Many of my readers may not instantly realize who the Bears might be. Some local readers may think I refer to a Stonington High athletic team, and some may think I’m referring to the denizens of Jellystone Park. But the cognizanti will know that I can only be referring to Bowdoin College (and bears of the polar variety), of which I am a prouder alumni today than yesterday, for we are now the number one academic target of the paranoid and racist right, and what greater source of pride could a school have:
The president of Bowdoin College responded forcefully Wednesday to a scathing, 360-page critique of the small, selective Maine college released last week by a conservative-leaning higher education advocacy group.
“Let me be clear and direct: The report by the National Association of Scholars is mean-spirited and personal,” Bowdoin president Barry Mills wrote in a statement posted online at the college and e-mailed to nearly 20,000 alumni and parents of current students. “It exaggerates its claims and misrepresents both what we do at Bowdoin and what we stand for.”
The response from Mills lagged a week behind the report, titled “What Does Bowdoin Teach?” The report is being championed by the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
A college spokesman said that officials needed time to review the lengthy document but grew concerned as misrepresentations of the school pulled from the report gained traction on talk radio and in the blogosphere this week, prompting some angry calls to college offices from anonymous critics.
(via The Boston Globe)
The report was apparently a made to order hatchet job, paid for by a rich racist who got mad at Bowdoin President Barry Mills for implying that he was a rich racist:
But the origins of the report have raised questions about its intent. Its funder, New York money manager Thomas Klingenstein, has a contentious history with Mills dating to 2010, when the two men first met on a golf course in Maine.
A few weeks later, Mills briefly described their encounter in a speech at Bowdoin. Without naming Klingenstein, the college president said his golf opponent had told him he would not donate to Bowdoin — or to Williams College, Klingenstein’s alma mater, for that matter — because of their “misguided diversity efforts,” a pronouncement Mills said left him with “despair and deep concern.”
So, the National Association of Scholars, an oxymoron if ever there was one, always on the look out to soak a rich conservative, agreed to conduct a study of what’s wrong with education today, allegedly using Bowdoin as representative of the type. (Read the article for the full story) Surprisingly, folks weren’t terribly excited about cooperating, so in the end, they had to base their previously formed conclusions on rather scanty evidence:
At Bowdoin, the researchers were tolerated, but did not get much help, said Wood, who described canceled interviews and curt replies to requests for information. Mills sent an e-mail to faculty making clear that the college did not endorse the study, but adding that “as always, you are free to discuss any matter you deem appropriate with whomever you choose.”
As a result, Wood said, the final report relies heavily on documents — course catalogs, minutes of meetings, student newspaper articles — that he said resulted in a stronger report.
Yes, truly, a stronger report, such as the conclusion reported later in the Globe’s article:
Alex Williams, a 2012 graduate of Bowdoin, challenged the study’s criticism of a rally held in 2011 after racist graffiti appeared on a student’s door. Students gathered to make public statements about their diversity, an episode the authors find troubling because speakers emphasized race or ethnicity, not their identities as scientists or mathematicians.
“The white, male authors of the NAS report display a sociopathic capability for removing this event from its immediate context,” Williams notes. “The identities that mattered for this demonstration were precisely the ones targeted by hateful speech.”
Well…duh.. You don’t even need to get into a highly selective institution to figure that one out, but apparently no one from the “National Association of Scholars” could do so.
So, anyway, I’m totally thrilled that my college is now the right wingers target one for their complaints that conservatism is not given proper respect in academia. Now, when I was there, there were a fair number of conservative professors. In fact, my favorite teacher was a conservative Republican, though, if he still lives and breathes, he must be mystified by the folks who’ve hijacked both those terms. Were I Barry Mills, I’d point out that today’s conservatives have forfeited their right to academic respectability by turning their backs on science and reason. We rational types neither expect or get respect in the seminaries and bible colleges; they should expect none from us.
I must say, however, that this incident has given me new found respect and appreciation for Barry Mills and the job he has to do. Barry was a classmate of mine, but if we ever exchanged two words, I can’t recall. I’ve been skeptical about the high salaries college presidents pull down these days, but from this article I can now see that they’re deserved. Imagine having a job that requires you to 1) play golf …2) with people like Klingenstein. It must be hard to spend a lot of your time kissing the asses of the entitled rich, and having to do it while spoiling a good walk must make it even worse.
Postscript: I told my wife I was going to title this post “Take that, Swarthmore!”, but she, a loyal Swarthmore alum (my younger son went there too), objected, though I couldn’t see why. It was my way of gloating about the fact that Bowdoin had overtaken Swarthmore as a target of conservative scorn. It’s quite an honor unseating a champ that, time out of mind, has held an undisputed crown. So I couldn’t resist adding this postscript, to gloat a bit, but also to tip my hat to the former champ. We Bowdoinites can only hope we can live up to its example. We salute you, Quakers!
Update: The report is even worse than I thought. Check out Conservative Scholars’ Investigation Says Bowdoin College Is Awesome
