinkers at my kids' college and at my alma mater, and my opinion of the colleges are not influenced that much by those people or occurances. Things like bad advising in general, an atmosphere that just does not fit the child, would really affect me.</p>

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<p>Churchill is clearly not contributing to reasonable debate, but is "spewing venom" with his comments. In Hamilton's defense, the only thing I can say is that perhaps the professor who invited Churchill to speak on American Indian activism was not aware of Churchill's views and comments on 9/11.</p>

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<p>You don't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater.</p>

16

<p>Two bad stories in a week about Hamilton (this one and the convicted felon) left a bad taste in my mouth, but I don't blame the school for these 9/11 comments.</p>

<p>I come from an area that lost a huge number of people on 9/11, and have a beloved relative that escaped by the skin of her teeth. That might explain some of my feeling.......</p>

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<p>This is actually the second time lately that Hamilton has been involved in a controversy of this kind; I do not recall the exact details of the earlier one, but it also got fairly extensive press coverage and had to do wth a "radical" speaker who somehow seemed a bit beyonf the standard variation of civil discourse, possibly osomething to do with the murder of a Brink's guard several decades ago in s upssoedly political holdup. This one is worse, though, to me it is simply hate speech and goes far beyond anything that could possibly be termed a simple personality conflict.</p>

<p>This series of bows to extreme politics is an odd situation for the school to be in, to my mind; when I visited it a couple of years ago, it did not seem a very impressive place, though it was pleasant. Its facilities were nice but not as impressive, say, as Colgate's, not to mention other LACs we visited. Also, the point was clearly made that admission was not need blind. The thing that most turned us off it however was this: our guide was a very sweet young man on scholarship; he was from an inner city high school and emphasized how hard he was having to work to keep up with his coursework; he noted, not resentfully but very tellingly, that he did schoolwork about five hours a day. He noted that many of his classmates, seemingly all from affluent backgrounds, were way better prepared for college than he was and spent much less time time on their work; there was an unspoken sense that maybe he cared more than they did about doing well, but I may be reading my own reaction into what he said. In any case, when my daughter adn I left campus, we both had the same basic feeling. We felt sorry for him because he seemed to be in almost above his head, and we could not understand why he seemed to be getting no academic support from the school. We felt that while it's great to give someone a scholarship and an opportunity, we could not fathom why someone wasn't mentoring him actively, or watching out for him in other respects and seeing if he is getting the support he needed. (I know the story may not be as simple as that, but that was our take on it.) So when I read about this latest Hamilton epsisode, I was reminded of that visit and feel that maybe Hamilton needs to look in its own house first before it brings in speakers to, as the speaker series sponsors probably would express it, shake its community out of complacency and stir debate.</p>

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<p>nedad:
"Once again, mootmom, I already stated that I agree that the answer to falsehood etc. is MORE speech - no one need quote Brandeis at me: I am the recipient of several Human Rights Awards."</p>

<p>Um... 'scuse me, but I was not "quoting Brandeis at [you]": I was quoting a relevant passage from the Hamilton president's statement, which I thought pointed at her reasoning for deciding to decline to interfere with Churchill's visit. You might note that I did not present a viewpoint of my own, but rather provided another source of information and explanation.</p>

<p>As someone else has mentioned, it is almost a sure bet that since Churchill was invited to address Native American activism issues, the organizers were not aware of his 9/11 comments. Whether it was wise for the Hamilton administration to let the talk go ahead in light of his other comments is what seems relevant in terms of Hamilton's reputation. If one believes this is an appropriate stance, it will not reflect poorly on Hamilton as a possible college choice. If one believes this is inexcusable, Hamilton will probably drop in esteem accordingly.</p>

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<p>Sincerely. I responded too quickly. Maybe reading my above post will provide some explanation as to why I might be too quick on the trigger. I can still feel (quite literally) the eight or nine hours of utter terror I went through while we waited for word on our relative.</p>

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<p>Between the guest lecturer connected to the Brink's murder and Churchill, it does seem that the Hamilton administration should be a bit more on top of who the faculty is inviting to speak on campus. I was stunned when I read the NY Times article this morning about Churchill.</p>