Nice Try, Professor

Posted on | July 5, 2010 | 39 Comments

Today, a friend of mine received an e-mail labeling me “a white supremacist.” The e-mail was forwarded to me and I smiled upon recognizing a familiar name — Jonathan Farley, an academic admirer of Che Guevara. The Washington Times, Tuesday, December 3, 2002:

Vanderbilt professor outrages Confederate progeny
Says Rebel soldiers deserved gallows
By Robert Stacy McCain
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A Vanderbilt University professor has stirred outrage in Dixie by declaring that Confederates were “cowards masquerading as civilized men” who should have been executed at the end of the Civil War.
“Every Confederate soldier … deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows,” Jonathan David Farley, an assistant professor of mathematics, wrote in a commentary in the Tennessean, Nashville’s largest newspaper. The United Daughters of the Confederacy [UDC], the professor wrote, is an organization that “honors traitors.”
Vanderbilt sparked conflict over Southern heritage this year when the university said it would strip the word “Confederate” from a dormitory, Confederate Memorial Hall, built in the 1930s with donations raised by the UDC.
Mr. Farley’s Nov. 20 column in the Tennessean increased the furor. Mr. Farley has complained of threatening e-mails and phone calls, while the newspaper has received letters from across the country.
“The majority of the letters have been from out of state, because it became an Internet thing,” said John Gibson, the reader editor of the Tennessean, adding that out-of-state letters “rarely” are published in the paper.
Tim Chavez, a columnist for the Tennessean, described one 66-year- old reader’s frustration over Mr. Farley’s views: “This just burns me because I don’t know what to do about it,” the man said. “If someone compared your ancestors to mass murderers, what would you do?”
Mr. Farley called Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest “a 19th century Hitler,” called Confederate heritage groups “the new holocaust revisionists,” and said that “the race problems that wrack America to this day are due largely to the fact that the Confederacy was not thoroughly destroyed, its leaders and soldiers executed, and their lands given to the landless freed slaves.”
Allen Sullivant, chief of heritage defense for the Sons of Confederate Veterans [SCV], said Mr. Farley is “entitled to his opinion, even one that’s based on misinformation, ignorance and bigotry.”
In response to complaints from SCV members, Mr. Farley has posted e-mail replies that “drip venom,” Mr. Sullivant said. Replying to one SCV member, Mr. Farley vowed to “form our own armies to expose and smash you. . . . Very simply, we represent good and you represent evil.”
Mr. Sullivant said such “blatantly, openly hateful” messages show that Mr. Farley is “just one of these people who’s got a real chip on his shoulders.”
A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Farley, 32, is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities. His parents are both academics. His father, an immigrant from Jamaica, holds a Ph.D. in economics, while his mother, an immigrant from Guyana, holds a Ph.D. in history.
On his university Web page [www.math.vanderbilt.edu/farley] Mr. Farley poses beside a large poster of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whom he calls a hero.
Mr. Farley has been politically active since moving to Nashville from Berkeley, Calif., in 1997, mounting a Green Party campaign for Congress this year, describing the two major party candidates as “two old white men with identical views.”
He challenged Rep. Jim Cooper, Tennessee Democrat, in the Nov. 5 election, placing a distant fourth with 1,205 votes.
Last year, Mr. Farley wrote an article criticizing Chelsea Clinton for supporting the U.S. anti-terrorism effort.
“One of Bill Clinton’s redeeming traits is the fact that, when he studied at Oxford, he opposed America’s war,” Mr. Farley, then a visiting scholar at England’s Oxford University, wrote in a British newspaper, the Guardian. “Maybe sometime, Chelsea, you will too.”
A Vanderbilt spokesman said that Mr. Farley, who is not tenured, is protected by the university’s academic-freedom policy.
“Professor Farley is speaking as an individual, he does not represent Vanderbilt University’s policy, and his statements are neither supported nor endorsed by the university,” said Michael Schoenfeld, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for public affairs.

Note that, as of December 2002, Farley was untenured and had only been at Vanderbilt about five years. I point that out because, on his personal Web site, Farley claims to have “received tenure at Vanderbilt University in 2003, but fled Tennessee after receiving death threats from supporters of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.” Did Vanderbilt really grant tenure to Farley after he’d incited this public-relations debacle, or is he engaged in self-dramatization?

At any rate, after leaving Vanderbilt, Farley landed a job at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica, a fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, and was published on the op-ed pages of the New York Times. So it isn’t as if he’s living in a van down by the river or anything.

