Social Justice Revisionism Comes for Washington and Lee

In the fall of 2018, the trustees of Washington and Lee University voted to paper over parts of the university’s history.

On the recommendations of Washington and Lee’s “Commission on Institutional History and Community,” the board voted to close off the Recumbent Statue of Robert E. Lee in the university chapel that bears his name and to remove the name of John Robinson from an important campus building.

A group of alumni were concerned by those decisions and started to dig deeper. They discovered that those weren’t the only attempts to de-emphasize their school’s history. Over the preceding year, the school ended prayer at public ceremonies, temporarily removed a stop in the interior of Lee Chapel from campus tours for prospective students, and even briefly banned a children’s book on Lee’s horse, Traveller.

From those concerns, The Generals Redoubt was born. The mission of this group of alumni, friends, parents, and students is “the preservation of the history, values, and traditions of Washington and Lee University.” The group’s July 2019 newsletter explains that “A redoubt is a military term designating a temporary defensive position from which offensive operations can be launched. We thought the term aptly described what our group was trying to do.”

In particular, they want to make sure that the men who established and sustained the university are not erased from its history: George Washington, John Robinson, and Robert E. Lee.

The school now bears Washington’s name because he saved what was then Liberty Hall Academy by giving the school its first major endowment in 1796. In 1826, the school was once again struggling. It had only 65 students and little money. That year, trustee John Robinson died and left his estate to the school. Robinson’s generous gift, which included a 400-acre farm, livestock, a whiskey distillery, and 73 slaves, helped save the school from bankruptcy. Robert E. Lee became president of the school, by then called Washington College, in 1865. Lee proved an able and innovative president. Trustees voted to change the school’s name to Washington and Lee University after Lee’s death in 1870. Members of the Generals Redoubt want that history to be acknowledged and preserved, despite its complications.

Tom Rideout, president of the Generals Redoubt, is particularly concerned about the effect of recent changes on Washington and Lee’s students. “Students are disadvantaged in their educational preparation for the world at large,” Rideout said. “And the focus on diversity, inclusion, and identity bloats the staff and payrolls and divides the students.”

Data from the Department of Education corroborate Rideout’s claims of administrative bloat. The number of full-time non-instructional staff per 1,000 Washington and Lee students grew from 241 in 2012-2013 to 291 in 2018-2019. That’s an increase of 21 percent in fewer than 10 years. The largest increase was in “Community, Social Service, Legal, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations,” which often includes diversity and inclusion personnel. In 2013-2014, there were just 48 employees in those categories. Now there are 113, despite the fact that enrollment has not grown. Washington and Lee spends nearly $9,000 per student on “day-to-day executive operations of the institution, not including student services or academic management” according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

Members of the Generals Redoubt are also concerned about changes in the curriculum, including a proliferation of courses related to identity-driven political agendas focused on race, class, sex, and gender. Neely Young, vice president of the Generals Redoubt, cataloged some of those courses here. A few notable examples are “Queering Colonialism” in the history department and “Post-modernism: Power, Difference, and Disruption” in the philosophy department. “Many of these courses seem to exist to meet the ever-narrowing and increasingly politicized specializations of the professoriate,” Young wrote.

Rideout blames “presentism” for the recent attempts to sanitize Washington and Lee’s history and change its curriculum. The FAQ section of the Generals Redoubt website explains:

During the late ’50s and very early ’60s of the last century, Professor Thomas P. Hughes taught W&L students of the rewriting of Russian history by Lenin and Stalin, both true authoritarians to their core. Today, this dubious academic practice is known as Presentism. Essentially it seeks to apply today’s cultural and moral values [to] the people and events of prior periods. If it finds the two in conflict, the modern view prevails and the well-established history of that era is at risk of significant modification.

The actions recommended by the administration and adopted by the Board of Trustees in the fall of 2018 are clear signs that Presentism is alive and well at Washington and Lee. The Report of the Commission on Institutional History and Community clearly left open the option to remove the names of George Washington and Robert E. Lee from that of the University, which would be the ultimate triumph of Presentism.

Yale dean Anthony Kronman addresses the same issue in his recent book, The Assault on American Excellence, which includes a chapter on memory. In it, he makes the case for living with monuments to the past, even if they do not meet our present standards:

[Dismissing preservationists as] racists in disguise…draws attention away from the special responsibility of our colleges and universities to cultivate the capacity for enduring the moral ambiguities of life. This includes—indeed it is often first aroused by—the need to acknowledge the complexities of a checkered and sometimes discreditable past. The ability to do this is moral strength. It is a species of moral imagination as valuable as it is rare, and as vital to the health of our democracy as to that of our colleges and universities themselves. Its neglect, or suppression, is an educational disgrace.

