About That Podcast
We took down the mgopodcast version of yesterday's Roundtable, which requires some explanation. Unfortunately I'm not sure this explanation is going to satisfy everyone, particularly because Ace and I are currently not of the same mind on many of these issues. If it was just up to me I would not have pulled the podcast, but Ace felt very strongly about it and I did not. If you'd like to listen to the segment and come to your own conclusions it's still on WTKA's site.
FIRST, AN APOLOGY
Calling Michigan State the Fightin' Larry Nassars was a textbook definition of hubris and I should not have done that.
I do still think there was a major gap between the modern universities' reactions. MSU gave Lou Anna Simon a golden parachute and their regents fought tooth and nail against any sort of accountability. Michigan doesn't appear to be running the same playbook. Now, it's a lot easier for Michigan to do that because current higher-ups in the university are not directly implicated; almost everyone is dead. What they would do if they were looking at consequences for their own selves is in doubt.
[After THE JUMP: the segment]
OBJECTIONS NEED TO BE ADDRESSED
I don't think Sam Webb did anything wrong in the segment. We've been doing this for years and one thing that's pretty common on the roundtable is Sam bringing up arguments that he's heard other people make, on all sorts of topics, to get my reaction to them. Sometimes this feels like Sam bringing me stuff that his role as a relatively neutral radio host and recruiting reporter prevents him from addressing as directly or forcefully as he might otherwise want to.
So it's important to note that Sam began this segment saying that Michigan had a "span of indifference across decades, that "Robert Anderson was allowed to operate with relative impunity," and that "the report is a concession, now the question is what comes next." He directly stated that the content of the report was damning and that he accepted it.
Then we said some things about what was next, and Sam brought up a couple of arguments that he has seen or heard elsewhere that challenge the idea that we should take everything down and rename everything. These were:
- That Bo's culpability here was less than Joe Paterno's and that the crime that was enabled was somehow less or different.
- That there are many historical figures, like Yost, who could be subject to a similar re-evaluation.
Sam is sometimes very explicitly clear that he is not holding the viewpoint he is expressing; here he did not pause and have one of his ALL CAPS "this is not a thing I think" moments, but listening to the segment again he is clearly bringing up arguments others have made, and does directly state so in passing a couple times. We then address them. Anticipating counter-arguments and addressing them makes persuasive writing stronger and I feel that's a process we undertake on the Roundtable regularly; I'm glad Sam brought those topics up so we could talk about them.
The results of those conversations were more or less:
- Comparisons to Paterno are invalid and unnecessary because the important thing is what the standard of this university is and whether Bo met it; he did not.
- Maybe memory-holing big chunks of the athletic department's history isn't the best way to go about things and we should consider whether to incorporate Robert Anderson into the public-facing part of Bo's legacy (and Yost's racism into his) instead.
I think both of those things are worth saying and may not have been said if Sam didn't bring up challenges to our point of view. I think that made the segment stronger.
SOME ITEMS WENT OFF THE RAILS
Craig had a passage in the middle of this segment that I did not directly address on the podcast that I disagree with vehemently. He first agreed with what I said and then said "in terms of Bo, here's the problem" before launching into a discussion of how people don't see things the same way and that we can't really know how culpable Bo was based on recollections of conversations from a long time ago.
This may be true but I completely disagree with Craig's reasoning here. ESPN's summary of the Wilmer Hale report:
In addition to a former student worker saying he raised concerns to Schembechler in the 1980s, investigators were told by three former members of the football team that they told the coach that they had a problem with Anderson's treatment.
One conversation may be misconstrued in the memory. At least four—and I'm guessing the report is not complete—coupled with a widespread, jocular attitude towards the open secret in the program…
"We also learned of more than a dozen additional instances in which Athletic Department personnel heard jokes or rumors about Dr. Anderson's examinations, some of which highlighted Dr. Anderson's propensity for performing sensitive examinations for no apparent medically appropriate reason."