Why does Professor Farley bear such ill-will toward me? Read the article carefully. I’d taken the time to do a bit of research so that, in the space of a single 635-word news article, readers learned that:

Farley had run for office against a popular Democratic congressman;
He had criticized Chelsea Clinton (!!!) for supporting the War on Terror; and
He had praised Che Guevara as a “hero.”

The article was accompanied by a two-column photo of Farley posing with his Che poster, and it isn’t hard to imagine the difficulty Vanderbilt had trying to explain that little detail to outraged alumni. And at a time when Democrats had just had their butts kicked in the 2002 mid-term election — in part because they were viewed as squishy on terrorism — Farley probably hadn’t won himself too many friends by denouncing Jim Cooper as an “old white man” and slagging Chelsea.

So instead of being seen as a victim of right-wing malice — a cause célèbre, a martyr for academic freedom — Farley became a liability whom even Democrats dared not defend. And being smart enough to locate the tipping point at which his support at Vanderbilt began its irretrievable collapse, the professor evidently has never forgiven me.

Category: Neutral Objective Journalism

Comments

39 Responses to “Nice Try, Professor”

Richard McEnroe
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:31 pm

Guys, I did some research and I think I tracked down gg…

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PVyDmTkfk6s/SoDPwnzbTzI/AAAAAAAACWA/vN30nQH9k-k/s400/flag_pooper.jpg
Richard McEnroe
July 5th, 2010 @ 7:31 pm

Guys, I did some research and I think I tracked down gg…

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PVyDmTkfk6s/SoDPwnzbTzI/AAAAAAAACWA/vN30nQH9k-k/s400/flag_pooper.jpg
just a conservative girl
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:36 pm

He sent an email today?

I would think he would be over it by now.

Also, If you are going to call a racist murderer a hero, you might just get called on it.
just a conservative girl
July 5th, 2010 @ 7:36 pm

He sent an email today?

I would think he would be over it by now.

Also, If you are going to call a racist murderer a hero, you might just get called on it.
Cameroonian
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:55 pm

There is nothing honorable in honoring the confederacy. The declarations of secession of South Carolina and Georgia explicitly state that preservation of slavery was their prime motivation. Their cause was that of evil, and it was a good thing they lost.

In an even larger sense, there is not much of anything honorable about either side in a war in which Americans were so eager to hate each other that they slaughtered their fellow countrymen by the thousands and destroyed much of what they had built up in this country. So much of what gets celebrated as courage and valor from that war was mindless dying in vain.

The only good things you can say about the Civil War is that it hastened the destruction of slavery in America and preserved the union of the states. However, all of South America and the entire British empire managed to abolish slavery without any strife even remotely like our descent into madness. Only fools have nostalgia for, or “heritage” pride in, the desolation that was the Civil War.
Cameroonian
July 5th, 2010 @ 7:55 pm

There is nothing honorable in honoring the confederacy. The declarations of secession of South Carolina and Georgia explicitly state that preservation of slavery was their prime motivation. Their cause was that of evil, and it was a good thing they lost.

In an even larger sense, there is not much of anything honorable about either side in a war in which Americans were so eager to hate each other that they slaughtered their fellow countrymen by the thousands and destroyed much of what they had built up in this country. So much of what gets celebrated as courage and valor from that war was mindless dying in vain.

The only good things you can say about the Civil War is that it hastened the destruction of slavery in America and preserved the union of the states. However, all of South America and the entire British empire managed to abolish slavery without any strife even remotely like our descent into madness. Only fools have nostalgia for, or “heritage” pride in, the desolation that was the Civil War.
Cameroonian
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:59 pm

As for Guevara, here’s my favorite commentary on people who idolize that sociopath:

http://www.slate.com/id/2107100

And my favorite quote from the monster himself:

“Hate as an element of struggle; uncompromising hate for the enemy, that pushes beyond the limitations of the human being and converts him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. This is how our soldiers must be; a people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy.”
Cameroonian
July 5th, 2010 @ 7:59 pm

As for Guevara, here’s my favorite commentary on people who idolize that sociopath:

http://www.slate.com/id/2107100

And my favorite quote from the monster himself:

“Hate as an element of struggle; uncompromising hate for the enemy, that pushes beyond the limitations of the human being and converts him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. This is how our soldiers must be; a people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy.”
Richard McEnroe
July 6th, 2010 @ 1:03 am

“As such i respect the American flag, just as i respect any other sovereign country’s flag.”

