Word: kilson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Crimson piece entitled "Parochial Moorings Don't Bog Down," in which he berates Professor Martin Kilson's "Cosmopolitan Imperative," Christopher J. Farley claims to speak for all Black students at Harvard. There are those of us, however, who feel he has misrepresented not only the Professor's argument but also the entire Black population of this country. His piece falsely portrays the latter as a culturally and politically monolithic group. Falling prey to a "romantic realism," Mr. Farley contrasts the inherent honesty, virtue, and simple "traditional customs" of Blacks with the materialistic, so-called, "yuppie ethic" of whites...
...author fears the loss of identity which might result from Blacks' adopting the "materialistic" or "cosmopolitan" stance he feels the professor is advocating. "To ask Blacks to become 'cosmopolitan' is a corruption of what it is to be a Black American." This rather lofty statement would be true if Kilson's definition of "cosmopolitan" agreed with Mr. Farley's misinterpretation of the term...
...race. On the contrary, the "cosmopolitan imperative," rather than being a call to assimilate, to deny our origins in the ruthless pursuit of personal advancement, is instead a plea to Black students to work within the social and political structures of this country to bring about improvement. Professor Kilson feels that Black students have the responsibility of alerting non-Blacks to a problem that is not only ours but theirs as well: poverty and discrimination in the United States. Perhaps Doctor Kilson goes too far in making the generalization that all cosmopolitan Blacks, will provide better leadership than all "parochial...
This is the idea Professor Kilson is supporting in his letter. He is not urging Black's to become something they are not; on the contrary, the Doctor is adamantly against both assimilation and the abandonment of one's social responsibility. He leaves it to the discretion of the student as to how much he or she should "temper" his or her parochial givens with cosmopolitan interactions...
...ethnocentric novices who run Harvard Black Student Association, be won by Blacks. Indeed, this frightening scenario would be detrimental to all of us--to all Americans--and especially detrimental to the cosmopolitan imperative that Harvard has played such a painstaking role in advancing in 20th century America. Martin L. Kilson Professor of Government