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Can Brodhead be far behind?
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Topic Started: Dec 29 2015, 07:07 AM (276 Views)
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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:07 AM
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http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25547/
Rutgers leaders declare campus founded by pillaging racists, earmarks funds for diversity teach-ins DECEMBER 17, 2015
As Rutgers University marks its 250th anniversary, university leaders have looked to the past, launching an “enslaved and disenfranchised populations in Rutgers history” committee to make up for “some facts that we have ignored for too long,” Rutgers Chancellor Richard Edwards recently announced.
“Our campus is built on land taken from the Lenni-Lenape, and a number of our founders and early benefactors were slave holders,” Edwards wrote in an email to the campus community. “Given our history as a colonial college, these are facts not unique to Rutgers, but it is time that we begin to recognize the rule that disadvantaged populations such as African Americans and Native tribes played in the University’s development.”
With that, Edwards announced the formation of a committee comprised of faculty, staff and students to study “enslaved and disenfranchised populations in Rutgers history.” Providing examples of what the committee may do, Edwards mentioned the recommendation of historical markers or establishment of symposia, lectures and teach-ins to address history.
“The committee will be charged with examining the role that the people of these disadvantaged groups played in the founding and development of Rutgers University, and with making recommendations to me on how the University can best acknowledge their influence on history,” he stated.
Early this year, Edwards created a new Diversity and Inclusion Office at Rutgers and launched a university-wide faculty diversity hiring initiative which aims to create “a diverse recruitment pool,” among other efforts.
Ironically, Rutgers students protested after Condoleezza Rice, the first female African American Secretary of State, was announced as the 2014 commencement speaker. Organizing a sit-in of more than fifty students in the president’s office, protesting students drew police to the scene after shattering a glass door. Rice subsequently declined the honorary degree Rutgers was to give her and her speaking engagement.
Meanwhile, not everyone at Rutgers agrees the new committee is the best use of taxpayer money at the publicly funded university. Rutgers College Republicans spokesperson Steven Wynen said the money is needed elsewhere.
“My fellow College Republicans and I are fiscally conservative. While we are all for the excavation of history to learn from the past, they feel as I do that this is not the right allocation of Rutgers’ limited resources,” Wynen said. “You are to learn from the past, not dwell on it. The money would be better off going to financial aid programs or infrastructure, which are current needs.”
“The bus system on campus needs maintenance and we have one of the highest in-state tuition costs in the nation,” he added. “If Rutgers truly wants to move forward and compete with other big-name schools for New Jersey students, wasting thousands of dollars on this committee is not going to help.”
And Save Jersey founder Matt Rooney, an attorney and blogger, also stated the new “enslaved and disenfranchised” committee is a bad decision.
“Naturally, the only way for a liberal to truly prove that he or she cares about the dispossessed is to throw money at the problem – ideally someone else’s money – and form a committee to spend it. The humorless RU administration doesn’t appreciate the irony of it all,” Rooney wrote. “Some birthday party, huh? I don’t know about you, Save Jerseyans, but digging up 250-year-old skeletons to appease professionally-offended academics and brainwashed students cowering in their safe spaces isn’t exactly my idea of a fun time.”
Wynen told The College Fix “it definitely appears that the decision to form the committee is a preemptive move to forestall a repeat of what happened at Yale or Mizzou at Rutgers.” Yet, Wynan said that to his knowledge there have been no outcries over race relations on campus.
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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:12 AM
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Knowing how Brodhead responded to the lax allegations (with a long dissertation about the racist past), and knowing that similar demands are likely to appear on the Duke campus, is it impossible to imagine him also appointing a committee (his favorite response to any crisis) to study Duke's exploitation of minorities?
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recommendation of historical markers or establishment of symposia, lectures and teach-ins to address history.
Maybe we can have some plaques on the campus (and the removal of the statues of any member of the Duke family).
Of course, there won't be a plaque to commemorate "Scottsboro II" (there's not even an expression of regret)
And it's odd that there was never a committee formed to study Duke's responses to that crisis and provide a transparent account of why Duke did what it did
But how will Brodhead respond to the current trends in student protest?
(I think we could write that scenario ourselves, and not be far off the mark)
(MOO)
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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:22 AM
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http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/615/entry
The Occaneechi and Eno were the first residents of present-day Durham County. Different from the Iroquois and Tuscarora, the peaceful Occaneechi migrated to Virginia as European settlers settled the area in the mid-eighteenth century. The Eno lived on the eastern side of Durham, and John Lawson encountered the tribe upon his survey of early North Carolina. Like the Occaneechi, the Eno moved with the Catawba tribe to live in South Carolina as the white man moved into the region. German, English, and Scotch-Irish settlers were the first Europeans to inhabit Durham. Most of the families who sought to dwell in Durham received land grants from the Earl of Granville, the Lord Proprietor of the Carolinas.
