Whether or not this is a reaction to the uproar about the apparent censorship of Mark Elrod at Harding University for his political beliefs, I think this is good news:
Yesterday, July 16, 2008, Harding published a press release entitled “Harding student, faculty to participate in DNC”. The statement announces that Mark Elrod will be traveling to the Democratic National Convention to act as a faculty leader at the The Washington Center’s Democratic National Convention Academic Seminar in Denver Aug. 17-29. A Harding student, Rachel Gardner, will also be attending the convention and seminar series as a student leader. The press release quotes Larry Long, Harding’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, as saying:
“It seems like an ‘honors’ approach to experiential learning: putting students in a setting where they see firsthand the processes of politics, international business, finance, government, etc., and then are given guided opportunities to reflect on and respond to what they have experienced. As for the faculty, participation in Washington or at a political convention would allow a faculty member to bring back to his or her classroom firsthand experience with the material he or she is teaching. If it is good for an archaeologist to go to a dig, it should be good for a political scientist to go to a convention.”
As those of you who know me well are aware, I am a political conservative. Nevertheless, I appreciate this gesture as one of hopefully many to come that shows Harding’s commitment to political free speech as an essential part of a healthy academic culture, a culture that promotes excellence in all things, including mature political discourse. Dr. Long’s statement is a clear endorsement of such discourse as valuable and necessary for students and faculty alike.
As a Harding Honors College alumnus, it also warms my heart that the program, which Larry Long conceived and that is now headed by the remarkable Jeff Hopper, continues to show this kind of leadership on campus.
planned long before the uproar
It’s not the fact that Mark gets to go that matters. That obviously had been planned for a while. What matters is that it’s publicly announced and endorsed.
The comment that Benson wanted Harding segregated until his retirement in 1965 is not true.Harding was integrated(3 black males) in the Fall of 1963.One one them(Louis Brown) became a very good friend of mine.
Ron — please refer to the comments on the previous post, which is where Shannon and I have already discussed that:
a) Harding desegregated, as you said, before George Benson left office.
and
b) That he resisted that policy even as he was implementing it and in fact until long after. I worked in the archives of the Brackett Library on campus for several years, and part of my task there was to sort Dr. Benson’s papers that had come to Harding from his second wife Marguerite’s estate. Those papers not only include newspaper clippings that suggest that while Harding may have allowed a few black students to attend beginning in the fall of 1963, the college was far from integrated beyond that minimal compliance. Dr. Ganus still had to deal with legal issues with the federal government because of it, and there is plenty of correspondence between the retired Dr. Benson and Dr. Ganus that suggests that Dr. Benson continued to resist integration and treating black students as true equals for a long time afterwards. (The archives are open to the public. You can go and check.) It appears that the 1963 move was due to legal pressure; Benson had not changed his mind personally about the issue.