“Even though i am an atheist, I respect all religious symbols and holy books too.”

Wow, even your doubletalk’s weak. Save then semantics games for Starbucks.

Son, you don’t respect a damned thing.
Richard McEnroe
July 5th, 2010 @ 9:03 pm

“As such i respect the American flag, just as i respect any other sovereign country’s flag.”

“Even though i am an atheist, I respect all religious symbols and holy books too.”

Wow, even your doubletalk’s weak. Save then semantics games for Starbucks.

Son, you don’t respect a damned thing.
Richard McEnroe
July 6th, 2010 @ 1:04 am

No, to be fair, you probably respect Professor Farley…
Richard McEnroe
July 5th, 2010 @ 9:04 pm

No, to be fair, you probably respect Professor Farley…
Obi's Sister
July 6th, 2010 @ 1:08 am

Oh my. Vanderbilt? I thought it was a little early for SEC smack-talkin’.
Obi's Sister
July 5th, 2010 @ 9:08 pm

Oh my. Vanderbilt? I thought it was a little early for SEC smack-talkin’.
MrPaulRevere
July 6th, 2010 @ 2:17 am

Give it up gg, what is your nickname at LGF? Mr. McCain, my grandad told me you can measure a man by the character of his enemies, in which case you are blessed.
MrPaulRevere
July 5th, 2010 @ 10:17 pm

Give it up gg, what is your nickname at LGF? Mr. McCain, my grandad told me you can measure a man by the character of his enemies, in which case you are blessed.
Robert Stacy McCain
July 6th, 2010 @ 2:28 am

Oh my. Vanderbilt? I thought it was a little early for SEC smack-talkin’.

Who would even bother smack-talkin’ about Vanderbilt? They’re practically Duke, except without the basketball team.
Robert Stacy McCain
July 5th, 2010 @ 10:28 pm

Oh my. Vanderbilt? I thought it was a little early for SEC smack-talkin’.

Who would even bother smack-talkin’ about Vanderbilt? They’re practically Duke, except without the basketball team.
Doug Hagin
July 6th, 2010 @ 3:00 am

Typical Leftist hatred based in complete ignorance of history. And Cameroonian, you ought to study your history, try reading the Virginia, or Tennessee or Arkansas ordinances of secession. NO mention of slavery, again,your ignorance shows.
Doug Hagin
July 6th, 2010 @ 3:00 am

“Who would even bother smack-talkin’ about Vanderbilt? They’re practically Duke, except without the basketball team”

Now THAT is funny!!
Doug Hagin
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:00 pm

Typical Leftist hatred based in complete ignorance of history. And Cameroonian, you ought to study your history, try reading the Virginia, or Tennessee or Arkansas ordinances of secession. NO mention of slavery, again,your ignorance shows.
Doug Hagin
July 5th, 2010 @ 11:00 pm

“Who would even bother smack-talkin’ about Vanderbilt? They’re practically Duke, except without the basketball team”

Now THAT is funny!!
Zonker
July 6th, 2010 @ 5:20 am

Stacy,
In Jonathan Farley’s opinion you’re racist white supremacist. He is only conveying this thought because you are white. Anti-Racism is just a code word for ANTI-WHITE. What Jonathan Farley if advocating is massive white GENOCIDE as defined by international law. In Jonathan Farley’s world the only way to solve the race problem is by killing white people. Since Jonathan Farley doesn’t have tenor people should pressure Vanderbilt to show this white hating communist the door. He is sure to find an audience at the University of Caracas, or Havana for his hate filled anti-white diatribes condoning the death of Southern Whites.
Zonker
July 6th, 2010 @ 1:20 am

Stacy,
In Jonathan Farley’s opinion you’re racist white supremacist. He is only conveying this thought because you are white. Anti-Racism is just a code word for ANTI-WHITE. What Jonathan Farley if advocating is massive white GENOCIDE as defined by international law. In Jonathan Farley’s world the only way to solve the race problem is by killing white people. Since Jonathan Farley doesn’t have tenor people should pressure Vanderbilt to show this white hating communist the door. He is sure to find an audience at the University of Caracas, or Havana for his hate filled anti-white diatribes condoning the death of Southern Whites.
Stogie
July 6th, 2010 @ 6:09 am

Cameroonian, I could care less what you think of the Confederacy. I honor it as the nation of my ancestors that was immorally invaded by an illegal conglomeration of Northern states.