And who was the Earl to give away the land of the Occaneechi and the Eno? Clearly that is rampant imperialism, and even though it was three hundred years ago, nevertheless the effects are felt today, and the recipients of that privilege should acknowledge their dispossession of the tribes.
(One may inquire how the Occaneechi and Eno acquired their lands, and who they dispossessed, but that would run contrary to the narrative.)
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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:27 AM
Post #4
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Cameron, Hardscrabble, and Leigh were the largest plantations within Durham in the early and middle nineteenth century. Yet, once the War Between the States concluded, the plantations vanished.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagville
Stagville Plantation is located in Durham County, North Carolina. With buildings constructed from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century, Stagville was part of one of the largest plantation complexes in the American South. The entire complex was owned by the Bennehan and Cameron families; it comprised roughly 30,000 acres (120 km²) and was home to almost 900 enslaved African-Americans in 1860.[2]

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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:32 AM
Post #5
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I don't see how anyone can be in Durham without being constantly being reminded of its doleful past; and suffering hourly microaggresions thereby.
And surely President Brodhead is aware of this unhappy fact:
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http://www.amazon.com/Journals-Charles-W-Chesnutt/dp/082231424X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451392153&sr=1-2&keywords=richard+brodhead
The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt Paperback – October 19, 1993 by Charles W. Chesnutt (Author), Richard H. Brodhead (Editor)
From Library Journal Chesnutt's journals (1871-82) give the reader a vivid view of what an educated black man endured in a racially discriminatory society. The journals reveal an iron will intent on self-improvement; Chesnutt was determined to teach himself several foreign languages, improve his shorthand, study liberal arts, and become college-educated without a college. At the age of 22, he became the principal of the State Colored Normal School of North Carolina, but the dream of his life was to become an author. The Conjure Woman , first published in 1899 to enormous acclaim, shows Chesnutt's understanding and appreciation of the black vernacular, which did not come easily from an educated viewpoint. However, the conjure tales are full of black popular culture: its grief, ghosts, music, and joys. Certainly, Chesnutt's journey to literary recognition--which came in his lifetime--began the day he started his journal of self, ever alert to all its possibilities. This is an important contribution to African American studies. Highly recommended.
- Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., Ind. vb.2
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Quasimodo
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Dec 29 2015, 07:40 AM
Post #6
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- Quasimodo
- Dec 29 2015, 07:22 AM
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http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/615/entry
The Occaneechi and Eno were the first residents of present-day Durham County. Different from the Iroquois and Tuscarora, the peaceful Occaneechi migrated to Virginia as European settlers settled the area in the mid-eighteenth century. The Eno lived on the eastern side of Durham, and John Lawson encountered the tribe upon his survey of early North Carolina. Like the Occaneechi, the Eno moved with the Catawba tribe to live in South Carolina as the white man moved into the region. German, English, and Scotch-Irish settlers were the first Europeans to inhabit Durham. Most of the families who sought to dwell in Durham received land grants from the Earl of Granville, the Lord Proprietor of the Carolinas.
And who was the Earl to give away the land of the Occaneechi and the Eno? Clearly that is rampant imperialism, and even though it was three hundred years ago, nevertheless the effects are felt today, and the recipients of that privilege should acknowledge their dispossession of the tribes.
(One may inquire how the Occaneechi and Eno acquired their lands, and who they dispossessed, but that would run contrary to the narrative.)
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”
Exactly where in Adam's will (to borrow a phrase) does it say that North America is willed forever to certain tribes, who may fight among themselves incessantly and migrate across it at will, and dispossess at will any tribes who are there before them; but no portion of North America may be in turn occupied by any other tribes if they arrive there after 1492 ?
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chatham
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Dec 29 2015, 08:32 AM
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http://civilwarexperience.ncdcr.gov/stagville/narrative-stagville1.htm
North Carolina Historic Sites Historic Stagville: Teaching through our historic sites
Slave House Slave house (ca. 1851) at Stagville Plantation
A Brief History of Stagville Plantation
Stagville was one of the largest plantations in North Carolina prior to the Civil War and among the largest of the entire South. By 1860, the Cameron family owned almost 30,000 acres and nearly 900 slaves. Stagville, a plantation of several thousand acres, lay at the center of this enormous estate.
