Dear Doug,
In your response to Talya Zemach-Bersin’s cri de coeur you quote a few words of the bubble-bunkered student’s neo-Marxist babble: “I am highlighting their (the Bennets) blatant insensitivity and denial of the systems and methods whereby those who are not white, male, heterosexual, and wealthy are marginalized and often met with resistance, in a world that is dominated by rich white heterosexual men, regardless of how hard they work.” (“They” are the marginalized, not “rich white heterosexual men.” Unsyntactically speaking, Zemach-Bersin is a repeat offender.)
You said that you were stung by her critique of your rendition of your career at the dinner you hosted for this year’s Wesleyan Service Career Fellows. Said rendition, I gather, attributed your success in the realm of public service less to talent and effort than to privilege the privilege of being a rich, white, heterosexual man. Except that you said it tongue-in-cheek, which means that you didn’t mean it: You made it on your own, and not because of privilege, etc. Granted, allowed the lady (maybe she figures that you’re the exception that proves the rule). Nonetheless, you were chastised for “blatant insensitivity.”
You, of all people. Was it not you who’d mandated sensitivity training for the staff, yourself included? (Good for you, Doug). The infantilizing indignities of mandatory sensitivity training are nothing new to the students, of course. And yet the Argus reports that offenses are up. Could it be that mandates breed resentment and resentment breeds offenders? No, you inveigh: the increase must be “alcohol-related.” Doug, be a mensch: accept responsibility.
You speak of Wesleyan’s “academic rigor.” That’s boilerplate. I can recall a student who asked me how to write a footnote. Was she a first-semester freshman? No, a final-semester senior—it wasn’t until a month before graduation that she wrote an essay requiring one; all previous papers were exercises in navel-gazing: How do you ‘feel’ about Weber’s theory of Protestantism and capitalism? That kind of thing.
You speak of “a rigorous Wesleyan education.” More boilerplate (you’re laying it on too thick). I can recall a Chinese teaching assistant who was told to dumb things down for his biology class; he had to make it “real easy,” he told me. I can recall an Indian teaching assistant who said he’d tried to teach his class not only WHAT mathematical formula to apply to a problem, but WHY. His students complained to the department chairman, who ordered him to teach the What without the Why.
Those two foreign students (and surely others) had come to Wes with a reservoir of good will and respect for her; they’d left with that reservoir drained and refilled with disdain.
I can recall (and so can you) when virtually every faculty member read the Argus, at the time a NEWSpaper. I can recall the Beta Symposium on anxiety (“The Age of Angst”), in which professors read papers the Betas had asked them to write especially for the occasion. Doug, could you imagine a fraternity presenting such a diversion today? The symposium was food for thought, not action—we didn’t presume to have all the answers. Nor were we encouraged by President Butterfield, a gentleman of the Old School, to think that we did. How times (and presidents) have changed.
A professor to whom I recently addressed a Wespeak emailed his reply. Why no open letter? Because, he said, he wished to avoid provoking one of those “endless squabbles” the students delight in. In Old Wes we didn’t have time for squabbles. I don’t know about you, Doug, but pretty much all that I had time for was Olin, whose Reserve Room (now Microfilms) was open and peopled with studious mooks (remember the term, Doug?) 24/7.
Fast forward fifty years. Erik Rosenberg ’08, in his Nov. 3 Wespeak, hectors his fellow students: “As a college student, you, more than anybody else in this country, have the time and resources to be politically active. You live in an environment that can be easily turned into a formidable political power. 95 percent of the people you live, learn, eat, fuck, party, and shit with have similar opinions regarding the war; all we need to do is walk onto the street together and were a force to be reckoned with. Channel your diligence and intelligence into something REAL. Just the fact that you are in college means you have time to be political.” A student after your own heart, Doug.
Rosenberg quotes Director of Media Relations David Pesci: “The university is very careful not to openly take any political stance or promote any political agenda.” “Not openly” can hide a multitude of sins. In your letter to Zemach-Bersin you say: “Corporate America and some professions are less permeable than education or the not-for-profit sector, but even they are getting the word.” The word. Let none dare call it “openly” political.
With all due respect, Doug, may I ask what qualifies you to be giving “the word” to corporate America? If I didn’t know better I would be tempted to dub you an ideologue in drag, a dude who masquerades as an educator. Have you ever graded a blue book or paper? According to your resume, your entire career has been spent in the wealth-consuming public sector; yet you condescend to educate the wealth-creating private sector, the sector in which the Davisons, Denisons, Olins, Thorndikes, Walter Wristons, and many another alum have prospered. And thanks to their generous love for their alma mater, you’re able to live the High life in your servant-furnished mansion, and Talya Zemach-Bersin is able to be a Wesleyan Service Career Fellow. And when she bites the hand that feeds her, flaying “a world that is dominated by rich white heterosexual men,” you stroke her resentment.
She mangles her syntax because her instructors, failing to correct the lass, repeatedly gave her a pass. What’s your excuse? You write: “Thinking about the recent dinner, the guests would have been all male and virtually all white in 1959, my senior year at Wesleyan. This was ridiculous in retrospect.” Not half as ridiculous as the admission of Wesleyan’s Rodney Dangerfields (women) and the reactionary restoration of segregation in virtually all-black Malcolm X House. It bears your Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, even though its presence couldn’t be less consistent with the assimilationist position you took in your undergraduate years. (You forced the integration of a local all-white barber shop and induced your fraternity to disaffiliate from the national organization because it refused to integrate.) When will you acknowledge your flip-flop? (And when will you acknowledge that “The Art and Science of Education since 1831” is a lumbering, dime-store logo coined by a lumbering, dime-store mind? “The Cardinal Choice” is choicer.)
You say that “Wesleyan was able to change for the better” Under your tenure? In 1995 you swaggered into town and boasted that under your aegis the school, then Number 6 in US News rankings, would be one of the top three. Last year it failed to make the top ten.
As for that precious intangible, “the Wesleyan experience,” when you stroll through Exley’s lobby, its floor bestrewn with all the news that’s fit to print; when you walk across a campus littered with paper and plastic detritus; when you ascend the steps to Olin and pass a raggedy clothesline strung across its iconic Ionic columns gowned in handbills and/or garish plastic sheaths; when you shut your eyes to those blatant indicators of spoiled children despoiling their Cardinal choice (and soiling themselves in the process); when you have a student from an urban ghetto who pushed a fellow student through a plate glass window and faced no charges, owing to your good offices; when you have girls in women’s bodies hooking up in hopes of winning the coveted title of “Miss Disposable Commodity”; when you read the Wespeak pages trivia, incoherence, bathroom humor, and verbal ejaculations (“F*** you!”) hurled at girls; and when, having shut your ears to those hostile intonations, you declare, in the tone of a man who holds his truths to be self-evident, ‘new and improved’ Wes superior to Old Wes, all I can say is, “Doug, whatever you say.” Which is ridiculous.
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