WASHINGTON, DC - Two weeks ago, I decided to commence research for a large writing project on ex-president Bill Clinton. My first task: Review some thirty or so articles in popular press about Bill Clinton’s flaws and mistakes. After that, I talked to three political scientists at my
alma mater, Williams College, about his administrative hallmarks and leadership
failures. Then I interviewed Juanita Broaddrick over the phone for roughly
twenty minutes. Her testimony was detailed, thoughtful, and sounded credible.
The information she gave me about Mr. Clinton was violent, severe, vivid, even
startling.
In Ms. Broaddrick’s words, Clinton inveighed after raping
her: “Don’t worry I’m sterile. I had mumps when I was a boy. You better get some
ice on that (her bleeding upper lip).” Bill, she explained to me, is a man
callous with no conscience.
I paused before responding.
Since my conversation with Ms. Broaddrick, I have read
another dozen articles about Bill Clinton’s shame and infidelity in The
Washington Post, New York Times, The Atlantic, and Boston Globe. Tomorrow I
should revisit books by David Maraniss and John D. Gartner that explore Bill
Clinton’s difficult upbringing in Hope, Arkansas. I might also peruse some
books that parse his muck and sexual repulse for Hillary Clinton. For example,
The Case Against Hillary Clinton by Peggy Noonan.
My writing on Mr. Clinton may take as its starting place an
interesting story I heard from a former colleague at a dinner party about how
Bill Clinton found himself emailing Hillary’s campaign staff with concerns —
because Mrs. Clinton did not want to hear from Bill herself. As my friend
explained, he emailed Robby Mook about Hillary’s deficits and received no
response.
This article for ABC leads me to believe that Bill Clinton
was heavily blamed for defeating his wife in 2008, so Hillary tended to ignore pudge of his ego.
Bill’s ego is gaseous and gooey. Imagine a rich spinach dip
with jalapeño, cheese, cream, onion, tomato, and green chilies. A blob of fatty
acid screaming excess and high cholesterol. Mr. Clinton, as one political
scientist told me, was a soft populist with talent who never matured as mama’s
boy.
I look forward to more.
Zachary R. Wood is an assistant curator at TED, as well as a former columnist and assistant opinion editor
at The Guardian, a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at The Wall Street Journal,
and a class of 2018 graduate of Williams College. He is the author of Uncensored (Random House, 2019).
WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Chad Topaz appears to be desperate for legitimacy now that his widely condemned plans to get a white female professor at UC Davis fired have backfired on him. As you may know, Topaz called for his Facebook and Twitter followers to subject Abigail Thompson to a merciless public shaming and to pressure her employer to punish her for expressing her personal opinions in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.
In response to outrage in the mathematics profession, Topaz took both his Facebook and Twitter pages private. Bizarrely, he also began redirecting links to his QSIDE Institute website created by his critics over to the landing page of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The insinuation, of course, is that anyone who disagreed with him was a dangerous white supremacist.
One of Chad Topaz's Williams College colleagues, Colin Adams, created a petition condemning Topaz's efforts to censor and punish Thompson. This petition has attracted over 625 supporters including two famous Fields Medalists, former presidents of the American Mathematics Society (AMS), and math and biology faculty at Williams College including his own department chair Richard de Veaux. If you wish, you can sign the petition here.
In his most recent missive, which I have included below the break, he calls for his supporters to join QSIDE and promote it by including mention of it in their e-mails and other channels of community. Unfortunately for Topaz, anyone who joins his brand new, family-run QSIDE Institute will share in the stigma of his appalling effort to get a white female professor black listed and the negative publicity now associated with the QSIDE Institute brand.
Finally, the story of Topaz's campaign to get Abigail Thompson fired has come to the attention of a national news blog, The College Fix.
Say it with me, kids: "The university is no longer the place for academic discussion." Your degree is worthless.
The irony is she is AGAINST making a decision based on skin color. This makes her the anti-racist, yet they will say the opposite.
Those who support totalitarianism and loyalty oaths need to consider the consequences for their own future. Eventually, they will need to go out into the world. And, of course, there is always the possibility that they will some day find themselves on the wrong side of the "party."
Chad Topaz? Since when have 2nd rate porn stars become mathematicians?
There is no God but the Party, and the Dialogue is his prophet.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND. His pronouns are Master/Commander.
Pamela E. Harris, Ph.D. Mathematics
at Williams College.
I scanned the list of people who signed the petition favoring Chad Topaz's efforts to silence, boycott, and fire a white, female math professor named Abigail Thompson. I was curious to see if anyone from his own department at Williams College was supporting him. I found there is only one signatory who claims Williams College as their institutional affiliation: Pamela E. Harris.
According to a recent article in the AMS Notices, it looks like she was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. She came here with her parents when she was 12. She appears to have lied on her paperwork to get into a community college. The article states: "It took some creative
form-filling, and hoping that nobody found the inconsistencies in the paperwork, for Pamela to be on her way to
the Milwaukee Area Technical College, where she earned
two associate degrees."
She arrived at Williams College about four years after getting her doctorate. Here is how Williams described her in 2016:
Dr. Pamela E. Harris received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in May 2012. Her research interests focus on combinatorial problems related to representation theory. Dr. Harris has previously taught courses in number theory, linear algebra, calculus, and statistics and probability. In addition to enjoying working with students on original research, Dr. Harris actively works to improve diversity and retention rates among women and minorities in the mathematical sciences through her work and involvement with the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). Dr. Harris enjoys cooking all types of spicy food, playing tennis, and she is looking forward to joining a new jiu jitsu dojo.
As far as I can tell, she is used to teaching Linear Algebra and Calculus 1. Her CV is largely filled with travel, small grants, woke activities and articles on which she is a contributing author. I looked through a talk she gave at a conference and she talks openly about how she feels less pressure to perform when she is just one in a series of authors and not the sole author of an article herself. She claims she has found her "place" in the mathematics community as a member of one of these teams.
I believe her husband, Jamual Harris, works as a campus safety and security officer. I'm assuming this is how she ended up with a non-Mexican last name.