…means it beggars belief to imagine that Bo Schembechler did not know about the problem. And what's more, it doesn't exonerate him in any way if he didn't. It was his job to know. Schembechler was the sort of infamous coach-tyrant very popular from the dawn of time; there are many stories out there about him holding onto memories and grudges as fuel. Stories about his exacting detail at seemingly every level of the program. Stories about recruits walking in and asking for money, and then being shown the door with their recruitment over.
Schembechler was clearly capable of hearing something he thought was wrong and taking direct action about it. That's not a bad summary of his career. So for Craig to hem and haw about what we know and how the exact details of what was present inside Bo's brain felt both incorrect and beside the point.
For what it's worth, I talked to Craig about this and he wrote a response after:
I believe my comments on the roundtable yesterday were inarticulate. Or more so than usual. I apologize. I do not believe the pain of the victims of Dr. Anderson should be minimized. These victims suffered and the University (and, plainly, some persons employed by the University) enabled the reality. Nor do I believe that their accounts of what happened to any of them should be trivialized or marginalized. Their stories deserve to be heard. To the extent anything I said implied anything else, I apologize again; this was not my point of view, yesterday or today.
If the University decides to take the statue of Bo down, I will not object.
SO WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT?
The university now has to address the contents of the report in a formal way. I'm not zealous about any path they take except obviously they cannot let the status quo stand. If they decide to memory-hole everything, I get it. If they take the route we suggested in the podcast where the statue is modified to include Robert Anderson in some way and the museum portion of Schembechler Hall has a prominent display explaining what happened, that feels fine to me too. But I'm just a guy on the internet. I didn't play for Bo; I wasn't abused by Anderson. It's not my call.
Back then we knew people like dr Anderson existed but thought they were a rare occurrence. Now all you have to do is read the paper about the Church, the Boy Scouts, or just look at any county’s sexual registry and know they are everywhere, at every level of society. They seek positions of authority and trust like the not so good doctor. All of these things have raised awareness since the 90s and as have their outgrowth, the required trainings and checks one must take to become an adult involved in formal activities with youths.
That stuff was in its infancy at best back then. And victims except the bravest cringed in the shadows for fear of being stigmatized. And in that void the inertia of “he’s a good guy, I’ve known him a long time, everyone likes him” tends to rule. It would have been heroic for Bo to recognize the threat presented by Dr Anderson and dismantled it. And he had enough to go on that he should have, but failed. So make it part of his story to give heart to his successors to do the right thing. And take his and Canhams names off the building and the statute down for it
But don’t curb discourse on this at all. It should be what we do in times like these. Bo and Canham are not here to tell their stories, express regret, or apologize, which they hopefully would have done. Let’s not stifle those with a perspective that might have come from these men’s quarters.
As far as Bo is concerned, the most logical conclusion to take away from his inaction is that he didn't think what Anderson was doing was as important as coaching his football team.
Alternately, he knew how vile it was and steered certain players, such as Harbaugh, away from Anderson.
Regardless, the difference between indifference and depraved indifference doesn't really matter to the victims. Bo"s legacy is forever tarnished. The University needs to make a statement saying as much. And then take down the statue, and rename the AD facilities.
No healing can take place without official action and atonement. And I hope to God, the phrase is never invoked in a post game interview, even if it comes after beating OSU.
OK so trash Bo more and drag Harbaugh into is as well. What are we doing here?
Steered away form Anderson?
"Dr. Anderson was our family doctor for us as kids, I was 9 or 10 years old, Dr. Anderson, Dr. Graves was the other family doctor," Jim Harbaugh said Wednesday during a Zoom call with reporters. "Those two doctors. And then also when I played here at Michigan, Dr. Anderson was the team doctor. Took a physical for every youth sport that I played and also when I was here in college for football, yearly physical.
It's not about trashing Bo or dragging in Harbaugh.
Bo trashed himself here.
As for Harbaugh, think of it this way: either he was a victim himself, or he was steered away from Anderson by Bo and/or Jack because they knew the guy wasn't right. It would be tough to live with that awareness.
Or Anderson, as predators do, figured he'd prey on safer targets and not the son of a coach.
Thank you for this article, Brian. I think it was an important discussion to have that does have layers to it
As an MSU fan (username checks out), it's good to see some self reflection on what was ABSOLUTELY rivalry driven coverage of Nassar. As a person who hated PSU when that happened only to have it happen to my school - I had that realization too. Growth is good.
