Author: ACAN

Published Monday, July 23, 2007
By Dan Gediman
Special to The Courier-Journal

I am writing in response to the mean-spirited Los Angeles Times piece about Antioch College that was recently reprinted in the Sunday Forum. I write from the perspective of an Antioch graduate who just attended my 25th year reunion at the college and who has been closely following the recent events at my alma mater.
There were several key pieces of information left out of the Times piece, most notably the heroic efforts on the part of the alumni to raise enough money to keep the school open. So far they have raised over $500,000 in three weeks’ time with more coming in every day. Their goal is to incorporate Antioch College as a separate entity with its own president and board of trustees.

In addition, the faculty is considering legal action against Antioch University to keep it from enacting its plan to close down the college for a four-year period and then reopen it with an entirely new, non-tenured faculty (Antioch University’s other five campuses are graduate schools staffed with adjunct faculty.) There are apparently statutes that state that if a college reopens within three years of its closing, it is obliged to offer its former faculty their old jobs back with tenure.
This is perhaps the part of the story that has been least commented on in the national media, which has mostly been focused on rehashing some of the more notorious moments of Antioch’s past. One exception is the Journal of Higher Education, which has extensively covered this issue, as it has potentially dire repercussions for the academic community nationally. If Antioch can get away with it, so too can any other institution of higher learning that wishes to save money while gaining greater control over the faculty. Some see this as another sign of the erosion of organized labor in America.

Speaking of those notorious moments from Antioch’s past, I remain unembarrassed and unapologetic about the way the school and its students have addressed the key issues of the past two centuries. They may have sometimes expressed themselves in a messy fashion, but they have been on the right side of history in every major case that I am aware of.

From its very founding in 1852, Antioch admitted both women and people of color, something nearly unheard of in antebellum America. It was the first college in the country to hire a female professor. Antioch was an early and fervent advocate for abolitionism, women’s suffrage and civil rights. It supported free-thinkers of every stripe, and when McCarthyism hit this country, Antioch was one of the few schools to support faculty who held politically progressive views.

Agreed, Antioch’s students were sometimes overly strident — even self-destructive — in their politics, but at least they were deeply engaged in matters of substance, and I for one am glad to have come of age as a citizen surrounded by others who were not a bit cynical about America’s ideals of fairness and freedom for all.

I have to say that I feel like the Antioch poster child. It gave me absolutely everything I needed to not just survive but thrive in my adult life. It provided me with both the inspiration for my vocation, radio, and my avocation, music — two passions that remain by my side to this day. I will remain eternally grateful for all the gifts that Antioch provided to me, and profoundly sad that this place that I love has reached such a point of public ignominy.

Antioch’s founder, Horace Mann, in his final address as college president uttered a sentence that has become the school’s official creed: “Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity.”

I don’t know how much other schools’ graduates take their school motto to heart, but I know that this one has permeated my being for the past 25 years, and regardless of the outcome of the current struggle to keep the school alive, I’m quite certain it will continue to guide me for the rest of my years.

Dan Gediman, Antioch ’82, is the executive producer of the public radio series “This I Believe.”

Link to the original Article

By Megan Rosenfeld

Saturday, July 21, 2007; Page A13

Geez, what did Antioch College ever do to George F. Will? My alma mater is on the skids, gasping for breath, and Will kicks sand in its face [” Forfeited Glory,” op-ed, July 15].

It’s easy to make fun of Antioch, which announced last month that lack of money would force it to close at the end of the coming academic year, 156 years after its founding. But why not look beyond cheap shots about hippies and radicals and ask why Antioch should be saved?
Bard College President Leon Botstein said recently that the closing of Antioch would be a “tragedy” and that the school is the “unfair victim” of liberals’ failure to give money to higher education (he noted that most instead endow programs to eradicate poverty and discrimination and to take on other worthwhile causes). As Botstein pointed out, small, independent colleges such as Antioch are needed to help preserve the goals of a free and just society and to educate those who will demand the responsive government we all deserve.

We need people who do not accept the status quo. “Antioch taught me to speak up for myself,” one graduate said at a recent meeting of shocked alums in Washington. We need people who have learned — in addition to history and science — to question authority.