Curiously, I found that she was one of the "co-authors" of a paper Chad Topaz did about the horrifying shortage of non-white guy artists in the major collections of prominent art museums. The paper was written by a number of Williams College math department professors including Chad M. Topaz, Bernhard Klingenberg, Daniel Turek, Brianna Heggeseth,
Pamela E. Harris and Julie C. Blackwood. Of these, only Harris appears to have signed up with Topaz's attack on Abigail Thompson.
Julie Blackwood, however, signed the anti-Chad Topaz petition. This puzzled me a little because Blackwood, who recently got tenure, appears to be deep into ecology, global warming, and anti-Trump ideology. Nevertheless, she took a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (2010) from UC Davis, the same institution as the beleagured Abigail Thompson. Awkward...
Listening to Pamela E. Harris speak, I think she is someone, like Chad Topaz, who has been taking advantage of an unearned, inter-sectional harvest of academic privilege including being Mexican, female, and - best of all - an illegal alien DREAMER. She is the sort of person who - for purely selfish reasons - I would expect to support a partisan, anti-white, McCarthy-like purity test designed to screen out the job applicants, the sort who might always beat her at theorems but will never enjoy her ethnic, sex or legal status advantages.
LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - If you would like to stay in touch, I have established a new blog called Williams Liberty.
Williams Liberty has a different mission compared to Ephblog. Williams Liberty will be focused primarily on breaking news. It will be promoted through my existing Twitter accounts, accounts that have more followers than the college's Twitter accounts. Covering breaking news at our nation's top liberal arts college is a service which cannot be provided by the Williams Record and would not be allowed on the college's websites.
It will, of course, be conservative friendly and politically incorrect.
In particular, it will provide the conservative viewpoint which has been largely absent on campus since 1989. Its contributors will be immune from ideologically motivated abuse or boycotts.
Consistent with conservative sensibilities, it will be well-written, tightly edited and moderated. Its language will be professional and PG at worst. Williams Liberty will be open to guest contributors (anonymous or not).
Guest contributors will be restricted to existing or prior William's College faculty and students.
Comments will be welcome from all. It may reserve a few spots for student contributors who will be picked on a competitive basis at the beginning of the school year or who have done a good job as guest contributors.
If you would like to submit an article for publication at Williams Liberty, please contact me through the form available on the blogsite, or me at 949.338.5921.
By the way, you can follow Williams Liberty on Twitter at @williamslibert5.
John C. Drew, Ph.D., is a former Williams College professor in American politics and political economy. He contributes to American Thinker, Breitbart, Campus Reform, The College Fix, and WorldNetDaily.
Over on Twitter, Franny Choi announced that she had accepted a two-year fellowship in English at Williams College. "I’m so so so excited to work with the fierce students at Williams," she wrote. Here's how she describes herself on her website:
Franny Choi is a queer, Korean-American poet, playwright, teacher, organizer, pottymouth, GryffinClaw, and general overachiever. She is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017).
I imagine the prolific Choi will feel right at home given her hatred for Trump, her advocacy for illegal immigrants, and her hostility to the second amendment. Inexplicably, her tweet indicates her surprise at her new appointment. "Can you believe," she tweets, "they wanted to hire this weepy futch potato?"
Out of curiosity, I looked up "futch." It means she sees herself as midway between being a feminine lesbian (femme) and a masculine lesbian (butch). There is even an attractive, multicolored chart for this.
I'll leave it to others to figure out why she refers to herself as a "weepy potato."
I think the readers of Ephblog are not as surprised as Franny about why the English department wanted to hire her.
I suspect we would be a good deal more shocked if the English department hired a high femme. Personally, I would consider it progress if the English department hired a poet - maybe even a stone butch - who composed poems that rhymed...like the way poetry used to be, back when it was popular and everyone liked it.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Report this morning and highlighted the reactions of those of us who were hoping Williams College would adopt the free speech absolutism of the Chicago Principles including Jerry Coyne, Luana Majora and me.
Ethan Berman, a student at the University of Texas-Austin, criticizes the Sawicki Report saying "...this ad hoc committee on 'Inquiry and Inclusion' instead gave the administration plenty of loopholes to regulate both student and faculty speech, including a 'feedback' protocol that resembles a community-wide heckler’s veto."
The article favorably quotes the pessimistic views of Jerry Coyne, a top leader of the New Atheist movement, who asserts it is impossible to reconcile freedom of speech and inclusiveness, and silly to think the Sawicki Report will fix things. “If Mandel and the committee thinks that this policy will quell the discontent of Williams’s woke students when they return this fall," Coyne writes, "they are sorely mistaken."
On a positive note, the article report Coyne was pleased that the committee report dropped an idea floated earlier that would have required each student group to have a faculty advisor who would discuss “the appropriateness of a speaker and its effect on the College community."
The College Fix interviewed Williams biology professor Luana Majora who indicated she was “relieved” the report was “not as terrible” as she feared it might have been. Maroja told The Fix that she agrees with Coyne’s take “for the most part." “I thought [the report] would require an ‘advisor’ approval all invited speakers,” as Coyne feared, Maroja wrote in an email. “We will see what the fall brings to us.”
WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Williams College has been named as one of the top five worst schools for free speech by civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, a co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The school won a not so coveted Campus Muzzle Award largely due to highly visible student protests against the adoption of the Chicago Principles and a generally "spineless" faculty response. According to Silverglate, a key moment was when
...a group of about 20 Williams students showed up to the faculty meeting to protest, some waving signs that stated “free speech is hate speech.” Disruption notwithstanding, the faculty was extremely accommodating, inviting the students into the meeting and permitting them to read their response aloud. But the students continued to be disruptive, at one point demanding that white male professors sit down and admit their “privilege,” and at another screaming that faculty members were trying to “kill them.”
Most of Silverglate's ire, however, is focused on the weak response from faculty members who seemed, over time, to give in to the free speech is hate speech mob.
We might expect at least the grownups on campus to safeguard free inquiry, even if those in their charge do not yet recognize how precious it is. Sadly, this is not the case at Williams College. Dozens of professors who originally supported the Chicago Principles caved to the unruly students and withdrew their signatures, rendering the petition all but defunct. These professors do their students a great disservice by denying them the opportunity to critically engage with a diversity of viewpoints, including ones they may disagree with. Such instances of intellectual cowardice by the professoriate are the antithesis of the goals of liberal education.
