I hope this doesn’t give Canada’s “human rights” commissions any bright ideas.
Keith Sampson, a student at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI), worked part-time as a janitor to help pay for his education. A book he read during breaks raised the ire of a lot of important (but apparently clueless) people.
Was it pornography or a defence of racist philosophy? Of course not. It was Notre Dame Vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan—a history of a student campaign against the Klan during the 1920s.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz reports the whole sad story.
Mr. Sampson was in short order visited by his union representative, who informed him he must not bring this book to the break room, and that he could be fired. Taking the book to the campus, Mr. Sampson says he was told, was "like bringing pornography to work." That it was a history of the battle students waged against the Klan in the 1920s in no way impressed the union rep.
The assistant affirmative action officer who next summoned the student was similarly unimpressed. Indeed she was, Mr. Sampson says, irate at his explanation that he was, after all, reading a scholarly book. "The Klan still rules Indiana," Marguerite Watkins told him – didn't he know that? Mr. Sampson, by now dazed, pointed out that this book was carried in the university library. Yes, she retorted, you can get Klan propaganda in the library.
The university has allowed no interviews with Ms. Watkins or any other university official involved in the case. Still, there can be no disputing the contents of the official letter that set forth the university's case.
Mr. Sampson stood accused of "openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black co-workers." The statement, signed by chief affirmative action officer Lillian Charleston, asserted that her office had completed its investigation of the charges brought by Ms. Nakea William, his co-worker – that Mr. Sampson had continued, despite complaints, to read a book on this "inflammatory topic." "We conclude," the letter informed him, "that your conduct constitutes racial harassment. . . ." A very serious matter, with serious consequences, it went on to point out.
After Mr Sampson contacted the ACLU and local press reported the story, the university sent him a revised letter stating that, while reading history books is fine, unspecified and confidential charges of harassment had been lodged against him.
Later, after still more publicity, charges were finally dropped. No official apology has been issued to Mr Sampson.
Here’s a question: What would an institution of higher learning have to do to make itself look more completely idiotic than IUPUI?
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The collect for today, the Feast Day of John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian, Poet (