The zeitgeist at many universities calls for completely erasing the sins of the past from every campus building, quad, and sign, taking with them the university’s place in history. Washington and Lee, with direction from the Generals Redoubt, can show that there is another way. It can set an example of how to live with the ambiguity of the past. Although Washington and Lee is unique, lessons from its experience can inform all of our historic universities as they learn to acknowledge and understand the past.

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Free Expression at Duke: What Do Freshmen Blue Devils Think?

As director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Campus Free Expression Project, I am always eager to get beyond the DC beltway to learn how students understand free expression on their particular campus. So, to return to Duke University, my alma mater, was particularly welcome.

Duke has a legacy of defending the expression of controversial views. In 1903, the school set a new standard in defending faculty academic freedom when the trustees voted to reject history professor John Bassett’s offer to resign after his praise of Booker T. Washington sparked controversy for the school—this only three years after Leland Stanford’s widow was able to have Edward Ross dismissed from the faculty of Stanford for arguments contrary to Mrs. Stanford’s business interests.

It was Duke political scientist John H. Hallowell who arranged to have Martin Luther King, Jr. address the 1964 annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association when it was held in Durham, at a time when not all in attendance were keen on King’s Civil Rights message.

But that is Duke’s past—what about today?

Just before my visit last fall, the Duke Student Government refused to recognize a Christian group, Young Life, that would not allow LBGTQ+ leaders. (A federal judge twice this year ruled that the University of Iowa violated the free speech, free association, and free exercise of religion rights with refusals to recognize Christian groups for parallel reasons). Also, Duke declined to renew the contract of an instructor who had taught at Duke for two decades apparently because, as he described at this site, he encouraged classroom discussions of polarizing and controversial topics.

Is support among Duke students for free expression and the First Amendment eroding?

Back in October, I had my chance to find out. Sixty freshmen students came for a conversation on those topics. Leading the conversation were Duke Professor of Law H. Jefferson Powell, Duke First Amendment Clinic Supervising Attorney Nicole Ligon, and me. The students probed the ways in which free speech and the First Amendment shaped their lives. Topics included the role of social media, whether the protections of the First Amendment should apply to private universities as much as public ones, and the importance of viewpoint diversity.

The conversation became especially intense when one student asked, shouldn’t we restrict free speech when we’re seeing hate-driven violence? That question reaches the core of today’s debates about campus free expression. Across American higher education, many today doubt that campuses can be safe, diverse, and inclusive while also remaining wide open to speech and expression.

First Amendment experts Powell and Ligon made the case that attempts to regulate speech frequently do more harm than good. Campus provocateurs often arrive with the intention of generating a spectacle rather than articulating a defensible argument. Silencing them lends credence to their claim of being targeted by crazed protesters for the truth they might speak. But allowing the most outrageous speaker to face questions—or an empty room—shows their claims of being conspired against to be meritless and denies them a propaganda victory. The most effective response to the vilest speech, they argued, is not to give such speakers the spectacle they desire.

On the other hand, speech codes meant to exclude hateful speech often end up ruling as out of bounds speech that merits thoughtful engagement. Ms. Ligon described how she and Duke Law students had filed an amicus brief on behalf of University of South Carolina students who had been investigated for actions they took as leaders of a pro-free speech campus protest. The freshmen present appreciated the irony of students facing investigations for protesting in favor of free speech and the chilling effect this would have on campus discourse.

I offered the example of the University of Maryland Statement on Free Speech Values, which asserts that one reason the university does not have a speech code is that such codes have been deployed to quell efforts of marginalized communities to advance their interests. I pointed out that controversial speech was essential to the Civil Rights Movement—Civil Rights leader and now eminent Congressman John Lewis was arrested for picketing with a sign that read, “One Man, One Vote.” Likewise, I pointed out, the movements for access to contraceptives and women’s suffrage were carried forward by the use of highly controversial speech.

Greeting that argument with skepticism, someone posed a question about whether free speech that furthered the interests of marginalized communities was an approach rendered obsolete by social media. In an age where social media fuels attacks such as those seen in Christchurch, New Zealand, Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the questioner asked, shouldn’t more be done to make sure that hateful speech is not translated into violence?

That was the most contested question of the evening. Some noted that speech on social media had been used to advance causes with which students sympathized, such as #MeToo; some thought that social media could be used to engage others and change their minds; some thought that ignoring hateful speech—just like not giving campus provocateurs an audience—could be effective in shutting them down; and others favored regulation of online (and perhaps other) speech to prevent violence.