My overall takes on the Pod yesterday:
1. I think Michigan fans/school have responded to the Anderson situation in a better way than MSU/PSU overall.
2. I thought the pod definitely had an "aw shucks, everyone's dead now so there's no way to know the truth" feel to it. I don't think that was intentionally sweeping things under the rug, but it felt that way at times.
Great post as usual Brian. Totally agree with you about what Sam was doing. The problem with the entire segment was the focus on the legacies of Bo and the university.
The focus at this time needed to be on the victims. Nothing else mattered. Kudos to Seth on his passionate words. Kudos to Ace to calling out his employer and himself. That was not an easy thing to do.
I hope they take down the statue and rename the football building. Even before all this information came out, the legacy of Bo was holding this program hostage. Too many people are content to live in the past and remember “the good old days.” Take down the statue and maybe this program can finally move forward.
Taking down a statue and renaming a building is not putting things into a memory hole and pretending the past didn't happen. I think that is an inaccurate charecterization of those things. Having a statue and a building named after you is an explicit homage to you and your overall greatness. Putting a plaque says "the guy wasn't perfect but overall we still think he is great and worth honoring and holding up as an exemplar to be congratulated and emulated" Its saying you want to the program to still celebrate Bo. Not just remember, but celebrate.
Bo does not deserve to be celebrated. This is an easy answer, its not complicated. He may not be evil but he certainly wasn't great. Take down the statue, rename the building. The history will still exist, people won't forget Bo did good or bad things, but the university will no longer be celebrating his memory and holding him up as a flawed but ultimately great man.
My interpretation of the phrase "memory-hole" was to characterize an over-reaction of doing everything possible to pretend Bo was never here. I think re-naming the building and removing the statue is a reasonable reaction. I think taking all pictures of Bo down from everywhere is past the point of reasonable. I'm sure there is a line-up of pictures of all head coaches somewhere, I also think the tunnel has a mural of team history that Bo is probably featured in. Are those considered celebrations, and are they still appropriate? I don't think so but I can see the other side.
There will be edge cases that test the standard and reasonable people of good faith will disagree on. Should the bookstore sell books by Bo or featuring him? Can his image be on the pre-game hype videos shown on TV on in-stadium? Should UGP sell shirts with his picture on it? What about all the gear that uses his quotes - "the team, the team, the team" and others? I think allowing most of those would be generally okay, and to forcibly remove them all would put us in memory-hole land. But I acknowledge these are hard questions to deal with as we move forward.
Podcast idea.
Ace: The Perpetual Victim
Man, is Ace just the Millenial boogieman? It seems like any time he voices an opinion, even airing some mild public disagreement about a topic that is extremely personal to him, people on this board lose their minds about him. You don't have to follow him on Twitter. You don't have to read his posts. You don't have to think about him at all. Just move on.
That is the part I don't quite get - you don't have to interact with him online or here if you don't. It's like when people see a board topic that clearly is going to piss them off, then they read it, then they comment about how dumb it was and how it bothers them. There are multiple stages in that process to just cut out. Do it with Ace if you want.
Mild public disagreement would be sharing that you do not agree with the opinions expressed on the podcast and perhaps writing a respectful, critical response to the podcast. Asking that a link to the content be pulled down goes well beyond this in my opinion.
Seems to me like he wrote a respectful, critical response to the podcast? He never even publicly called for it to be removed
From his Twitter:
"i feel obligated to say this after reading the wilmerhale report and given my experience as a sexual assault victim: the mgoblog roundtable on wtka today contained denialism that wasn't pushed back on hard enough. i can't apologize on behalf of everyone but i can disavow it.
if you want an accountable discussion of schembechler and anderson, don't listen to segment two.
part of this discussion is acknowledging our own failures and i hope my colleagues are willing to do so. it's a difficult conversation; there's still a right way forward, and we came up short today.
i'm also acutely aware that past posts mentioned similar tragedies at other schools in a way that wasn't at all appropriate. it hurt to see that and i hope we take full responsibility for it, too. i should've spoken up then. i'm sorry we've failed in this conversation.
craig ross repeatedly said that we'll never know if bo schembechler knew about anderson. there's a 240-page report that repeatedly makes that impossible to believe (also: common sense). we've spiked the podcast from our feed and i'm glad we did so."