As you may know, Williams College is a previous award winner. It won a Campus Muzzle Award in 2016 in recognition of Adam Falk's paternalistic effort to protect the fragile students of Williams College from the potential death and destruction which would have ensued if he had not rescinded a speaking invitation to John Derbyshire.
For the record, the other Campus Muzzle Awards for 2019 went to Middlebury College, Roger Williams University, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst. In 2018, the awardees included UMass Boston, Tufts University, Northeastern University, Harvard and Brandeis University. More details on this story are available over at The College Fix.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
WILLIAMSTOWN - I had a chance to read through the final 75 page report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion. Here's my take on what we will now refer to as The Sawicki Report.
The most positive thing about the report is it illustrates the vast majority of students and alumni don't like it when the school bans speakers. Most significantly, the report indicates hosting a speaker does not imply the school endorses the speaker's positions. These findings support the interpretation that the vast majority of us do not buy the most important arguments for banning speakers.
In general, the report confirms what many of us active in off-campus social media - including Zachary Wood '18 - have been saying and complaining about regarding Adam Falk's decision to ban John Derbyshire.
On the downside, the report does nothing to reverse viewpoint discrimination.
The report mentions, then thoroughly ignores, complaints that conservative views are absent on campus and that conservative students and faculty are fearful of speaking up. There is no sense of historical or political context either. It doesn't seem to grasp the way dis-invitations have been solely focused on harming conservative speakers whose ideas interfere with the college's institutional commitment to identity politics, feminism and critical race theory.
To interpret the report's conclusions, it is important to understand the perspective of Sigal Ben-Porath, specifically her reasons for rejecting the Chicago Principles. In her view, freedom of speech is too often a tool used by conservatives. She disdains an absolutist view of free speech. She believes free speech has a tendency to silence minority students. Her philosophy helps explain why so much of the Sawicki Report stresses systems that give minority students the opportunity to process what they hear from outside speakers. Empirically, of course, Ben-Porath is off-the-charts wrong.
As Michael Poliakoff has observed, Ben-Porath's own principles have not worked out very well on her own University of Pennsylvania campus. As you may remember, the University of Pennsylvania Law School went after professor Amy Wax for the crime of promoting bourgeois values and questioning the usefulness of affirmative action. Ultimately, Ben-Porath's argument leaves you with a situation in which the administration still ends up choosing which speech will be privileged and which will be shut down.
Consequently, I don't see The Sawicki Report recommending a reversal of Falk's regrettable Derbyshire decision. If anything, it affirms Falk's views by making clear the administration still has the right to ban speakers. In this sense, their recommendations fall far short of the clear, decisive, and easy-to-understand Chicago principles.
On the topic of clarity, the report reminds me of Maud Mandel's earlier response to the CARE Now students. This is because it includes a long, encyclopedic recitation of existing policies which is designed to assure the reader everything is okay if only we are up-to-speed on the relevant on-campus literature.
In other words, pay attention to what we say and not what we do.
Instead of a pithy Chicago-style statement, we are left with a wordy, difficult to digest, mash up of unclear and unspecified recommendations designed to make it look like everyone has won.
Almost everyone.
The greatest ire developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on Inquiry and Inclusion is focused those over which it has the least control, the off-campus folks following and commenting on Williams College through social media. On the penultimate page of their report, the committee bares its fangs:
We must also recognize that speaker invitations (and disinvitations) are not the primary threat to inquiry and inclusion. Today’s intellectual discourse has been tainted by the rise of intolerant forms of expression and its proliferation on social media. While this can occur deliberately, it can also arise from (and further encourage) bad habits characterized by impatience, intimidation, and other deleterious forms of speech and thought. Here too, we can look to the Mission Statement, which cautions "...against the growing culture of simplification, where intricate issues are boiled down into fiercely held 'positions,' where counter-arguments are seen as irritating distractions from clarity, where 'points' have more power and visibility than the thinking that produced them.
We recommend that working against this culture be a focus of continued conversation and study, in particular to explore how the College can support students, faculty, and staff in the presence of internet discourse that can be used to harass, threaten, or demean individuals or otherwise disrupt the functioning of the College and its educational goals.
Essentially, The Sawicki Report closes with the observation it was given the wrong mission. Its real focus should have been on discovering ways to shut up contributors at Ephblog, Breitbart, Canary Mission, FIRE, First Things, The College Fix, College Reform, Mind the Campus, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Tablet, and Legal Insurrection and others who have been most active in protecting the rights, freedom and safety of politically non-compliant and ideologically persecuted students and faculty.
As I read the report, it is telling stakeholders there are no real problems with free speech at Williams, the administration should still be free to limit conservative speakers to appease campus activists, and the school's worst venom should be targeted at its off-site enemies, the social media activists and reporters who are holding the college accountable.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award winning political scientist.
In a letter to the Williams Record, Isaiah Blake '19 reveals his highly visible effort to create a culture of open antagonism against white students has come back to bite him. Showing no interest in apologies, Blake reports he is feeling "anxious and scared."
Isaiah Blake '21, center, leads a protest in February 2019 at Williams
College where students chant, I love you! I love me! I love us!
I love we!
This is quite an about face from the domineering verbal abuse he unloaded on white students by calling them "niggers" at an April 9, 2019 Williams College Council meeting. Blake told the white students, "You only go to the number one liberal arts school because I’m here, nigger. Period." Check out the details of Isaiah Blake's anti-white bigotry here.
Blake's religiously tinged letter puts his over-the-top butt-hurt on full display. The text of his letter is below:
May 8, 2019
To the editor:
My prayer this year was for the perspective and wisdom to know beauty and love. I have asked for the ability to see community grow like healing plants in a new garden. In order to plant a garden, you need a couple of things. You need garden tools and plants. You need space to place and to grow the plants. You need water, air, sunlight and compost.
But in order to keep a garden you need other things. You need permission from ancestors. You need the power of a community to sustain it. You need a fearful love.
