Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty
By ROGER KIMBALL
WSJ; December 3, 2004; Page W15
online.wsj.com
At Hamilton College -- an elite liberal arts institution in Clinton, N.Y. -- you can take courses in Roman civilization, Shakespeare and the "Emergence of Modern Western Europe, 1500-1815." All well and good. You can also take something called "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change." That last course -- a month-long, half-credit seminar -- is scheduled to begin next month. Its teacher is Susan Rosenberg, formerly of the Weather Underground.
Remember the Weather Underground? Its self-described revolutionaries, mostly middle-class, dedicated themselves to supporting radical black causes and tearing apart American society in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1970, they blew up a townhouse when a bomb detonated prematurely and killed a few of their troops. Kathy Boudin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and other high-profile members of the group spent the next decade or so running from the police and, some of them, continuing to pursue careers in criminal violence.
Ms. Rosenberg did her part. In October 1981, in an operation code-named "The Big Dance," several black radicals and members of the Weather Underground held up a Brinks armored car in Nanuet, N.Y. In the course of that act of domestic terrorism, they murdered Peter Paige, a Brinks guard, and police officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, the only black officer on the Nyack, N.Y., force. Ms. Rosenberg, then still at large, was indicted as an accessory.
According to John Castellucci's "The Big Dance," an account of the Brinks robbery, Ms. Rosenberg's role in the Brinks job was performing surveillance, driving a getaway car and transmitting orders. "Any white who had taken part in the robbery," Mr. Castellucci writes, "would have received orders from her."
Susan Rosenberg in 1984, on her way to arraignment. She will soon begin teaching at New York's Hamilton College.
Mr. Castellucci reports that the Brinks robbery was only one of several violent episodes that Ms. Rosenberg was involved with in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She was finally apprehended in November 1984 while unloading a cache of weapons -- including 740 pounds of explosives -- at a storage facility in Cherry Hill, N.J.
As it happens, a key witness in the Brinks case refused to testify as the trial approached. Prosecutors dropped their earlier charges against Ms. Rosenberg, figuring that she could serve a long prison term anyway for weapons possession. At the time, she was quoted in the New York Times saying: "We're caught, but we're not defeated. Long live the armed struggle!" When she was indeed sentenced to 58 years, she announced that "we were busted because we vacillated on our politics.... Our own principles were not strong enough to fight to win." According to Mr. Castellucci, one of the officers who apprehended her interpreted this statement to mean that "she regretted not shooting them." Given the context, Mr. Castellucci notes, "he was probably right."
So why isn't Susan Rosenberg still in prison? Because in January 2001, Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. The outcry at the time was loud and furious. And no wonder. Just as important: Why is Hamilton College opening its doors to her?
Ms. Rosenberg is coming to Hamilton under the auspices of the Kirkland Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture, a left-wing enclave run by Nancy Rabinowitz, a professor of comparative literature (and, incidentally, the daughter-in-law of Victor Rabinowitz, of the radical law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin et al., which defended, among others, Kathy Boudin). It was Ms. Rabinowitz who invited Ms. Rosenberg. And it was she who rechristened an "artist/scholar-in-residence program" as an "artist/activist-in-residence program." According to Ms. Rabinowitz, Ms. Rosenberg is "an exemplar of rehabilitation" whose "story is about how you can make something productive out of something that was really awful."
It is by no means clear that Susan Rosenberg is "an exemplar of rehabilitation." In an interview on Pacifica radio soon after she was released, she tentatively renounced individual violence. But nowhere in her evasive circumlocutions did she renounce collective violence, what she described in 1993 as "the necessity for armed self-defense" in the pursuit of "revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance." She still denies having taken part in the Brinks job and likes to call herself "a former U.S. political prisoner."
And what is Ms. Rosenberg going to teach students? In a statement, Hamilton administrators described her as "an award-winning writer, an activist and a teacher who offers a unique perspective as a writer." In fact, her "writings" consist of political doggerel and radical exhortation, while her awards are PEN commendations for prison writing. Here is a representative passage from her poem "To Mumia Abu-Jamal," the convicted cop killer now on death row: "Their message so clear / Do not be Black / Do not be radical / Do not be a political prisoner / There is still time to / SHAKE IT LOOSE."
As for offering a unique perspective -- well, so might Osama bin Laden. Robert Paquette, a professor of history at Hamilton, was quoted by the Post Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., saying: "If you're going to bring Susan Rosenberg here...why not bring in David Duke on race or O.J. Simpson on the sociology of sports?" Mr. Paquette is not the only unhappy faculty member. Steven Goldberg, a professor of art history, noted that "there are nine children today who will never see their father... three women who are widowed" because of the crimes with which Ms. Rosenberg is associated.
Edward Moore, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., chief of police, is the father of a Hamilton student. He recently e-mailed Joan Hinde Stewart, Hamilton's president, to express his distress that "a convicted terrorist having a violent criminal background is welcome at Hamilton College."
Under fire, Hamilton administrators have wrapped themselves in the mantle of free speech. "As long as public safety and the rights of others are not compromised," they stated, "the college does not normally put limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot."
Well, that depends. In 2002, it is true, when Annie Sprinkle, a pornography star and performance artist, came to Hamilton to regale students and members of the local community about the proper use of sexual appliances, Hamilton administrators stood high on the pedestal of free speech. But when Brendan McCormick, a Hamilton alumnus and official class representative, sought to alert his classmates to the Rosenberg appointment, the college's development office refused to send out a letter from him, as it normally would. "I pointed out the hypocrisy of sending out a press release claiming that you do not censor speech and then turning around and doing just that," Mr. McCormick later said.
Ah yes: Free speech for me, but not for thee. Hamilton College is set to kick off an ambitious capital campaign today in New York. Mr. McCormick suggests that alumni consider withholding contributions. Call it the right kind of resistance.
Mr. Kimball is the author of "The Rape of the Masters" (Encounter). |
