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struggle4progress

(118,041 posts)
Thu Oct 22, 2015, 04:31 PM Oct 2015

The Confederate Flag at Harvard

By S. ALLEN COUNTER JR
19 hours ago

... Teaching the history of the Confederate flag at Harvard may serve to enlighten us about our past and present status of race relations. Harvard records show that Confederate flag displays at the College have occurred at various times in the past. In 1948, Harvard College student Louis B. Du Pree '50, from Greenville, North Carolina, publicly displayed the Confederate flag from his window at Kirkland House. This incident led to protests from Harvard’s few black students (only four black students were admitted to the Harvard freshman class that year). Later, in 1952, a cross was burned in front of Stoughton Hall, where the 11 black members of the Harvard class of 1955 lived.

In the spring of 1990, Jon P. Jiles, a Leverett House student, displayed a Confederate flag outside his window as a symbol of his “ethnic identity” and “heritage.” A number of African American students and tutors in Leverett House requested a meeting with the House masters John E. Dowling and Judy Dowling to discuss their disapproval of the hanging of the Confederate flag in their residence hall, and how they were aggrieved by the presence of this symbol of racial terrorism and hate in the Harvard community. Dowling, a distinguished professor of neurobiology, said later at a meeting with his fellow House masters, “We live in a community, and if one person displays something that offends everyone, it should be taken down." At the insistence of the Dowlings, Jiles removed the Confederate flag, and Leverett House restored civility and trust among its residents of all races with no further disturbance" ...

In contrast to the Dowlings, Kirkland House Masters Donald H. Pfister and Cathleen K. Pfister permitted Kerrigan’s Confederate flag to remain hanging in prominent display in the entryway of their House for months, in spite of emotional pleas from Harvard’s minority students to take it down. The masters of Kirkland House maintained that it was Kerrigan’s right of free speech to display the Confederate flag. When African American students countered that the display of a symbol of hatred and human slavery was not speech, but an act or behavior, the Kirkland House masters still refused to remove the Confederate flag from the College residence hall.

Some asked whether the House masters would permit a Nazi flag to remain displayed in the entryway of the residence hall under the free-speech rule. (Outraged by the vapid free-speech defense in the refusal to remove the Confederate flag from the residence hall, one black student drew a swastika on a piece of cloth and displayed it in her dormitory window—the student had no Nazi flag. Within a short period, Harvard officials entered her room and took the swastika down, but left the Confederate flag in place) ...


http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/22/allen-counter-confederate-flag/

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randys1

(16,286 posts)
1. I dont know that much about you personally, but I admire your insistence on staying on this
Thu Oct 22, 2015, 04:33 PM
Oct 2015

topic.

There are some basic issues that need to be dealt with in this country, the unconstitutional requirement for an ID to vote, the misconstrued interpretation of the 2nd amendment, and this flag thing which is part of the whole race thing.

struggle4progress

(118,041 posts)
4. That might be the right PoV. But the author, a Harvard prof,
Thu Oct 22, 2015, 10:27 PM
Oct 2015

was involved in mediating those disputes then, and is reflecting on them now, when the flag has against become the subject of contention

The issues seem to have changed surprisingly little over the years; and it is really rather tragic to see that, a hundred to a hundred and fifty years after the civil war ended. The flag today still "stands for white supremacy and .. for slavery," as it always did, despite the very worn and threadbare claims that it somehow represents "Southern honor, grace and dignity"

 

KamaAina

(78,249 posts)
3. Not to be outdone, one of Yale's 12 residential colleges (glorified dorms) is named Calhoun.
Thu Oct 22, 2015, 07:07 PM
Oct 2015

Complete with stained-glass windows depicting enslaved Africans in the common room.

We are presently beginning the process of building two new colleges. I suggest that one be named for Frederick Douglass, Thurgood Marshall, Harriet Tubman, MLK, or a prominent African American with ties to Yale.

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