Saturday, August 04, 2007, YOUR LETTERS, Dayton Daily News

Will Wrong about Antioch’s Demise

Re George Will’s July 15 column, “News of Antioch’s impending closure is heartening”: Will suggested, as did Michael Goldfarb before him, that what did Antioch in was its radical brand of liberalism. Unlike alumnus Goldfarb, however, Will finds the closing “heartening.” As a faculty member of the College and a native of Yellow Springs, I have a different view.

Antioch has always been known to be liberal. As the alumni board notes on its Web site, antiochians.org, “Antioch was indeed among the first nonsectarian colleges, among the first to offer equal compensation and opportunity to male and female faculty, among the first to offer an equal curriculum to women and blacks.”

Now, internships and service learning are commonplace at most universities, as is greater representation of minorities, women, gays and lesbians. In fact, what Antioch suffers from most is that it is no longer unique.

Higher education is a very liberal business. As a 2005 Washington Post article reported, a survey of university faculty found that “72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative.” Therefore, if the combination of undergraduate ignorance and liberalism were truly fatal, the majority of universities would now be dead.

Antioch’s problems are more mundane, such as a lack of strong leadership, poor governance, and distrust from potential funders. The university has only one board of trustees, which is charged with the oversight of six
separate campuses in five different locations across the country. If there is one fundamental lesson to be learned, it is that any governmental structure too far removed from the lives of the people it serves may fail to understand their needs, much less fulfill them.

— Jocelyn Hardman, Yellow Springs

There’s More to Antioch Story

The July 27 story about Steve Lawry resigning from Antioch College (”Antioch College president resigns, effective Dec. 31″) featured a mugshot that looked like it was lifted from a police blotter. What’s next, grainy black-and-white, off-focus shots like those used in contemporary political ads designed to discredit opponents?

Antioch College’s press release mirrored one from Antioch University, a purely administrative structure invented in the 1970s. Year after year, that top-heavy structure with its imperial CEOs and its distant governing board plundered Antioch College’s treasure. So last month in Seattle, Antioch University’s 2007 board announced the inevitable end of that long process —i.e., “suspending” the historic liberal-arts college and, of course, inheriting its estate. Small wonder that Lawry was willing to leave early.

Antioch University’s press releases spin such announcements to sound very matter-of-fact — no arguments, case closed. They also try to make Antioch University sound like a real university, and they portray Antioch as a
highly problematic program no longer worth supporting. But if reporters investigated the history of this trend with faculty, staff, alumni and villagers in Yellow Springs, they might have a more accurate story to tell.

— Thomas Haugsby, Yellow Springs

Mr. Haugsby is an Antioch College professor and director of cooperative
education.

Last Modified : August 14th, 2007 Filed under : News articles Navigate : Previous post / Next post