Earlier in the year, we asked people to love. We chanted, “I love you! I love me! I love us! I love we!” Love is no easy task or fleeting word. After all of the difficulty of organizing, challenging CC, creating Black Previews, doing homework, being a good friend and maintaining good dental care, love has been no easy task for me. The response from the work I have done to be Black and proud on this campus has scared me and made me feel alienated or alone. Alt-right videos and articles with my name and face have made me anxious and scared. I asked: Who will keep me safe?
I fear no man. I fear no weapon (Isaiah 54:17). I only fear love. I fear the love of God. I fear the love of ancestors. I fear the love of my family, both biological and logical, family of blood and water. I fear the love of the water, air, sunlight and compost. I fear the love of gardens and the communities that grow them. I only fear the things I couldn’t live without. My prayer has been answered. I am thankful to everyone who loves me and cares for me. Who do you fear? Who loves you?
Amen & Ashe.
Isaiah Blake ’21
Blake's bigoted, anti-white rant was filmed by the College Council. It later became a viral sensation. Comments on the video came largely from those offended by his verbal abuse of white male students. As the letter above indicates, Isaiah Blake shows no empathy for his victims. He does not take responsibility for his mistake. He just seeks to make himself the victim by complaining about the national level coverage of his anti-white bigotry.
Isaiah Blake '21 holds a protest sign in March 2018 asserting
that white leaders in the legislature are terrorists.
As far as I can tell even his allies have turned on him. Some students planned a take-over of Hollander Hall and scheduled it for today, May 10, 2019. The entire protest only attracted about 20 people. It was as if they called for an occupation and no one came. Even more interesting, the notice promoting the demonstration didn't even mention Isaiah Blake's group, CARE Now. He reports he feels alienated and alone. He blames social media, but - in truth - all his critics did was present him speaking in his own words.
We want some money to fucking cook some fried fucking chicken and be niggers for once. Isaiah Blake '21
I imagine the immediate problem for Isaiah Blake '21 is he has become an embarrassment to his fellow CARE Now leaders.
Whoever is advising Blake, including his parents, might suggest he calm down and offer a sincere apology. He should also think through what else, beside politically motivated rage, contributed to his verbally abusive behavior and his willingness to mercilessly bully both black and white students.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Before Seyi Olaose '22 became the symbol of anti-white bigotry at Williams College she had a remarkable level of success in high school speech and debate. "I look forward to using my voice to educate the uneducated," she said, "at the National Speech and Debate Association national championship in Florida this month and at Williams College in the fall."
Oluseyi Olaose, teammate Esmeralda Reyes, and Coach DiCo
at the Long Island District tournament, where Oluseyi qualified
for the national championship and was named District
Student of the Year. (Achievement First Brooklyn High School)
This desire to educate the benighted denizens of Williams College may have been part of her motivation when the enraged Olaose exploded at white male student representatives at the April 9, 2019 College Council meeting, saying
"I WANTED SO BAD TO TELL HIM TO F*** YOURSELF. F*** YOURSELF. F***. ALL OF YA SHOULD ALL F*** YOURSELF.
I ran across a video of Seyi Olaose '22 where she repeats an award-winning speech which won her honors during her high school years. Significantly, she articulates many of the themes which appeared in her now famous, bigoted rant.
For example, she indicates she won a national level tournament with this speech at the University of Pennsylvania. She is good. Unlike her hate-filled tirade at Williams College, she uses humor to win over the audience even as she makes passive-aggressive comments.
Seyi Olaose '22 confronts white student representatives on
the Williams College Council on April 9, 2019.
In this video she explains her belief that conflict is good and that it creates solutions. She wants us to get used to the idea that confrontation is a good thing. A research study, she asserts, indicated that people who thought they were being assertive really weren't very assertive at all. I take this to mean that going over-the-top with your anger is a proper measure since it will make your comments more appropriately assertive.
Similar to her comments in the viral rant, Seyi says she feels less confident unless there is "critical mass" of blacks in the room. This video helps us understand why she seemed so preoccupied by the fact there were no black women at the College Council meeting.
Dear white people. I'm not calling you racist. I'm really not. What I'm saying is even though you may be my ally, when I walk into a room where I'm the only one who looks like me, it is my human instinct to get scared.
One of the funniest moments in the video is when she says her biggest fear is stereotype confirmation. She does not want to create the impression that she is just another angry black woman. Ouch! That observation didn't age well. Remember how she told off the white students who were the object of her ire: Olaose: I have not f***ing eaten today! BECAUSE YA DUMB ASS N***ERS WANTA F***ING TALK! Inclusion. Inclusion. FUCK YOUR INCLUSION! (HITS TABLE) BECAUSE I’M F***ING EXCLUDED. How many people look like you in this f***ing room right now?! How many people?!
White student: One!
Olaose: What the…? ARE YOU BLIND, MY N***ER? WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE?! YOU’RE A WHITE MAN! I can count f***ing how many? Literally this f***ing row. They look like you! Who is the black woman who look like me?
The one conclusion I feel absolutely sure about is the content of the bigoted rage Seyi Olaose '22 directed at white men at Williams College was the manifestation of a long-standing, well-nursed grudge. When she unloaded on those unsuspecting guys, it was a well-rehearsed and well-thought out performance.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
James Allsup has uploaded a funny and informative take on the April 9, 2019 livestream deleted by the College Council. Allsup's YouTube video has received 4,766 comments and 130,670 views as of May 4, 2019.
As you may know, this video features one of the CARE Now leaders, Isaiah Blake '21 saying “to be here [at Williams] is like sucking white d*** every f***ing day.” “We want some money to f***ing cook some fried f***ing chicken and be n***ers.”
Allsup's most humorous line was maybe everyone would be better off if the College Council just provided applicants with free knee pads.
On a more serious note, Allsup picked up on a theme I've been stressing. The bigoted rant performed by Isaiah Blake '21 and Seyi Olaose '22 wasn't about politics...it was about verbal abuse. These black students were using the cover of identity politics to inflict psychic pain on the white students.
The video isn't long...about 15:34. My comments are featured at 6:53 and again at 13:36.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
To provide prospective students and their parents with insight into the dysfunctional culture of Williams College, I thought it would helpful to review a transcript of the verbal abuse recently leveled against white student representatives at the April 9, 2019 College Council meeting. To make it easier to compare the transcript with the video, I have uploaded a version of the video that aligns with the transcript presented below.