The war “saved the union.” Balderdash. The war enforced a “union” on thirteen southern states that didn’t want it, and in the process killed 640,000 Americans.

God save the South. And to hell with Jonathan Farley, a fool.
Stogie
July 6th, 2010 @ 2:09 am

Cameroonian, I could care less what you think of the Confederacy. I honor it as the nation of my ancestors that was immorally invaded by an illegal conglomeration of Northern states.

The war “saved the union.” Balderdash. The war enforced a “union” on thirteen southern states that didn’t want it, and in the process killed 640,000 Americans.

God save the South. And to hell with Jonathan Farley, a fool.
Virginia Right! News Hound for 7/6/2010 | Virginia Right!
July 6th, 2010 @ 6:16 am

[…] Nice Try, Professor […]
Cameroonian
July 6th, 2010 @ 12:12 pm

Doug: Have you even read the Virginia ordinance of secession? The ordinances of many of the other states make no mention of any cause or justification for the act of secession — they merely declare secession. Virginia’s ordinance, however, gives the federal government’s “oppression of the Southern slave-holding States” as the reason. When you call that “NO mention of slavery,” you’re completely ignorant.

Tennessee’s secession ordinance cited no cause, but Governor Isham’s first call for a secession convention did: “The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question.” Yet you say slavery had nothing to do with secession in Tennessee. Learn some history before you blather on the Internet.
Cameroonian
July 6th, 2010 @ 8:12 am

Doug: Have you even read the Virginia ordinance of secession? The ordinances of many of the other states make no mention of any cause or justification for the act of secession — they merely declare secession. Virginia’s ordinance, however, gives the federal government’s “oppression of the Southern slave-holding States” as the reason. When you call that “NO mention of slavery,” you’re completely ignorant.

Tennessee’s secession ordinance cited no cause, but Governor Isham’s first call for a secession convention did: “The systematic, wanton, and long continued agitation of the slavery question.” Yet you say slavery had nothing to do with secession in Tennessee. Learn some history before you blather on the Internet.
Grimcargo
July 6th, 2010 @ 2:17 pm

Cameroonian Should I forgive you for your ignorance? You need to dig a little more.The civil war was not about slavery at all. It was a sub title in the war. Abe Lincoln was a slick politician that would lie and do anything to get into office just like Obama. He’s a war criminal that presided over the deaths of thousands upon thousands including native Americans.
———————————————
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
—————————————-
I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
———————
“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.
———————-
Who said that? Was it Robert McCain? George Wallace? Why it was the then Senator from Il. You know him. Old Abe. Learn something!
Grimcargo
July 6th, 2010 @ 10:17 am

Cameroonian Should I forgive you for your ignorance? You need to dig a little more.The civil war was not about slavery at all. It was a sub title in the war. Abe Lincoln was a slick politician that would lie and do anything to get into office just like Obama. He’s a war criminal that presided over the deaths of thousands upon thousands including native Americans.
———————————————
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
—————————————-
I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
———————
“I have never had the least apprehension that I or my friends would marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it, but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes.
———————-
Who said that? Was it Robert McCain? George Wallace? Why it was the then Senator from Il. You know him. Old Abe. Learn something!
Grimcargo
July 6th, 2010 @ 2:21 pm

One more thing Cameroonian. Taxation upon the South reached a crescendo with the election of Abe Lincoln who imposed such a tariff on the South that they could not thrive. THIS is why the war started. Fool yourself just as the likes of you have been doing since the war.
Grimcargo
July 6th, 2010 @ 10:21 am

One more thing Cameroonian. Taxation upon the South reached a crescendo with the election of Abe Lincoln who imposed such a tariff on the South that they could not thrive. THIS is why the war started. Fool yourself just as the likes of you have been doing since the war.
Ben (The Tiger)
July 6th, 2010 @ 4:42 pm

I love the South, and would much prefer living there, if I still lived Stateside.

But can you really go against the Cornerstone Speech?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

Stephens really laid it out there.

Many honourable men served in the CSA government and army, and I’ve got much respect for Robert E. Lee, but the cause was what it was.

***

Have all the Confederate History Months you like — fly the flag, whatever. It doesn’t bother me as long as people behave well in the here and now — and they do, for the most part. The South is actually much more integrated than the North now, from all that I’ve seen.

