Last week, in the aftermath of the national fury that has erupted, and continues, over the apparent killing by a Minneapolis police officer of a black man, George Floyd, while he was being taken into custody, a letter appeared in my inbox from Christina H. Paxson, president of Brown University, where I teach. The letter, sent to thousands of students, staff, and faculty, was cosigned by many of Brown’s senior administrators and deans.
“We write to you today as leaders of this university,” the letter begins, “to express first deep sadness, but also anger, regarding the racist incidents that continue to cut short the lives of black people every day.”
It continues:
“The sadness comes from knowing that this is not a mere moment for our country. This is historical, lasting and persistent. Structures of power, deep-rooted histories of oppression, as well as prejudice, outright bigotry and hate, directly and personally affect the lives of millions of people in this nation every minute and every hour. Black people continue to live in fear for themselves, their children and their communities, at times in fear of the very systems and structures that are supposed to be in place to ensure safety and justice.“
I found the letter deeply disturbing, and was moved to compose the following response, which I shared with a colleague. I’m happy now to share it as well:
Dear ____:
I was disturbed by the letter from Brown’s senior administration. It was obviously the product of a committee—Professors XX and YY, or someone of similar sensibility, wrote a manifesto, to which the president and senior administrative leadership have dutifully affixed their names.
I wondered why such a proclamation was necessary. Either it affirmed platitudes to which we can all subscribe, or, more menacingly, it asserted controversial and arguable positions as though they were axiomatic certainties. It trafficked in the social-justice warriors’ pedantic language and sophomoric nostrums. It invoked “race” gratuitously and unreflectively at every turn. It often presumed what remains to be established. It often elided pertinent differences between the many instances cited. It read in part like a loyalty oath. It declares in every paragraph: “We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident.”
And just what truths are these? The main one: that racial domination and “white supremacy” define our national existence even now, a century and a half after the end of slavery.
I deeply resented the letter. First of all, what makes an administrator (even a highly paid one, with an exalted title) a “leader” of this university? We, the faculty, are the only “leaders” worthy of mention when it comes to the realm of ideas. Who cares what some paper-pushing apparatchik thinks? It’s all a bit creepy and unsettling. Why must this university’s senior administration declare, on behalf of the institution as a whole and with one voice, that they unanimously—without any subtle differences of emphasis or nuance—interpret contentious current events through a single lens?
They write sentences such as this: “We have been here before, and in fact have never left.” Really? This is nothing but propaganda. Is it supposed to be self-evident that every death of an “unarmed black man” at the hands of a white person tells the same story? They speak of “deep-rooted systems of oppression; legacies of hate.” No elaboration required here? No specification of where Brown might stand within such a system? No nuance or complexity? Is it obvious that “hate”—as opposed to incompetence, or fear, or cruelty, or poor training, or lack of accountability, or a brutal police culture, or panic, or malfeasance—is what we observed in Minneapolis? We are called upon to “effect change.” Change from what to what, exactly? Evidently, we’re now all charged to promote the policy agenda of the “progressive” wing of American politics. Is this what a university is supposed to be doing?
I must object. This is no reasoned ethical reflection. Rather, it is indoctrination, virtue-signaling, and the transparent currying of favor with our charges. The roster of Brown’s “leaders” who signed this manifesto in lockstep remind me of a Soviet Politburo making some party-line declaration. I can only assume that the point here is to forestall any student protests by declaring the university to be on the Right Side of History.
What I found most alarming, though, is that no voice was given to what one might have thought would be a university’s principal intellectual contribution to the national debate at this critical moment: namely, to affirm the primacy of reason over violence in calibrating our reactions to the supposed “oppression.”
Equally troubling were our president’s promises to focus the university’s instructional and research resources on “fighting for social justice” around the world, without any mention of the problematic and ambiguous character of those movements which, over the past two centuries or more, have self-consciously defined themselves in just such terms—from the French and Russian Revolutions through the upheavals of the 1960s.
My bottom line: I’m offended by the letter. It frightens, saddens, and angers me.
Sincerely,
Glenn
Says G:
I agree Brown’s is a badly written letter. All committee written lettrs are bad as each member of the ommttee tries to add a word or line that he or she thinks will make the issue clearer or more pertinent. But, its the wy of social issue expression -- other than singing solidarity forever. What would you have the profs and the leadership of the school do. Send a memo to each teacher asking him or her to write their own personal appreciation of the proble, sign, it and send to the President of the University to be presented to the press as the voice of the school. You could walk to the moon before that could be arranged or done. The net net -- you hvave a badlly written letter, hyperbolic in nature, but still presenting the various social and racia issuesl that are roiling the USA today. Petitions and letters of this nature have been the Vox of the masses since writing began. Other than disagreeing with the extent of the problem what did Dr. Loury want other than greater participation in the drafting?
Me:
The old joke is a camel is a horse designed by committee.
Assuming the school *had* to say anything, big assumption, there could have been a way of saying something that didn’t so transparently want to placate students and faculty by joining them in bowing before the day’s conventional and unsubstantiated wisdom, thereby insulting independent minded intellectuals like Lowry.
The letter is like the email I got from Uber today with its statement decrying systemic racism. What I took from that email is that someone at Uber decided that such decrying is good for the ol’ bottom line. I characterize the content of the letter differently than you. It doesn’t just avert to the issues plaguing the US. Those Issues are complex and at least two sided. In the letter, Brown takes a particular position on them that is problematic for among the reasons Loury notes and is questionable for the same reasons. The letter makes Brown an imbiber of the “narrative.”
A better letter could have raised those issues but in a way that fit with what in big part a university is supposed to do, expressing a commitment to disinterestedly but deeply and rigorously exploring those issues with a view to their better understanding and, so, join a vital national conversation about them. Something like that.
I suppose for those who with Godly omniscience know the truth of these matters, Brown’s letter will go some way toward satisfying them. But for the mere mortals among Brown’s faculty and students who are sufficiently open minded and modestly Socratic in knowing what they don’t know—take Loury for example—but not willing to accept Brown’s ready platitudes and its intoning of ready conventional wisdom, the letter is an affront.
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