Word: kilson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...less reasonable, though, to believe that the corrective is membership in the elite Harvard establishment Professor of Government Kilson serves. Remember, the establishment is one in which Kilson both encourages political discussion in the classroom and is pleased to be a fearless thought-policeman outside it, quashing debate with allegations of "neo-racism...
...victims precisely because we're newcomers, because we have yet to be dressed-up and made presentable for the professor's polite society. The enemy Kilson wants "fought head-on" is our true, malevolent selves. And it's a reasonable, if debatable, proposition that such a fight is needed...
...WORTH considering how Kilson's academy looks up close. Consider what happened last semester when students adopted Kilson's tactics, coming up with their own code-word for racism--"racially insensitive"--and used it in pitting themselves against the Winthrop Professor of History, Stephan Thernstrom. The students, who brought their complaint before a College committee, objected to remarks Thernstrom made in Historical Studies A-25: "The Peopling of America," including characterizations of Jim Crow laws as beneficial to Blacks in diffusing white antagonism...
Enjoining argument over the Thernstrom incident would have implied acceptance of the agreement on which all discussion depends: that the best case should prevail. That would matter not just for Thernstrom, this time. It would establish a precedent by which to judge other professors, other times. And so Kilson had as little to say as his colleagues...
...might now say, with full professorial sway, what in some other fellow's mouth would be small-minded. And he has the audacity to suggest that anyone who would question what he believes is in the grip of an unspeakable sickness. If the rest of us defer because of Kilson's title, or because of the stylish prefixes he uses, we'll pay a price...