In the annals of academic condescension, there can be few equivalents in modern times to the letter, signed by 110 (and counting) college presidents, addressed to President-elect Donald Trump. “In light of your pledge to be ‘President for all Americans,’ ” it declares, “we urge you to condemn and work to prevent the harassment, hate and acts of violence that are being perpetrated across our nation, sometimes in your name.”
To be sure, the letter fails to acknowledge that a significant percentage of the “harassment, hate and acts of violence” to which it refers have been perpetrated by opponents, rather than proponents, of Trump’s candidacy. As is often the case, acts of vandalism and symbolic gestures of bigotry—on campus and off—have been committed by the putative targets of such harassment and violence in order to discredit their adversaries. This is a common tactic. So the letter goes on: “In our schools, on job sites and college campuses, on public streets and in coffee shops, members of our communities, our children, our families, our neighbors, our students and our employees are facing very real threats, and are frightened.”
However, as The Scrapbook is constrained to point out, the public spectacles of violence, abusive speech, and civil disobedience in America since the election—in Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Oakland, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, and innumerable locations—have been committed not in Trump’s name but by his detractors. Indeed, it could well be said that the likeliest victims of “harassment, hate and acts of violence” since November 8 have been Trump supporters, not the “children . . . neighbors . . . students,” and so on, cited by the college presidents.
In one sense, the letter is partisan business as usual, and the signatories are the usual suspects. The organizer is the president of Bennington College, and among the signatories are the chief executives of Antioch, Sarah Lawrence, Goddard, Wesleyan, Bard, Haverford, Wellesley, Middlebury, Guilford, Swarthmore, Sewanee, Earlham, and Williams. The Scrapbook can safely assume where their sentiments lie on the political spectrum.
As with most political pronouncements, however, there is a measure of irony here. The presidents counsel the president-elect to “reaffirm the core values of our democratic nation: human decency, equal rights, freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination.” And yet, if there is one place in America where the core values of human decency, equal rights, freedom of expression, and freedom from discrimination are imperiled, and demonstrably under assault, it is on America’s campuses, where the drift toward mob rule and uniformity of thought in recent years has been painfully evident.
If Donald Trump were inclined to do such things, he should send each president a telegram: “Pedagogue, heal thyself.”