It's pretty clear that Ace put pressure on Brian and Seth to remove the podcast. He tweeted it himself. Also, I wouldn't characterize all of these tweets as respectful, critical responses. His first shot at Sam is calling comments that most people found reasonable and sensitive to be "abhorrent." To me, that's not a respectful reply, that's an attack.
All quotes below come from Ace's replies to @SamWebb77, linked above.
the comments today on the radio were abhorrent, sam.
i pushed for us to take the podcast off mgoblog and we did so.
it sure is. i don't know whether you were trying to play devil's advocate or just were way off base with your prompts but the discussion didn't meet our standards and we apologized for posting it.
the other people at mgoblog listened to criticism but that doesn't seem to be your prerogative today.
both sides-ing the reaction to a conversation about a sexual assault scandal is exactly the problem we have here, sam
do you want them to enumerate the issues with this morning's segment? i'm sure they can. the question about comparing this to situations at other schools was horribly framed at best, for one. also, you allowed craig to spew denialism.
If you want to take issue with his adjective choice, be my guest. None of these comments are attacking Sam. If this constitutes an attack, then I have no idea how he’s supposed to engage with Sam on this.
The definition of abhorrent is "inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant." If someone publicly told me that opinions I had thoughtfully come to and shared in good faith were repugnant, I would certainly take it as an attack. Sam definitely did, if you follow his recent tweets in response. His last word on the matter is
It's hard not to see such a blatant misrepresentation of that discussion as anything but purposeful. Speaks to who here is really guilty of not wanting to listen to other people's views.
Nothing I have seen from Ace has shown any empathy to Sam, Seth, Brian or anyone else as they work through developing and expressing nuanced views on a difficult subject. I haven't seen Ace tweet or post to say anything along the lines of "hey, Brian and I disagree on this but I respect his opinion, and I respect him more for taking down the post as I demanded." Anything like that, done publicly, would at least show a little more humanity than he has. Instead, it's just tweet after tweet about how awful everyone else is if they don't discuss this with the right amount of anger as determined by Ace.
He’s a mainly a method for the Newsmax crowd to get in their usual bitchfest in the guise of non-politics.
Honestly, where this concerns MGoBlog, all this comes down to is an employer making a decision that helps make his employee comfortable. I have no problem with that. It's Brian's site, he can do what he wants with it and I respect that he listens to Ace and cares enough about his thoughts to pull the podcast even if he doesn't fully agree.
I appreciate Brian's breakdown of the podcast because I will not listen to it, not because I'm against it, but simply because I don't usually listen to the WTKA pods and don't feel like this is the place to start. The transparency here is great though, and while I don't really have a strong opinion on what should happen next, I think statues of people are generally a weird thing, especially for a football coach, and whatever steps are taken I'll support. If that means taking his statue down and name off the building, sure. People aren't going to forget he existed or the things he did on the field, it's just a consequence and a stain on the legacy of a university icon.
I'm less concerned about individuals than I am about systems. What Michigan needs to do, beyond every other thing, is set up systems and protocols that make sure that something like this never gets beyond the first victimization.
I happen to think changing systems means altering how we remember people. It matters that the message we send is this, "If you don't protect the young people in your charge (and everybody else you work with), you don't get away with it, no matter how many games you win and how much good you do otherwise."
Having a modicum of compassion for Bo because he lived in a time where he didn't understand the damage that was being done doesn't mean we ignore the fact that he failed in a way that we have to make sure never happens again. I'm agnostic about the statue and other memorials. What I'd like to see is the survivors decide that. They deserve that, at least.
It's not about the dead. It's about the people who are here now, and about the athletes, students, and others who will be at Michigan going forward.
Maybe Michigan shouldn't bother with football for a while. Maybe 1-2 seasons. Maybe go D3 and prove people mean more than profits.