To keep it interesting, I'll add in my commentary as appropriate. I'll start by saying that Seyi Olaose '21 creeps me out with her controlling behavior. When I taught at Williams College in the late 1980's my area of focus was child abuse and neglect. I'm hypersensitive to verbal abuse. In the following exchange, she is basically taunting the white student representatives, basically daring even shaming them to talk back to her. She is supported in this effort by the actor/student Isaiah Blake, '21. As you may know Isaiah has appeared in a number of films including Newton's Law and The Rainbow Experiment.
Start - 50:27
SO: And that’s valid too. Like, if you want to talk, you can talk. But seems like you’all…you…you had a lot to say. So where is it now?
WH: Thank you, guys. You should have gotten your money. You got money. Then I’m very happy if you got your money.
IB: Wow. Wow. That’s crazy.
SO: Say it to me.
Student Representative: I’m sorry this is so hard for you guys. I was just at the end. You know. (PAUSE) I don’t know what to say.
At this point, I can only assume that some of the white students in the room were tearing up as a consequence of the abusive language coming from IB and SO. The speakers apparently notice the tears and use the white student's display of emotion to further their humiliation.
SO: This is white liberal s***.
IB: This is the s***, the tears…
SO: Because nobody wants to talk. Because you had a lot of questions. You had a lot of questions. And I’ve had classes with you. I know what kind of d***heads you are. I’ve had political science with you. It’s s*** that opens up all a yo white moderate f***ing liberal bullshit. I know the type of person you are. So what do you want to say?
WH: I haven’t taken a poly sci class here.
SO: I wasn’t talking to you.
WH: I’m sorry.
This last bit is kind of inspiring since the young white student pushes back on SO for making an inaccurate generalization. What creeps me out is that she asks for feedback, but then shuts down anyone with the nerve to confront her. This strikes me as classic controlling behavior. It is consistent with the suggestion that the student speakers are attempting rule Williams College through fear and intimidation. It will be interesting to me to see how, if at all, the administration seeks to improve what Maud has identified as a culture of open antagonism.
All in all, I'm most impressed with the bearing and peacemaking of TW. After reviewing the tape, he looks like the strongest and most gracious person in the room. When too many of his fellow student representatives absorbed the speaker's verbal abuse without comment, Tristan stood up to these bigots, as follows:
Start - 51:20
TW: When you were sitting here and you were in discussion, I observed the regular order and I gave you a certain parliamentary respect that we do, and I would just ask in your conversation with me that you preserve that same respect. Now, the first thing…the first thing, when you referred to what I was writing. What I was writing down was in reference to what you were saying…it was a note of sort. And, you mentioned that why isn’t black previews called minority previews? And that was something that was said in here. That was something that I found problematic. It was, it was, it was never suggested in here that black previews be called minority previews. I think that’s where, kind of…
SO: This is on?! You’all wanna to run it back? Actually how many people remember me?
WH: I’ll respond to that. I, I was the person who said that.
SO: Oh. You have the minutes?
WH: I can respond. I was the person who said that. That was just a comment about the inclusive nature. I think that what you said and what other people in this room said resolved my, all of my concerns about the inclusive nature of your event.
SO: How long did that take? How long did that take? Very f***ing long. For you. For you, your problems to get resolved. I had to f***ing sit here. I had practice at 8:00 o’clock. I did not have time for ya n***ers.
IB: Have you eaten today?
SO: I have not f***ing eaten today! BECAUSE YA DUMB ASS N***ERS WANTA F***ING TALK! Inclusion. Inclusion. FUCK YOUR INCLUSION! (HITS TABLE) BECAUSE I’M F***ING EXCLUDED. How many people look like you in this f***ing room right now?! How many people?!
WH: One!
This was actually some of the best comic relief during this whole regrettable incident. I don't know the student's name, but good for him too. You cannot deny the sheer logic of his response. After all, he doesn't have a twin brother in the room. I think the intellectual environment at Williams College would improve if there were more courageous students like this.
At first, I did not understand why Seyi Olaose indicates she is frustrated that there aren't any black women in the room. The key to her views is a speech she gave in high school. It reveals that she believes it is a normal human reaction for her to react in fear if she doesn't see a certain number of blacks in a room with her.
I should add that one of the things that strikes me as extremely odd about the speaker's bigoted tirade is the way they repeatedly address the white students as niggers. I have never seen that before. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that this is another way that the black activist students lord their power over their white peers. Since white students are socially prohibited from using the word niggers, the black students are taunting them with language which cannot be answered under these bizarre social conditions. The discourse on campus might be improved if there was a new social compact where a white person can call a black person a nigger but only if the black person called the white person a nigger first?
SO: What the…? ARE YOU BLIND, MY N***ER? WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE?! YOU’RE A WHITE MAN! I can count f***ing how many? Literally this f***ing row. They look like you! Who is the black woman who look like me?
IB: You look like her?
WH: No.
IB: Oh, okay. What the hell!
SO: Great. At least you know something. Now I know why you got to Williams.
The comment "Now I know why you got to Williams" got my attention. I think it should be obvious that a blond white guy got into Williams College because of his extraordinary test scores and probably some impressive athletic or artistic talents too. It was clearly inappropriate for SO to demean him by suggesting that there was a puzzle about what qualified him to matriculate at Williams College. Again, it is difficult to imagine a situation where a white student might say that the black students confronting them were there only due to the need to provide more non-white faces in the diversity catalog.
All in all, this episode is a telling reminder of a dysfunctional culture of open antagonism where black students can repeatedly verbally abuse white students and get away without suffering similar abuse.
As Maud Mandel has noted in her letter to the college community, many schools are dealing with the conflict inherent in the practice of establishing segregated spaces in an attempt to improve diversity and inclusion. In the next portion of the transcript, we see the speaker IB deal with the issue of segregation by first noticing it in the room and then asking for it outside of the room.
Start - 53:10
IB: I’m just so confused. Because I did the same comment. I did the same and I don’t care or understand how the logic. I just don’t get it. The critical thing of the room is on the ground. I just don’t get it. Could you dare? How? Are we witnessing this? Am I here today? Because I can’t believe this. The room is literally segregated. Do you notice that?! Did you notice that? Because I noticed that from being here three seconds.