Students who learn during their college years to sustain civil and respectful discussions are empowered to assess and counter hateful speech wherever they encounter it.
Perhaps the most important part of the conversation was not about the First Amendment per se, but why the First Amendment should not be the only standard for campus discourse. As Powell and Ligon pointed, out, the First Amendment protects “the marketplace of ideas.” However, a free-wheeling marketplace may not be the best analogy for campus discourse. Whatever consumers favor wins in the marketplace; “because I like it” fully justifies a consumer’s choice.

But in academic discourse, justifying preferences with “that’s just my opinion” shouldn’t be good enough. Assertions and theories must be backed by evidence and arguments; the judgments of experts receive additional weight; and disciplinary standards determine what constitutes a valid case. All of us on the panel made the argument that the First Amendment should be a minimum bar for campus discourse, protecting speech and expression but leaving it necessary for students, guided by professors, to engage in thoughtful, rigorous, and wide-ranging academic debate.

In fact, as we panelists observed, the level of conversation in the room showed that these students were sophisticated enough to see through sophomoric tropes. But the conversation also reminded me that many 18-year-olds are just starting to hone their skills of conversation and to learn that they can trust that dialogue about difficult and controversial subjects advances our common good, even when it does not result in agreement.

Students who learn during their college years to sustain civil and respectful discussions are empowered to assess and counter hateful speech wherever they encounter it—but more, they are able to engage in conversations about the pursuit of truth. College leaders, from professors to college presidents, must explain to them how campuses can welcome all students while protecting free speech. If more students absorb that lesson, students might find they were more able to tolerate student groups with unpopular views and classroom conversations on polarizing topics.

Helping students grow in their ability to engage in campus conversations is part of our work at the Bipartisan Policy Center Campus Free Expression Project. In today’s highly polarized society, we must ensure that students learn the skills of respectful discourse that will help them graduate as thoughtful citizens.

The conversation with those lively and engaged Duke freshmen was a terrific example of the kind of work to be done with freshmen as they arrive on campus to ready them to be engaged citizens and leaders in our democracy.

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Yale Drops Introductory Art History Course as ‘Overwhelmingly White’

In a victory for the forces of political correctness, Yale University’s undergraduate school will stop teaching a widely acclaimed introductory survey course in art history because the artists studied are “overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male.”

The move goes against the longstanding advice of the National Association of Scholars, a group that challenges political correctness in the academy.

“All who care about the life of the mind should study the history of Western civilization, its achievements and failures, and its artistic and cultural legacy. State and federal policy should encourage K-12 and college students to study the West, including how its ideals of liberty underpin the structure of our republic.”

Under pressure from activists in 2017, Yale dropped its requirement that English majors study the works of William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer, two longtime staples of English literature, The College Fix reported at the time. The move came after a petition circulated calling on Yale to “decolonize the English department” by moving away from the study of white male writers.

The course now headed to the chopping block, “Introduction to Art History: Renaissance to the Present,” which at one time was taught by the legendary American art historian Vincent Scully, was regarded as “one of Yale College’s quintessential classes,” The Yale Daily News reports.

But student unease “over an idealized Western ‘canon’ — a product of an overwhelmingly white, straight, European and male cadre of artists,” forced the cancellation of the course. Maria Bass, the director of undergraduate studies at Yale University, said introductory survey courses should be “designed in recognition of an essential truth: that there has never been just one story of the history of art,” according to The Daily Wire.

Similarly, Art History department chairman and the course’s instructor, Tim Barringer, said there is more to the history of art than Western art. When there are so many other regions, traditions, and genres to look at, all of which are “equally deserving of study,” placing European art on a pedestal is “problematic,” he said.

“I believe that every object I discuss in [the course] … is of profound cultural value,” Barringer told the student newspaper. “I want all Yale students … to have access to and to feel confident analyzing and enjoying the core works of the Western tradition. But I don’t mistake a history of European painting for the history of all art in all places.”

In the future, emphasis will be placed on “questions of gender, class and ‘race’” and art’s connection to Western capitalism and climate change, Barringer wrote in a syllabus online.

Barringer’s department plans to replace the course with a multitude of other course offerings that de-emphasize the contributions of Western civilization, including “Art and Politics,” “Global Craft,” “The Silk Road,” and “Sacred Places.”

In two or three years, he told the student newspaper, the department will offer a new “Introduction to Art History” course, but it “will be a course equal in status to the other 100-level courses, not the introduction to our discipline claiming to be the mainstream with everything else pushed to the margins.”

Not all Yale students are keen on the change.

“My biggest critique of the decision is that it’s a disservice to undergrads,” the school newspaper quoted undergraduate student Mahlon Sorensen as saying.

“If you get rid of that one, all-encompassing course, then to understand the Western canon of art, students are going to have to take multiple art history courses. Which is all well and good for the art history major, but it sucks for the rest of us, which, I would say, make up the vast majority of the people who are taking [the course].”

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