I really don't care how they respond to this because it's reactive, not proactive. It's becoming painfully clear college football has been an awful place for 18-22 year old men. I won't bother watching this fall.
Strictly Meta:
I really appreciate this post. I started reading this blog in my middle teenage years. Through college, the phrase "people in charge of things are just in charge" elicited psuedo-cheers probably not uncommon among "fight the man" young people. As that turned to mid-20s and finally early 30s, and I stepped into middle management roles, that phrase more and more caused me to roll my eyes instead, in the admittedly less common times it was brought out in a not light-hearted way. I felt that sometimes it made sense but sometimes it was really just reflected that the author had perhaps not been in a leadership position in a large company and generally just had not experienced the nuances involved behind the scenes of events and decisions behind public-facing items that were being targeted. Sometimes, you make bad decisions when you've spent 50 hours this week dealing with employees dealing with significant emotional trauma, domestic abuse, or life-threatening illness. It's okay to have sympathy for leaders who might be exhausted, and who externally it might look like accomplish almost nothing. It's okay to be frustrated with their output too, but be careful judging them too harshly when you don't know their inputs or why they aren't being more transparent. Sometimes them making a C- move is wildly above what they should be capable of after the week/year they've had.
The story around mgo staff with this post would have been easy to bury from the blog. It's difficult. Being as transparent as you can when it is hard or might reflect poorly on yourself or members of your team is leadership. I do hope there's understanding that in some cases being transparent would've made it much worse, and people might've thrown a "people in charge are just in charge" without knowing the behind the scenes.
EDIT: the first paragraph could read as applying to Bo. It does not. We know this because he fielded good football teams. That is, he couldn't have been, unbeknownst to us, so incredibly exhausted that he failed, but was successful at football, without putting football ahead of the victims.
These statements by Brian are undoubtedly true and undebatable:
"But I'm just a guy on the internet. I didn't play for Bo; I wasn't abused by Anderson. It's not my call."
This statement is also true and undebatable.
"All of the above is equally true of Ace."
However, we seem to be taking the point of view that it is Ace's call.
Brian,
It is time to part ways with Ace. Between MgoBlog and Twitter, he is causing more drama than he's worth.
Perhaps Ace should start his own website. I will chime in with a name.
MGoWoke
The constant bitching about Ace is making this an increasingly difficult board to want to follow.
Agreed, it's become an incredibly tiresome and toxic thing. I hesitate to even mention this to give it any daylight, but there was a thread from a year+ ago that give light to some really gross accusations by more than just gutter trolls that Ace was faking his CFS and grifting users with his GoFundMe. It was a low, low point for this forum.
He's not above criticism (and I agree with some of those), but in light of some of the really vile and below-the-belt things that people here have said, I can understand why he might not be all sweetness and light vis-à-vis this space.
I would never bash his condition or accuse him of anything that sinister. My issue with Ace is his fear of any opinion that dissents from his own. He is constantly portraying himself as the victim, and his twitter feed is an echo chamber of far left woke drivel. I said in an earlier post that when I read the headline and heard they removed the Pod, I thought, oh geez, what did Ace get his panties in a bunch about now. Unfortunately, I was right that it was all him, here. We can engage in discussion, and most of us have no issue hearing dissenting opinions. Ace doesn't seem to respect or even listen to anyone else if they don't share his viewpoint. How can any of us grow as people if we trap ourselves in our echo chamber. Unfortunately, Ace brings a lot of this so called hate on himself. It's sad, because I think he is a solid writer and he has a good knowledge of basketball.
It exasperates me to no end when people fish for argument or credibility by trying to hold the messenger of other people’s opinions accountable for those views. It’s disingenuous and just another way to poison discourse.
We definitely have pro-abuse scumbags here. It’s fair to bring up the crap they’re saying for public scrutiny.
