Someone Gets It

Finally, a post about Antioch that manages to suggest a genuine love of the place while also skewering the leaders of the last few decades–and the students of that time too. She even has the courage to light into the students who are there right now for not taking over the campus and demanding a better place to learn. If only the person had the additional courage to name Bob Devine outright, instead of referring to him twenty different ways to Tuesday.

I don’t buy the “PCism killed Antioch” thesis–unless you’re talking PC circa 1973, supplemented by some PC circa 1965, which inspired Dixon’s murderous plan to start branch campuses all over the planet. But I agree that all kinds of other folks have gotten off pretty easily, particularly on the discussion boards.

The only notes I would add would be a general slam against the somnolent (but hard working! never forget that!) faculty. I’d also include a plan to move forward–one that doesn’t piggyback on one of the Usual Bloviators.

 

Antioch College and the FBI

Over at Antiochians.org, a poster says that at reunion “an alumna told me the C.I.A. had engineered the 1973 strike.” The poster doubts this, but many other people have no doubt about it at all.

One thing that keeps this idea out there is the Church Commission report. (A complete copy of it is available here; a searchable text of parts of it is here. )

So far as I can tell, there are only two references to Antioch in the entire text, both of them exactly the same. (In my book that actually makes one reference, but I’m being generous.) They appear in the opening section of Part D of Book II and in Part I.B.2 of Book III in a sentence that reads in part:

New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College (‘vanguard of the New Left’) to the New Mexico Free University and other ‘alternate’ schools.

So Antioch was just a small part of what interested them. What’s important is what COINTELPRO did at Antioch. Here’s an example of the kind of take-no-prisoners directions the FBI gave its agents:

Consider the use of cartoons, photographs, and anonymous letters which will have the effect of ridiculing the New Left.

(The memorandum that describes the recommended disruption techniques begins here and goes on for the next five pages.)

The Church Committee also notes that COINTELPRO was “officially terminated ‘for security reasons’ on April 27, 1971″; the report then explains that the Committee’s investigation had found only three instances of COINTELPRO activity continuing beyond that date.

So all the report can be said to claim in relation to Antioch is that COINTELPRO, in the late 1960s, applied some disruptive techniques among groups considered to be in the extremely ill-defined category of the New Left and that these techniques were aimed at suppressing First Amendment rights. A damning enough claim, certainly, but not one that in any way suggests that COINTELPRO was behind the strike–which in any case happened about two years after COINTELPRO closed up shop.

Until I see more concrete information to the contrary, I’m considering this bit about the FBI and the ‘73 strike nothing more than a rumor.

 

Google Translation of Antioch’s Philosophy Professor’s Most Recent Email, Whatever It Is

Dear X:

When I was in seventh grade, I began experimenting with stroking my chin. I soon realized that most people can’t tell the difference between a posture of reasonableness and the actual ability to reason.

One day I fed my goldfish to Cookie Monster. He was made of synthetic fabric and didn’t even absorb the liquid.

[Philosophy Professor Guy]
Antioch College

 

In the Meantime, Some Snark

In my first post, I called this “a forum.” That brought to mind this oily comment from Bob “I helped drive the College to its doom” Devine:

Does anyone recall that in the late 80s and through the 90s that the regular Friday Forum brought together a wide diversity of speakers and perspectives in a format of moderated respectful dialogue. Those fora were attended by…

I remember the Friday Forums: a milquetoasty nonevent where a few stragglers sat around watching People Who Had Opinions hold forth on what the Sunday New York Times told us were the most important issues of the day. Luckily, the Times also helped with the guest list by defining what the various “sides” of “the” debate were.

To this day I can’t figure out how people have convinced themselves that bringing together any two yoyos who disagree is the same as the blinking Phaedrus.

Really, the only thing worse than the Friday Forums is watching Bob Devine nod sententiously while pretending the plural of “forum” is “fora”–which it is, if you’re talking about ancient Greek marketplaces.