There are a lot of reasons the school is going under, as fierce Internet traffic among alumni in recent weeks has shown. Blame it on the over-the-top radicals and the wimpy administrators of the 1970s; blame it on the tight-fisted alumni who felt unloved and responded in kind. Blame it on the multiple campuses and the unworkable governing structure that reigned over all with split focus and at times neglect. Blame it on lousy presidents, and the culture of consumerism, and, oh heck, blame it on Lindsay Lohan, too.

But don’t blame it on a failure of liberalism. That’s much too simple.

Institutions that experiment with the content of higher education, such as Antioch’s co-op job program combining classroom learning with real-world experience, often have a tough time keeping ahead of their mandate for innovation. The co-op job program, for example, has been obviated by the ubiquitous institution of internships and summer jobs for most college students. Other progressive schools, such as Bard, have found that courses in Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are avant-garde. But Antioch should be allowed to carry on its role as a laboratory for higher education. Our mistakes often save other schools time and money.

When my husband was at Yale, the unofficial motto was, “We go to school to learn to rule.” Maybe that’s one reason they have a $20 billion endowment. Our motto is, “Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity.” Maybe that’s why we don’t.

(The motto of Trinity College, George Will’s alma mater, is, “Pro Ecclesia et Patria” — for church and country. Not quite as inclusive as “humanity,” but I’m not criticizing.)

Our small campus in Ohio has always been a target for anyone with an anti-progressive bent. When I was there in the late ’60s, the tiny Ohio chapter of the Ku Klux Klan regularly marched down the main street of campus, apparently under the assumption that if Antioch vanished, the Klan’s racism could flourish. Some of us set up lemonade stands and watched the marchers from the sidelines.

The sexual-conduct pledge of the early ’90s came in for a lot of derision — but from what I’ve read and heard, date rape is not a problem at Antioch as it is on other campuses. All colleges today are petri dishes of social issues. When my son entered Temple University — a large, public, urban school — six years ago, he had to sign a pledge not to bring guns into his dorm. I talked recently with a woman who left Smith College a decade ago because she felt overwhelmed by pressure to be a lesbian. Antioch is not alone in incubating a kind of monolithic radicalism that allows for little deviation from leftist mantras. Our college leaders are aware of this problem and are wondering how to fix it.

Antioch has produced a suitable number of MacArthur “genius” award winners, doctors and lawyers, if that’s how you measure success. The proportion of Antiochians going on to get PhDs is one of the highest in the nation. We are proud to have never had a football team or a fraternity. To the best of my knowledge, “beer pong” was not invented on our campus.

Most of us alumni — who raised nearly $500,000 for an Antioch revival fund over the recent reunion weekend — do not want to preserve the starving, attenuated Antioch of today. We want our robust, challenging school back, the one that gave a home to oddballs of all kinds, that allowed the marketplace of ideas to flourish and that had a sense of humor.

If George Will hates us, we must be doing something right.

Megan Rosenfeld, a graduate of Antioch College, is a Washington writer and former Post reporter. Her e-mail address is rosenfeldm@verizon.net.

Letter to the Editor
Friday, July 20, 2007; Page A18

George F. Will’s July 15 op-ed, “Forfeited Glory,” argued that the suspension of Antioch College’s operations was caused by “repressive liberalism unleavened by learning.” The argument fails to fit the facts.

Antioch College’s governance structure is participatory and democratic and is no more toxic than any other democracy. True to its democratic ideals, Antioch has many powerful elected governance councils open to students, faculty members and administrators. As with any democracy, if a community member does not agree with a decision, that member can express displeasure at the polls or run for office. This is not a toxic culture; this is democracy at its best.

Above all, Antioch presents the student with every tool necessary for a world-class academic, experiential and democratic education, but it demands that students take responsibility for their own learning. This is an alien concept in today’s higher-education market, where students are predominantly customers purchasing an expensive service; most prospective students dare not take Antioch’s challenge.

Antioch is not as “user-friendly” as most colleges today, but it offers an unforgettable, challenging education that is second to none. A powerful coalition of outraged alumni, passionate faculty members and dedicated trustees will not let Antioch die.

JONAH LIEBERT

Woodside, N.Y.

The writer is a 2003 graduate of Antioch College.