By Kyle Smith
Friday, August 11, 2017
Yale’s determination to take a giant jar of Wite-Out to
history has reached a new level of fatuousness.
This week the Yale
Alumni Magazine reported that a stone carving of an Indian and a Puritan
over an entrance to Sterling Memorial Library had been bowdlerized, with the
weapon the latter was holding covered up. A head librarian, Susan Gibbons, said
that she and the university’s Committee on Art in Public Spaces found that the
carving’s “presence at a major entrance to Sterling was not appropriate.” Yale
ordered the musket of the Puritan to be covered up with a layer of stone that
Gibbons said “can be removed in the future without damaging the original
carving,” the magazine reported.
It’s instructive that even as Yale’s administration
rampages through history with a censor’s eye and a vandal’s paint pot, someone
like Gibbons can tacitly acknowledge that the hysteria might die down in some
future generation and that we should therefore make some of the cover-ups
reversible. At the same time, though, it’s impossible not to rue the irony of a
period when librarians take on the duties of literally covering up the past.
Perhaps the definition of librarian will gradually morph over the coming
decades to “one who protects us from the historical record.”
In their haste to preemptively ward off any sudden
triggering episodes by continuing to display a carving that has been visible in
the heart of the campus for many decades, Yale’s historical-demolition squad
appeared not to notice a few things. For instance: Although the Puritan was
holding a weapon, so was the Indian. Only the Puritan’s musket was plastered
over, not the Indian’s bow. Now that only one of the two men is armed, does
Yale mean to imply that persons of color are irrationally violent or
untrustworthy? Troubling, very troubling. A reasonable interpretation of the
work now is that an Indian is sneaking up on an unarmed Puritan with intent to
do him harm. Why must Yale perpetuate such harmful stereotypes?
Moreover, although the exigencies of placing two
characters and two objects in a small setting meant that each man’s weapon was
close to the other’s head, the two principals are not looking at each other.
Each is looking away, as though they are working in alliance, perhaps to hunt.
Given the two types of weapons being deployed, the chances that any game
spotted will be felled to nourish all are increased. Diversity is our strength,
indeed! Has an innocent instance of simple multicultural cooperation been
frantically blotted out because easily triggered dunderheads misinterpreted the
meaning of the carving?
Yale’s insistence that all of history be made to conform
with current political attitudes is difficult to distinguish from vandalism.
After a black dishwasher imbibed campus hysteria so thoroughly he was moved to
use a broomstick to knock out a stained-glass window at Calhoun College because
it depicted slaves, he became a campus hero. Yale, which had initially fired
him, rehired him a few weeks later. Then it pressed ahead with his work,
removing other windows depicting enslavement. The principle of authorizing
freelance politics-based vandalism had been established.
Calhoun College is named for Vice President John C.
Calhoun, antebellum America’s most prominent defender of slavery. In April of
2016, Yale President Peter Salovey declared that he wouldn’t give in to critics
who had called for it be renamed, saying that, “Universities have to be the
places where tough conversations happen. I don’t think that is advanced by
hiding our past.” After an outcry, Salovey reversed course within a year,
saying Calhoun’s legacy of backing slavery “fundamentally conflicts with Yale’s
mission and values.” The mission of hosting tough conversations and the value
of acknowledging the past were forgotten. All that mattered now was the
short-term gratification of the mob.
Yet campus activists are always looking for something to
be outraged about. Giving in to their demands simply whets their appetite for
more. Salovey insisted that campus symbols of Calhoun would remain, including a
statue of Calhoun on the campus’s most prominent landmark, Harkness Tower. How
long before these start being stripped away, too?
There is no limiting principle in play here, at least
none that I can detect. Once you establish that an artwork or artifact that
gives offense to any minority must be hidden, removed, or destroyed, and that’s
it perfectly acceptable for any individual to appoint herself to take on this
important work of expunging and correcting, it becomes open season on history.
Window-breaking and musket-covering are just the beginning. As Roger Kimball
points out, a person intimately associated with Yale was deeply involved in
trading slaves. His name? Elihu Yale. He founded the place. Expunging his name
from campus will take much more work than merely spackling over an image of a
gun. The ecstasy of the mob that succeeded in getting the name Calhoun expunged
from Calhoun College will be nothing compared to that experienced by whatever
future gang of activists succeeds in getting Yale itself renamed.
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