But don’t try to fool us, or yourselves, into thinking the war between the states was not about slavery. Of course it was. And that’s why the South — though it had a better argument about federalism, FWIW (IMHO) — lost. Legally right, morally wrong, and morality beat legality.
Ben (The Tiger)
July 6th, 2010 @ 12:42 pm

I love the South, and would much prefer living there, if I still lived Stateside.

But can you really go against the Cornerstone Speech?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech

Stephens really laid it out there.

Many honourable men served in the CSA government and army, and I’ve got much respect for Robert E. Lee, but the cause was what it was.

***

Have all the Confederate History Months you like — fly the flag, whatever. It doesn’t bother me as long as people behave well in the here and now — and they do, for the most part. The South is actually much more integrated than the North now, from all that I’ve seen.

But don’t try to fool us, or yourselves, into thinking the war between the states was not about slavery. Of course it was. And that’s why the South — though it had a better argument about federalism, FWIW (IMHO) — lost. Legally right, morally wrong, and morality beat legality.
Ben (The Tiger)
July 6th, 2010 @ 4:44 pm

Oh, and Farley’s an idiot. So left-wing that even the lefties ran away from him.
Ben (The Tiger)
July 6th, 2010 @ 12:44 pm

Oh, and Farley’s an idiot. So left-wing that even the lefties ran away from him.
Fensterwald
July 7th, 2010 @ 1:43 am

Grimcargo said: “Abe Lincoln…imposed such a tariff on the South that they could not thrive. THIS is why the war started.”

The tariffs Lincoln imposed could not have started the Civil War for the simple historical fact that the war started BEFORE Lincoln raised tariffs.

Tariffs had been steadily reduced for years leading up to the Civil War, and had hit a 45-year low by 1857. The majority of the rebel states seceded BEFORE Lincoln took office in 1861. The resulting reduction in southern congressmen permitted the passage of a tariff increase, which was signed into law by Democratic President James Buchanan. Again, this happened BEFORE the Lincoln administration. Even after the Buchanan increase, tariff schedules were still at the second-lowest rates in a generation. Lincoln subsequently raised tariffs further – but that was to pay for the war, which had already been underway for months by then.

The South seceded because of the growing pressure it felt on slavery. Southerners were frightened and outraged by the opposition to allowing slavery in new territories and states; by Northern refusals to return escaped slaves; by legal and mob action against slave catchers; by the John Brown raid and his post-mortem lionization; and, finally, by the election of Lincoln — even though Lincoln was relatively moderate on the slavery question. Southerners saw the handwriting on the wall: slavery had no future in the union.

Secession was an end-game bid to preserve an evil system in which a privileged few enriched themselves by kidnapping, imprisoning, selling, torturing, raping, and murdering other people. Because of that, the whole idea of the Confederacy was and is inherently ignoble.

…and another thing, Grimcargo: your “Senator from Il.” was never a senator from Illinois or anywhere else. Yet another example of how desperately you need to learn some actual history.
Fensterwald
July 6th, 2010 @ 9:43 pm

Grimcargo said: “Abe Lincoln…imposed such a tariff on the South that they could not thrive. THIS is why the war started.”

The tariffs Lincoln imposed could not have started the Civil War for the simple historical fact that the war started BEFORE Lincoln raised tariffs.

Tariffs had been steadily reduced for years leading up to the Civil War, and had hit a 45-year low by 1857. The majority of the rebel states seceded BEFORE Lincoln took office in 1861. The resulting reduction in southern congressmen permitted the passage of a tariff increase, which was signed into law by Democratic President James Buchanan. Again, this happened BEFORE the Lincoln administration. Even after the Buchanan increase, tariff schedules were still at the second-lowest rates in a generation. Lincoln subsequently raised tariffs further – but that was to pay for the war, which had already been underway for months by then.

The South seceded because of the growing pressure it felt on slavery. Southerners were frightened and outraged by the opposition to allowing slavery in new territories and states; by Northern refusals to return escaped slaves; by legal and mob action against slave catchers; by the John Brown raid and his post-mortem lionization; and, finally, by the election of Lincoln — even though Lincoln was relatively moderate on the slavery question. Southerners saw the handwriting on the wall: slavery had no future in the union.

Secession was an end-game bid to preserve an evil system in which a privileged few enriched themselves by kidnapping, imprisoning, selling, torturing, raping, and murdering other people. Because of that, the whole idea of the Confederacy was and is inherently ignoble.

…and another thing, Grimcargo: your “Senator from Il.” was never a senator from Illinois or anywhere else. Yet another example of how desperately you need to learn some actual history.