So many act like Anderson worked for Bo. As far as I can tell he did not ("It's your job to know"). This guy was unleashed on an unknowing athletic department from UHS (Johnson/Easthope). To my eyes many in the AD outside student-athletes were victims as well. I think they trusted the guy. You mention three examples ... all of these are people complaining about treatments that people frequently complain about anyway and treatments that even the coaches received in the same context ... PPE's. There is nothing in the write-ups that would strike a person thinking a rectal exam was OK that it was anything more than a typical reaction of a young person receiving this treatment. Also none of mgoblog reporting has stated that genital exams are part of a physical. I think a lot of people do not know that and gives false impression a red flag was ignored.The fourth regarding the person with migraine is a red flag but even that one he appears to have sent the person to the superior and unclear if he told Bo that he got that treatment for migraine only / no physical exam or what. Even then did he follow up with Canham? We do not know.
I like, respect, and admire Ace. I have worked with some--not a lot, but some--survivors of sexual abuse. I've talked to men about how they were abused by priests. I've talked to a woman who'd just learned that her husband had been raping her three daughters. I am not a survivor of sexual abuse myself. I am personally acquainted with other forms of unpleasantness.
I strongly disagree with taking down the podcast. We have to be able to talk about these things and think them through. I am terribly sorry to learn that Ace was assaulted. I really am. But that does not make his judgment about these matters superior to anyone else's. He is, of course, able to speak to what it means to be a survivor of sexual assault in a way that I, for example, cannot. But that is not the same as having more wisdom regarding what to do about Bo.
Others have said similar things, but listening to it yesterday I definitely winced at what Craig was saying. It sounded like the kind of argument you want to make when you're trying to excuse indefensible actions by someone you admire. Maybe he phrased it terribly or maybe he was looking at it in a narrow legal sense. But it definitely came across to me like he was trying to say that "well, we can't really know if Bo knew."
Several victims say they told him and there was clearly a widespread atmosphere in the locker room of the major sports at Michigan that if you were sent to see Anderson about anything he'd ask you to drop your pants and was likely to digitally probe you. Given those accounts it seems impossible to think that Bo didn't know.
And it doesn't really matter after that what exactly Bo knew. If Bo just heard those jokes about how "I hurt my elbow, I'm going to see Dr. Anderson" "Better get ready to drop your pants." that should have been enough to investigate and intervene. If players told him more directly what was going on, it's worse I guess, but just ignoring the jokes is enough I think.
For the meta blog issue, I do think there is a strong tendency on the internet to cloister yourself with people who share your views. What happens then is that those views are reinforced and strengthened. And ultimately people think that the only way that you can disagree with your clearly correct views is to be stupid or evil. And that causes extremely strong reactions and a lack of empathy.
I don't think Ace tried to think about what Craig or Sam was thinking in that situation. Sam's thinking was fairly obvious. Craig I think just fucked up. And I would guess part of that is his age. We don't take sexual assault seriously enough yet, and we still take it way more seriously than we did even 10 years ago.
And we have to have room for people to fuck up if they're not doing it intentionally. It's how people learn. I would hope that Craig thinks about what he's saying more carefully in the future.
As for taking the post down, seems like it's Brian's site and he can do what he wants. I would have left it up I think, but close call. Not really my business.
As for what to do next re Bo and the statue, I think it is up to the victims of Anderson who played for Bo. They get to decide. Their call.
I really like that the internet and social media brings this information to the masses. But, I really dislike how it hijacks human nature and triggers us to act really poorly to each other while attempting to discuss emotion triggering topics.
So has anyone asked John U. if he knew? If so... should he remain a source of anything related to U of M? If not.. can we really think he knows all he says he knows?
How about Coach Harbaugh.. nope not that one.. Jack Harbaugh? He had to have known... why does he retain any ties to the program.. and did he send his son to U of M knowing that this could occur? Was Jim given an exception from physicals?
I was thinking the same thing regarding Bacon. He was on Sam Webb this morning to talk it over, but I didn't get anything new from him.
Live discussions on hard topics are imperfect, there was nothing wrong with your podcast.
I'm sorry that Ace has had shit happen to him. This however is a situation that has nothing to do with him, and yet somehow he's made it about him.
Seems to be what he does best.
thank you.
Thank you Brian. A well written and level take. I personally thought the Roundtable segment was largely fine. Craig was speaking from a lawyer's perspective in regards to the law. Sam did what he always does in bringing in counterarguments that he gets told on boards and social media purely for discussion. It's what a host does.