SO: Me too.
IB: What the hell! I just don’t understand it. Like how could you be so blind? I don’t know. Silence. Everyone goes back to talk to their fathers and their f***ing friends and all these God damn s*** and nothing gets to resolve. We just lose our breath. Right?
SO: Right? This is not a f***ing show.
IB: I’m not f***ing performing for you. This is not a monologue we created. We didn’t practice the lines before we came here. This is the lines of life. We do this s*** every day. I was talking to my father. I was living my life. I had essays and labs. Leave things behind. But here I am. You didn’t have to do that today. You get to catch up on your homework. Don’t tell me you’all have hard work. Don’t tell me you tired. I’m sick and tired of white people telling me they’ve got f***ing s*** to do. Because this wasn’t in their schedule today and damn, it wasn’t in mine.
SO: Not in my schedule.
IB: But, yet. Here I am wasting time, energy and life. And what do I got to do? You know what I have to do after this? You know what we have to do after this? We gotta find a space and time and community to heal and resist. It looks something like…black previews. And then when we ask for point four of a budget, we get asked to f***ing include you. What the f***?! After we done dealt with this s***.
And we say I just want a little bit of a break. I just want a little bit of an affinity house. I just want a little bit of a not having to speak to Charles Derbyshire time. I just want to have to deal with all these things. And then to come back and get asked: ‘Can it, can it be everyone else?’ What the f***? Everyone else isn’t here right now. It’s just us. We had to leave the meeting just to be here…with you. With ya’all. It’s your job. It is your job right there. And your job right there. And your job right there to be doing the work. We tired!
At this point, it looks like the room has been slowly filling up with other black students. As far as I can tell, SO addressed the room on her own earlier. She then contacted IB and requested that he come and defend her to the College Council. She or IB may have also sent messages to other black students to join them at the College Council meetings. Ironically, this example of piling on illustrates one of the dangers of the black community that John Derbyshire suggests white parents should warn their children. In particular, he cautions that it is best to leave an area if a large number of black people suddenly dominate a public space. IB recognizes the arrival of other black students and explains this show of force as a hallmark of genuine black community.
IB: Another one. You see when you call community they come. That’s what community looks like. Not some minority black guy. What are you talking about? Community looks like…if I call YOU SHOW UP because we’re getting eviscerated, embarrassed in this space. We having to suck d*** and then tell you we don’t like the way it tastes.
That’s what’s happening today. Sure we got the money. But we sick and tired of having to beg, steal, barter, go into every f***ing office, suck some more d*** just to ask for some shit. That’s crazy! Just so that we can get more community. We didn’t ask to interrupt this space. But you have some way of intruding in ours. We didn’t ask for none of that and yet here…we…are. What’s wrong with you?
From IB's comments, it is clear that he sees himself and his fellow black students as invaders who have taken over the space set aside for white male students. Sadly, the social climate has gotten so bad at Williams College that the school is already segregated...at least in the mind of IB.
At this point in the video, I assume more of the white representatives are tearing up. Normally, these tears should humanize them in the eyes of their verbal abusers. In this case, however, they only enrage SO further. I believe it is fairly common for abusers to believe they have the right, the authority, and even the responsibility to tell others how they should react. In this portion of the transcript, you can see how SO and IB interacted with each other for dramatic effect.
Start - 56:17
IB: What’s wrong with you?
SO: And do not look at…don’t look at us with tears.
IB: I don’t want your tears.
SO: I don’t want that. I want anger. You should all be f***ing angry. I…I sat there and I had to f***ing listen to every single person. While I was siting there like my voice is not f***ing…I could not f***ing speak! I WANTED SO BAD TO TELL HIM TO F*** YOURSELF. F*** YOURSELF. F***. ALL OF YA SHOULD ALL F*** YOURSELF.
IB: You had to be real nice.
SO: But I had to be real nice to get some f***ing money. So all you had to say was f***ing motion, I approve. What the f***. You should be f***ing angry.
IB: You just told me ‘You got the money so you should be quiet.’ That’s f***ing crazy, son. (HITS DESK) I can’t believe this man said that to me in my face. You got your money so you should be quiet. What the f***?! That’s what they say. Right. You got your financial aid, shut the f*** up. Right?! You got your little house. Right. You got your little food. Right. Shut the f*** up. You don’t need nothing else. You got your job at the best institution in the f***ing school So you shouldn’t ask for nothing else. Right? We made it number one. You couldn’t be number one without me. Period. So what’s the word?! Every time we ask for something, you’all grant it, your rating stays up. So what the hell is the part of the equation. I don’t get it, son. You only go to the number one liberal arts school because I’m here, n***er. Period
If we weren’t here could you possibly be? Or would you be some white exclusionary school who can’t do diversity. What?! So when we…try. What do you think we do when we do black previews? We retain pre-frosh. Fool! What’s wrong with you people?! I just don’t get it. You just said ‘You got your money. Stop talking. Why did you come back?’ Because you thought we had no honor. You said you got to come. You sucked it up. (SPAGHETTI SUCKING SOUND) What are we here for? To vomit it back out. We tired, son. I’m sorry. We couldn’t do it this time. You love it when we swallow. We couldn’t do it. Can’t believe that we just got told that to our face. That’s the level of respect that you have for me. Just in case you was confused with what you said to me.
When I heard IB make that spaghetti sucking sound on the video it reminded me of that moment in Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lecter tells Agent Starling that he once got a questionnaire from a census taker and reacted by killing him, cooking up his liver, and eating it with fava beans and a nice Chianti. (SPAGHETTI SUCKING SOUND)
It is clear that IB believes he is contributing to the U.S. News & World Report ratings of the school. I am guessing that these thoughts are not original to him. They are most likely repeated among those who believe that their primary contribution to the school is that they provide evidence of diversity. In truth, these ratings are more accurately seen as a consequence of the Williams College endowment.
This endowment, and the schools rural location, allow it to provide a high quality education at a lower than normal price. The U.S. News & World Report rating gives Williams College an advantage, in part, because it is a comparative bargain.
