How to Identify the Racists

Author James Baldwin explained it:

Every time I attend a conference of white writers, I have a method for finding out if my colleagues are racist. It consists of uttering stupidities and maintaining absurd theses. If they listen respectfully and, at the end, overwhelm me with applause, there isn’t the slightest doubt: they are filthy racists.

Hat tip to Ron McCamy, who responded on Facebook to our post on Ta-Nehisi Coates with this quote.

Letter to the Editor: On Marquette President Michael Lovell

“Gimme That Old Time Religion” is an old down home hymn often associated with Christian fundamentalism. Fervent revivalists have been been mocked in films, while singing it.

Essentially, fundamentalism is a form of fideistic, a priori conviction that one’s sect alone knows the absolute truth about the true and the good. Only in its confines is salvation to be found. The faithful cement their bond by the use of a special terminology: King James Bible only, which alone is inerrant, the Rapture, a literal six day creation and Sabbath rest, a young earth, of perhaps a very few thousand years, a second blessing, etc. Whatever the religious content, they alone know the absolute truth. Doubters and dissenters are purged through excommunication. In an earlier era, they were tortured into recantation or burned at the stake.

Yet Christian fundamentalism is far from being the only variety. It’s the only variety, however, it’s permissible to publicly mock.

The president of Marquette University, Dr. Michael Lovell, is a true believer belonging to a different, more recently developed fundamentalist cult. This is the dogmatic faith known as political correctness. It’s anthem, if it had one, would be, “Gimme That New Time Religion.”

The flock recognizes its members by Shibboleths bleated by its sheep who safely graze the fields of academia: diversity, multiculturalism, inclusion, welcoming, white privilege, hate speech, offensiveness, insensitivity, social justice, etc. Its priests and prophets are the administrators and elitist faculty of most universities. Its revivalist tents and temples are buildings funded by often out of touch alumni.

At Marquette, a prophetic provost presents the new Thou Shalt Not imperatives inscribed in tablets of stone: homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, heterosexism, sexism, classism, logophobia, eurocentrism, speciesism, lookism, oppression (of select self-identified victim groups), hegemony of Western Civilization, and so on. Here, too, doubters and dissenters are not tolerated. They are excluded as dangerous heretics from whom the faithful must protect their prospective converts. Widespread excommunication isn’t just medieval anymore.

The Cheryl Abbate case at Marquette was a morality play in which she was cast as a martyred Joan of Arc by Dr. Lovell. What heroic virtue, one may reasonably ask, is exemplified by one who silenced free speech in an academic setting? What was supererogatory about condemning the Magisterium’s teaching against homosexual acts as “homophobia”? On a questionably Roman Catholic campus, what was excellent in forbidding discussion of the natural law arguments honed by contemporary philosophers? Abbate corrupted by politicizing the Socratic Method. In this she sinned against philosophy, as did the Department Chair and others who supported her.

A well established, respected and tenured professor came under the ban for protesting this on his private blog. For supporting an undergraduate student wrongly oppressed by Abbate, Dr. John McAdams was condemned as a dangerous dissenter and anathematized. He was blamed for apparently hateful communications Abbate received. In other words, the guilt of others unknown to McAdams was imputed to him. Dr. Lovell ought to have been advised that the imputation of sins was only possible in the case of Jesus Christ. Only he was able to take on himself the sins of others, indeed, of the world.

The fundamentalism of Dr. Lovell and his politically correct cult is reminiscent of the religious zeal that led to the burning of heretics at the stake. It’s troublingly easy to visualize him, with grim satisfaction, setting the torch to the stake. These days, he can only torch the reputation of an accomplished professor. And this, of course, while whistling “Gimme That New Time Religion.”

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Ron McCamy
(McCamy is a 1996 Ph.D. graduate of Marquette’s Philosophy Department)

Letter to the Editor: Learn to Teach Philosophy

Dear Dr. McAdams,

Golden Eagle’s reply is one of the most risible bits of light comedy I’ve enjoyed recently. Dr. McAdams “bullied” the feminist, vegan philosopher about as much as the current Marquette Philosophy Department threatens the prestige of Princeton’s department. It was Ms. Abbate who, in an ideological pique, bullied an undergrad student into relinquishing his university’s guaranteed right to a free exchange of ideas. It was she who misled her class by presenting ideological name calling (“homophobia!” “racist!”) as authentic philosophy. The student had every right to defend the Roman Catholic use of natural law arguments against the moral integrity of gay marriage. At least one would think so at a Roman Catholic university. Were we dealing with one of those, the outcome might have been different.

If Ms. Abbate wasn’t qualified to deal with the natural law tradition in either its classical or newer forms, that’s nobody’s fault but her own and the department. Why wouldn’t Ms. Abbate have used this as a teachable moment to illustrate a natural law critique of Rawl’s notion of fairness? This was a perfect opportunity, provided by students themselves, to explore the contrast between two ethical theories. This is how the Socratic Method works, as opposed to an indoctrination of students according to the ideological preferences of the teacher. As a feminist, one might think she’d have shown more of an ethic of care or empathy toward the undergraduate student.

Since she did not do that, and did not act in a welcoming and inclusive manner towards his Catholic moral concerns, she surely violated the “values” trumpeted by Dr. Lovell.

Having been bullied by Ms. Abbate, the student sought fairness and justice from a department which uses a nose of wax approach to principles like these. He tried, in vain, to enlist support for the notion that philosophy should be what is done in a philosophy class. Having been effectively bullied at each point as he worked within the proper channels, he took his concern for the integrity of free speech at Marquette to Dr. McAdams. On his private blog he correctly supported the student’s right to contribute to a free exchange of ideas at the university. Dr. McAdams took no position on gay marriage, nor on homophobia, nor on the privileging of homosexual behavior. His concern was the student’s: teachers ought not to be bullies who impose ideologically driven censorship on their classes.

For openly questioning Marquette’s integrity related to its stated “values” of encouraging vigorous discussion of controversial issues, Dr. Lovell and his administrative cohorts attempted to bully Dr. McAdams into submission to the party line. To put it concisely, the university failed miserably in its fool’s errand. In media nationwide, Marquette is now a laughingstock. It’s an embarrassment to alums, like me, who have earned doctoral degrees in its Philosophy Department. The university's ongoing panegyric on Ms. Abbate and her penchant for censorship has not endeared Marquette to those interested in an authentic liberal education. Meanwhile, Dr. Lovell continues to compound his spectacularly poor treatment of Dr. McAdams. Dr. Lovell, with a determined commitment to inept self-justification, has reduced a substantive discussion of free speech to the bathos of a dime store novel. We are repeatedly regaled with the tale of a hapless, victimized ingenue.

The bullies in the long running comedy of administrative errors at Marquette are Ms. Abbate, Dr. Lovell, and the their accomplices in the bloated bureaucracy of lockstep diversity.

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Ron McCamy, PhD
Philosophy Department
Moorpark College