Personally wouldn't have taken it down from the feed, but Im not in charge.
Edit: I also think Ace going at Sam like that on Twitter was highly unprofessional.
As a faculty member at a university in the geographic south, I think about examining history in the context of racism quite a bit. No, this isn't the same as covering up predatory sexual misconduct, but I think we would agree that we'd like to eliminate both of these.
Nearly every public institution in the south denied admission to prospective students of color:
Of the many severe inequalities foisted upon them, black students were prevented from attending any of the Southern institutions founded in the wake of the 1862 Morrill Act providing for land grant colleges in every state. To combat this aspect of segregation, Congress passed the Second Morrill Act of 1890 (also known as the Agricultural College Act of 1890), requiring states to establish land grant colleges for Black Americans in contexts where such students were otherwise excluded from existing land grant colleges.
How many buildings on these campuses are named after the founding president or other university leaders from that era? Should they stay up? Should they be taken down? One other way to get things done at a public college is to ask the governor for help and name a building after that governor.
Some institutions were also founded explicitly to support Jim Crow/voter suppression issues -- look at your "Teacher's Colleges" or "Normal Schools" in the south founded around 1900 (plus or minus a decade or so). [Racist politicians of the day: "If we are going to suppress the black vote by having literacy tests, we're going to have to teach all of those poor, rural white people to read so they can keep voting for us. In order to do that, we need lots of white teachers. Let's get 'separate, but equal' enshrined in law (thanks Plessy vs. Ferguson), make a bunch of good white schools, and not fund black schools at all..."]. How should we as a society now look at those institutions? What should we do with the statues of the founders and political champions that made these institutions a reality? What about those building names?
I'll pick a more concrete example regarding naming buildings (that has nothing to do with me personally and is not in the state where I am a faculty member). It is generally known that Adolph Rupp at UK was a racist, and only grudgingly offered black players basketball scholarships. Should they rename the basketball arena (Some of the UK faculty says YES) or continue to honor one of the most successful basketball coaches of all time according to NCAA win metrics? The AD says NO. How would support of UK students, faculty, athletics change if they did make this change? Can we celebrate a great coach while condemning his racism at the same time? And, playing devil's advocate for a second, would removing Rupp's name be an attempt to whitewash history?
Wrote the above before I heard the discussion about Yost in the podcast...
I was going to ask this question to the board in general, but you seem like a good person to find an answer: is there a good example of any institution properly balancing celebrating a hero while acknowledging serious faults? Maybe you have seen something well done in the university in the South context.
I thought of some examples: In business, Henry Ford - does Ford Motor Company and/or the Henry Ford museum acknowledge his anti-Semitism? Assuming they do, is it enough?
Hollywood is still figuring out how to deal with Roman Polanski's career, and balance art vs the artist.
Many Founding Fathers were slaveowners, and even those that didn't, at least tolerated slavery enough to found the country without fighting for abolition until years later. As a country we still fight about what it means and how we deal with the statues and monuments to the men.
And to bring it back home (on a much less serious subject), the Michigan AD determined it best to remove banners and disassociate from the members of the Fab Five who broke the rules, though there is a strong chorus of support to bring them back.
In general, it seems like a narrow path to try to do without disrespecting one side or the other. I would like to see a good way that someone else has handled a similar sensitive history.
I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not sure that there is a good example. (And, to make things even more complicated, I think it is fair to say that what is "good" to one person is not to another...see the disagreement between Brian and Ace as the genesis for this article.)
This might be where my comparison of institutions built to further institutionalize racist politics breaks down. There are many reasons that institutions may wish to decry racism, some of them out of genuine anti-racist motivations, while others could be more cynical. After all, state funding formulas being what they are, universities are incentivized to grow our enrollments, and, often, focus on lower-income populations. The fact that we are using this moment in history to remove racist figures/confederate statues can be viewed as a synergy between both of these altruistic and cynical viewpoints. For example, in North Carolina, Charles Aycock, Governor in the 1890s-1900s who ran on institutionalizing the "Grandfather Clause," is disappearing all over the state. And his statue in the Capitol's statuary hall is being replaced with Billy Graham's.