IB: When you said you got your money and so you should be quiet. I don’t even remember what you said. Because you know you all look like you. That’s that’s that’s what happened. Because when I get angry and enraged and stuff like that I don’t have the time to give you the dignity…no, in fact, I have the time to give you the dignity you gave to me. Because that’s what it looks like. That’s what it looks like. It’s crazy, son.
He just said, ‘Yo. Yo. I got somewhere to go. Can you please stop?’ What?! I had somewhere to go two hours ago. I missed work…to plan this shit. I missed…I missed everything…to plan it. What could I possibly be doing that I have to go and do all these other things? What could possibly be taking up my time? Why I can’t do my homework? He came for my job. He said, ‘Why aren’t you at work right now?’ What? It almost drives me crazy. Why am I not at work? Why am I not sleeping at night? Why do I have? What?
So I can take out time during my middle of my day to not do homework next Wednesday, so we can create space for black frosh’s. You ain’t creating it. You were going to create it? You were going to create minority previews? You was going to do it? Or the black woman who always got to do the God damn thing going to come in this space and create it. You was going to create minority previews, right? Right. God damn.
I think that the conventional wisdom is that the abusive behavior illustrated in this controversial video is that the black activist speakers were behaving this way as a reaction to their political environment and the way they have been treated as students on campus. I know enough about verbal and physical abusers, however, to call into question the conventional wisdom. Rage and controlling behavior, for example, can also be a side effect of drug and alcohol abuse. If either of these abusive students are in counseling, I'm confident that the therapist will ask them what, if anything, else contributed to their feelings of extreme frustration.
We see one of the greatest ironies in the objectionable video right at the very end. It turns out that both IB and SO believe that further visibility of their encounter with the College Council will work in their favor.
This assumption is consistent with the immediate after action spin off the event offered by the CC co-presidents. I think this is why they posted the video on the College Council's Facebook page. They sincerely thought the video made the white male students look bad. Unfortunately, the College Council made an even more foolish mistake when it deleted the video from their Facebook page after it was being linked to by numerous on-line sites including The College Fix.
IB and SO sought to invoke fear and further build their power and control over the College Council by threatening to expose them in some sort of movie or documentary film. As you may know, Isaiah Blake '21 does have experience in film. In 2018, for example, he was one of the stars of a film about the ramifications of a high school science project that left a New York student badly burned. The film was called The Rainbow Experiment and you can read about it here. By the way, creating films was part of the political activist style taught and practiced by Prof. Green, a self-described black transgender male.
Start - 59:53
IB: Oh, you want to make it all illusion. Why do you have to tell them what it’s like? What?! (PAUSE) This is what it’s like. We’ll make sure to tell them that this is how it was.
SO: Definitely!
IB: We’ll make sure.
SO: I’m going be text messaging…one or two.
IB: We’ll make some videos out of that shit. Because its wow.
SO: Best f***ing movie.
IB: I just can’t…believe it.
Finally, this tag team of anti-white bigots rounds off their evening with the most embarrassing moment of all, a not so subtle humiliation of the black/minority students in the room. The aim, as far as I can tell, is to embarrass the minority students for not being as aggressive and as black nationalistic woke as the speakers. The controlling nature of this final exchange is cringe-worthy. Even IB, an obviously sensitive actor, seems to realize that he has gone too far.
IB: You have anything to say Cleveland? Or, or Shane? Cause you know ni***ers never get to say anything?
SB: I’ve said everything I felt I needed to say (Unintelligible) sometimes…the nature of council is just kind of (Unintelligible) questionable.
IB: Shane, why aren’t you president? Why didn’t you run president again? Why didn’t you run for that other shit?
Shane: I wasn’t… (Unintelligible)
IB: Cleveland, you got something to say? (PAUSE) No. No. Okay, because of you… anyone?… you’all got something to say? Does the minority coalition in the minority cove? Because that’s what you’all look like over here. (LONG PAUSE) That’s all right. We want to make sure we open this space. We never get to be heard. (PAUSE) I’m done. You done?
SO: I am.
IB: Okay. I hope you have a great day. Goodnight. (SLAMS DOOR)
All in all, the video of the April 9, 2019 College Council meeting is an excellent example of the sort of critical race theory activism that tore up Evergreen State College. Surprisingly, the black student activists were so proud of this outburst that they planned to prolong their righteous indignation by staging a demonstration in support of IB and SO. According to a report in the Williams Record, however, this demonstration was cancelled after the video recording was shared on other platforms.
"A larger protest had been planned," the Williams Record says, "but cancelled because of student fears about safety after last week’s meeting livestream was distributed by several online sites."
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
The College Council has removed from its Facebook account a controversial video. This video captured an example of profane, incendiary, anti-white bigotry directed at white student representatives by Isaiah Blake '21 - an actor and one of the most prominent black student leaders at Williams College on June 9, 2019.
The video featured a long, stream-of-consciousness rant by Isaiah Blake saying, in part, "...to be here is like sucking white d*** every f***ing day."
"You want a discussion and dialogue. Here’s the f***ing dialog. We don’t have dialogue, because every time we try to talk to you we get shut down by the white moderate, white liberal bull***t."
A link to the video was published on Ephblog on April 15, 2019. A partial transcript appeared at the Anonymous Political Scientist blog on that same day. Finally, The College Fix published a link to the video on April 19, 2019. The College Fix is a national-level conservative website where student journalists write on topics in higher education.
NOTE: A heavily redacted transcript of the June 9, 2019 meeting is still available at 4_9 Minutes.
According to the Williams Record, black student activists planned a demonstration to protest their treatment by the College Council. It was canceled, however, after links to the video of the rant by Isaiah Blake '21 were published at various on-line sites.
Thankfully, there is now a copy of Isaiah Blake's obnoxious rant available on YouTube. Isaiah Blake '21 has appeared in The Rainbow Experiment (2018).
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
The great Darel E. Paul, professor of political science, published a well-researched and thoughtfully organized article at Areo on how the new identity politics has taken hold at schools across the nation. He connects the dots which show how identity politics has become a staple at schools as different as Williams, Sarah Lawrence, Evergreen State College and Yale.
