Pardon Our Insanity: Hank Payne, Kai Green and the Crazy Left at Williams College

Harry C. Payne, former president
of Williams College, 1994-1999.

While I was teaching at Williams College in MA, two of the 120 professors committed suicide.  I have always wondered if there was something wrong about the school which is - objectively - one of the most competitive, wealthiest and exclusive in the nation.  The three years I taught there were alarming to me in that I discovered a lot of hatred expressed against white people and - especially - young white men.  I remember leaving in 1989 thinking that it was an unhealthy institution - especially for young Christians.

In my experience, I think the money and prestige of Williams can be used to disguise a lot of deviant behavior and mental illness - as long as it is packaged as leftist ideology and academic perfectionism.

To give you a little insight into Williams College, I should report that one of its most recent presidents committed suicide in 2008.  Harry C. "Hank" Payne, pictured above, jumped from an eighth-floor hotel room in Atlanta, GA.  In my view, the twisted policies of Williams College - including its absolutely inhumane affirmative action policies - imply that any white guy that rose to power in that environment would have to have serious internal conflicts and a stinging case of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

I did a little research about mental illness and Williams College and found a lot of bad news consistent this this sad pattern.  For example, I found that a recent student, Katie Craig, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and took her own life in 2007.  On a more positive note, another former student, Jon Stanley, freely advertises both his graduation from Williams and his bipolar disorder.  In the worst case, we have Eric Bellucci, a man diagnosed with schizophrenia who killed his mother and father in a borough of New York City.  He attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan and graduated from Williams College. Mr. Bellucci boarded a plane to Israel and was apprehended after a ticket agent in the Ben Gurion Airport recognized him from media accounts and called the Israeli police.

One very sad case is that of Jamie Neal. She dropped in and out of Williams College and made it to her sophomore year before she took another medical leave from Williams College in early 2010. By March of 2010, the 21-year-old killed herself in the family's home.

One of the most spectacular examples is found in an NYT story regarding a black alumni, Natasha Williams '93, who died at 46 after many years of living on the streets in New York City. Surprisingly, she was in touch with a number of fellow Williams College graduates. Unfortunately, none of them applied enough pressure to get her into an institutional setting that would have addressed her rather obvious schizophrenia. She left behind two young children.

My concern is that the recruitment strategies used by Williams College are biased towards selecting mentally ill students, faculty and staff. After all, no sane person would ever contort their life to the extent demanded by the school's overwhelmingly leftist ideology.

I found out that Kai Green ’07, an assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies (WGSS), is spending the 2019 spring semester on medical leave. According to her own Facebook report, she suffered a profound psychotic episode in November 2018. She is a black transgender man. She reports "I started taking my clothes off piece by piece, so by the time I got to the Clark I was completely naked. My clothes were like breadcrumbs on the dark road. Eventually police came and put me in the back of the car. I can’t remember if I had handcuffs on. I remember handcuffs because I was singing to myself 'we have nothing to lose but our chains.' I remember thinking the song was magic spell that would unlock the cuffs."

As I write today, I understand that students at Williams College have built a shrine in Kai Green's honor and are treating her like a martyr to the cause of outspoken social justice.

In reality, of course, she is just a hurting mentally ill person. She is suffering from a chronic condition that will not change or go away. Unfortunately, like Harry C. "Hank" Payne, Kai Green is destined to suffer longer than she should because her mental illness is disguised under layers and layers of unhealthy, misguided and dysfunctional leftist nonsense.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.