I struggle with Seth's, "put a plaque on it" idea. Going back to Rupp Arena for a second. I'm just not sure a plaque (or even a plaque near every entrance) stating something like, "Adolph Rupp was a well-known racist, as is easily seen by the fact that UK was one of the final teams in the SEC to integrate Black players," sends the same message as some hype video screaming WELCOME TO RUPP ARENA, HOME OF YOUR KENTUCKY WILDCATS! Nor do I think would changing the name to "(Racist) Rupp Arena" would be viewed favorably by UK donors. Not to mention, I doubt Calipari would like to recruit players, telling them that they get to defend a home court with "racist" anywhere in the title.
It's a hard thing to balance, and tribalism, I think, makes it all harder. I mean, should we revise Ufer's description of the Big House, "The hole that Yost dug, Crisler paid for, Canham carpeted, and Schembechler fills every cotton-pickin' Saturday afternoon..." to add "while looking the other way while a sexual predator abused his team." Does that inspire fandom as it was intended to? Maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't. But, not many (none?) of the names listed in that quote would bear modern scrutiny. Should we take them all down? Should we name our campus buildings after lakes in the state (goodness knows we have enough). Or should we acknowledge that all humans are both sinner and saint and choose to celebrate our iconic figures in spite of that duality?
I know I asked more questions than gave you answers. Maybe that's a good thing? Raising awareness and having these sorts of discussions is productive too.
The problem with live radio is you say something and then it's your idea and shit now I have to walk this back because I didn't mean to advocate for putting a plaque on it--I said if you leave up the statue you have to put a plaque on it, meaning as a Solomonesque "now nobody's happy" answer, and then Sam ran with it and I had to sit there until it was my turn to speak and say "I just want to be clear, that's not my position." Fuck.
Raylan Givens : You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.
I listened to the discussion on WKTA. I'm perplexed how anyone could be offended by an in depth discussion about a sensitive situation by four extremely professional adults. If all of our political and social discourse took this approach, our world would be such a better place.
And then you have the 6 year old petulant child throwing a fit on twitter and demanding the discussion be taken down.
Brian this is very well written and brings some nuance to a very hard topic. I commend you for tackling this issue.
The one thing I will take some objection to - not just here, but whenever these types of conversations are discussed - is the notion that sexual assault survivors writ large have some sort of priority of opinion. We as a society need to have more empathy of others experiences and I don’t know if we can have a productive dialogue if we’re saying only the opinions of those people who have experienced (sexual assault, racism, classism, discrimination, etc.) matter. That’s not how we move forward to stop these types of things from happening.
As a personal experience - I am biracial and I remember when Colin Kapernick started his protest and another black NFL player said that Colin couldn’t speak for black players because he was only half black, or something to that affect. Does that make Colin’s experiences with racism different, or less worthy of being able to speak out about? Does it matter?
To bring it back to this conversation, I can empathize with Ace and what he experienced, though that’s something I’ve never personally experienced. I’m not downgrading his experiences- but why does that make him the gatekeeper of opinion on the matter (much like the NFL player attacking Colin)?
If the conversation was bad on its merits - sure, take it down. If it was bad because one staff member thought so - and only because of that - then I disagree with removing it.
Once again, I think we all just need to practice empathy. Ace’s experience is different than Brian’s or Seths and it’s different than mine, but it’s also different than other survivors of sexual assault. But the only way we can be better is with all of us grappling with these issues - and yes, sometime that may mean saying what can be perceived as the wrong thing. And if or when that happens we should handle those situations with a balance of perspective - ie judge people’s intent. Shutting down conversation because it doesn’t match our viewpoints- like Ace asked for - doesn’t help anything IMO.
If I recall correctly, Ace previously shared a story of abuse. The story focused on getting high with a friend and then that friend making an unwanted pass at him. A key aspect of the retelling was the that other person was bigger and stronger, so Ace projected predatory tendencies onto this person who may have just misread a situation. My ex-girlfriend was an actual survivor of rape. Her story of being helpless and powerless was gut-wrenching. The fact that a story of Ace's homophobia is in anyway associated with actual suffering is ridiculous.
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