Colleges and universities across the English-speaking world are caught up in the enthusiasm of a Great Awokening. Its dogmas are structural violence, systemic racism, racial stress, white privilege, white fragility, implicit bias and microaggressions. From the University of Missouri to Evergreen State College to Sarah Lawrence College and beyond, faculty and students are ablaze with the fire of social justice.
In Paul's view, liberal arts colleges are particularly likely to get wrapped up in the dogma of critical race theory because they lack - by definition - traditional STEM programs like business, medicine, engineering and agriculture. He reports that predictably "...this spring the Great Awokening finally came to my home institution, Williams College." Unfortunately for Williams, Paul writes that the school seems unpleasantly close to being another Evergreen State College.
Administrators and other campus leaders have encouraged white members of the college community like myself to listen. Over the past two months, I have striven to do exactly that. In fact, I’ve done quite a lot of listening (and reading). I have spent dozens of hours listening at meetings and reading copious documents produced by activist students and faculty. I have also watched videos and read documents resulting from the racial blowups at Yale University in 2015, Evergreen State College in 2017 and Sarah Lawrence College in 2019. Listening to these views from multiple campuses helped me realize that what seems to be a local discourse responding to local issues is actually a local manifestation of an international social, political and ideological phenomenon. All the accents and cadences of critical race theory can be identified. Williams, Sarah Lawrence, Evergreen and Yale could really be Any Residential College in Any Town.
Paul notes that the folks promoting critical race theory are ultimately leading us into a Soviet Union style educational system where truth matters very little. All that matters is whether research and teaching supports the dominant ideology.
Just as critical race theory can destroy knowledge, it can likewise destroy institutions premised upon the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge. Thanks in large part to the influence of critical race theory, Evergreen State College melted down in Spring 2017. The concrete results of that meltdown included numerous faculty resignations, a catastrophic collapse in enrollments, layoffs, budget cuts and worldwide humiliation. Every institution of higher education should learn the lessons of Evergreen, for history is wont to repeat itself―the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Areo is an opinion and analysis digital magazine focused on current affairs — in particular: humanism, culture, politics, human rights, science, and free expression.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
Dr. Kai M. Green of Williams College
is away on medical leave. She has
reported on her own psychotic
breakdown in her Facebook profile.
The raw insanity of radical, leftist Williams College is on full display this week as the administration processes the disruptive behavior of assistant professor Kai M. Green, a self-described trans, black, queer feminist. For example, the College Fix reported that Kai M. Green had flaked out on her students and cancelled her spring 2019 classes for the most flimsy of reasons.
Based on Dr. Green's published Facebook report, I'm quite confident in asserting that she is suffering from a chronic form of delusional disorder. Those delusions got so far out of hand in November 2018 that she feared her department chair, Alison Case, was out to "assassinate" her. It makes perfect sense to me that Dr. Green is on medical leave right now.
Apparently, dealing with Kai Green's mental illness has been taxing for everyone around her. As of December 2018, Case is no longer the department chair. This position has been taken over by Gregory Mitchell.
It took me a while to figure out why Kai Green's friend, another black, queer feminist, Dr. Kimberly Love was also placed on medical leave. A lot of this only makes sense if we understand that Dr. Green and Dr. Love are a couple sharing the same home. In this context, it was reasonable for the college to give Dr. Love medical leave too because she is caring for Dr. Green. I don't see any evidence that Dr. Love is psychotic.
Given the desire of the college to keep two gay black female professors on board for affirmative action reasons, it makes sense that Dr. Love, as a contributor at Ephblog said, "was put on medical leave after she didn’t show up to class as that was probably the only way to give her a chance and not terminate her employment."
Dr. Kai M. Green shows off the scars from
her top surgery in this cover photo from
No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black
Queer Studies.
The problem here is that some of the obsessions contained in Kai Green's delusional disorder match up with a prevailing ideological perspective which asserts that black, trans, queer feminists are living in an unhealthy (supposedly violent) environment. As she writes: "My biggest fear, I learned is to be considered crazy. But I have no choice in this world full of a crazy that is not of my own making--Racial Capitalism." In addition, the student activists are seeking to spin this profound and potentially life-threatening mental health crisis as a heroic effort by Green and Love to fight back against the oppression they face as assistant professors at the school.
Maybe it would help the leftist students more accurately frame this situation as a genuine mental health crisis if we called to their attention the ideas contained in Kai M. Green's delusional disorder which are unrelated to politics. For example, she has also reported that...
She had a delusion that there was a new restaurant in Williamstown that served curry goat.
She had a delusion that "Lil Kai" had been murdered by the police.
She had a similar delusion that her "lil cousin Mekhi" had died instead of "Lil Kai."
While experiencing this psychotic episode, she reports, she "started taking my clothes off piece by piece, so by the time I got to the Clark I was completely naked."
While under arrest, she believed the song she was singing was a "magic spell that would unlock the cuffs."
Frankly, there is not much that the college can do to protect its students from the reality that Kai M. Green has provided us with compelling evidence that transgender individuals disproportionately suffer from mental illness.
The larger issue, for me, is that we aren't doing troubled individuals any favors when we sign off on their delusions and enable them to take drastic and irreversible actions in pursuit of them.
It is particularly horrifying when society adopts dysfunctional beliefs that encourage the mentally ill to engage in brutal self-mutilation or poison themselves with inappropriate hormone treatments. No one who truly understands the elaborate maintenance needed to keep a pseudo vagina healthy could ever recommend that a man ought to do that to himself.
Likewise, the ugly details of removing a woman's breasts (top surgery), ovaries and womb (bottom surgery) should really be weighed before suggesting this procedure to anyone. By the way, I don't think any sane woman would consider it a bright idea to undergo a bottom surgery that included phalloplasty. As they say: "The long term success rates of implants in constructed penises are lower than the success rates of reconstruction in men born with penises. Good sensation in the reconstructed penis can help reduce the risk of the implant eventually eroding through the skin." Yeah, there's always that...
Protecting the jobs and security of individuals who understand, and speak out about, the life-threatening severity of Kai Green's mental illness should be a top priority of anyone who supports freedom of speech at Williams College. The sane should not surrender our leadership or power to those who agonize over imaginary murders or sing to unlock their very real handcuffs.
John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.
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.