The first owner of Stagville plantation was Richard Bennehan. In 1768, at the age of 25, Bennehan moved to North Carolina to seek his fortune as a partner and manager in William Johnston's Little River Store at Snow Hill Plantation, located several miles west of Stagville. The nearest town, Hillsborough, was eighteen miles away and was just beginning to attract a number of merchants, professional men, and summer gentry. Neither Raleigh nor Durham had been founded at this time.
In 1776, Bennehan invested in 1,213 acres of land, which became the core of the plantation lands his family would hold for nearly two hundred years. During a period spanning almost sixty years, Richard Bennehan's keen business sense and attention to detail at his store and on the plantation made him one of the wealthiest men in North Carolina. Also in 1776, Richard Bennehan married Mary Amis. The couple had two children, Rebecca, born in 1778, and Thomas, born in 1782. Rebecca married Duncan Cameron and moved to Farintosh Plantation, which was adjacent to her father's property. Upon his death in 1825, Richard Bennehan left all his properties to his son Thomas. These properties included the holdings of Stagville and many other plantations encompassing more than 3,900 acres in Granville, Wake, and Orange (part of which became Durham County in 1881) counties. His estate also included a city block in Raleigh.
Slaves Slaves working in the fields
Thomas never married, but devoted his life to his family and the operation of the plantations. He lived at Stagville his entire life. Thomas and his sister, Rebecca, maintained a very close relationship throughout their lives. Upon his death, Thomas left all of his lands between the Flat and Little Rivers, including Little River Plantation and Stagville, to his nephew Paul Cameron, Rebecca and Duncan Cameron's son. Paul Cameron became the sole heir of his father's and uncle's large estates. Of Rebecca and Duncan's eight children, Paul was the only one actively engaged in the operation of the plantation. Paul's interest in agricultural practices and personal involvement with the day-to-day operations of the plantation, ensured the continued success of the immense plantation complex.
In addition to tending to plantation operations, Paul Cameron was a North Carolina state senator from 1856-1857. He unsuccessfully ran for re-election in 1858. At the onset of the Civil War, Paul Cameron was considered the wealthiest man in North Carolina. He and his family listed their combined holdings to include over 900 slaves and 30,000 acres of land. The remote location of the Stagville plantation complex served to keep the impact of the Civil War at a safe distance. Aside from a few instances of conscription of enslaved individuals to work on the fortifications near Wilmington, life at Stagville continued with minimal impact during the war. Near the end of the war, Union troops raided the plantation for supplies and a skirmish between Union and Confederate cavalry was fought on Stagville lands. After the war, however, the lives of those living on the Cameron lands, both free and enslaved, were never the same.
When the war ended, many newly freed families left Stagville. Others chose to stay as day laborers or sharecroppers. Sharecropping was the dominant form of labor throughout the South after the Civil War. Many descendants of the Bennehan-Cameron enslaved community remain in present-day Durham County and the surrounding area.
The Bennehan and Cameron families left behind an immense amount of personal and business papers which have been collected in two local repositories: The Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the North Carolina State Archives. These surviving family letters and documents provide detailed accounts of activities on the plantation and greatly enhance our understanding of life on Stagville plantation lands in North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama. These resources help us learn more about the operation of the Stagville plantation and help us refine the interpretation at Historic Stagville.
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Payback
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Dec 29 2015, 09:42 AM
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Washington Duke was a heavy smoker. Brodhead should make a public statement about that.
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chatham
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Dec 29 2015, 10:22 AM
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Many people consider stagville after the civil war the beginning of the economic oportunities for blacks in the area. And may be another reason durham has developed into a very successful diverse city. Unfortunately, some still blame white folks for their own failures.
Remember, brodhead brings a yankee perspective to race relations at duke, rather than someone who could choose to develop duke from the diverse economic oportunity it can offer everyone.
Moo
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kbp
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Dec 30 2015, 08:16 AM
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- Quasimodo
- Dec 29 2015, 07:07 AM
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http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/25547/
Rutgers leaders declare campus founded by pillaging racists, earmarks funds for diversity teach-ins DECEMBER 17, 2015
[...] And Save Jersey founder Matt Rooney, an attorney and blogger, also stated the new “enslaved and disenfranchised” committee is a bad decision.
“Naturally, the only way for a liberal to truly prove that he or she cares about the dispossessed is to throw money at the problem – ideally someone else’s money – and form a committee to spend it. The humorless RU administration doesn’t appreciate the irony of it all,” Rooney wrote. “Some birthday party, huh? I don’t know about you, Save Jerseyans, but digging up 250-year-old skeletons to appease professionally-offended academics and brainwashed students cowering in their safe spaces isn’t exactly my idea of a fun time.”
Has Trump started the non-PC trend?
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