|
2nd
in a Series
Wellesley College Has Lied Before
It Caused Us
to Begin Massachusetts News
 Read
first in series
By
J. Edward Pawlick
March 9, 2001
My
wife, Sally, didn’t realize until 1995 that
her alma mater, Wellesley College, was using distortions and
outright lies to teach anger and hostility against men.
But it became obvious as soon as she opened her alumnae magazine
and realized that a lead article was not telling the truth.
She
wondered. Was this large, obvious, feminist lie being told by
Wellesley College on purpose or was it simply a mistake? She didn’t
have to wonder for long.
Now
she’s curious what other falsehoods are being told at her alma
mater and what influence is this having? Is this what turned Hillary
Clinton and thousands of other young women into unhappy, strident
feminists during their stay at the college?
Sally
was so disappointed that she prepared a 16-page booklet which
clearly pointed out the falsehoods in the article. She distributed
it to the entire faculty, the administration, the trustees and
over 1000 alumnae. But she received no answer from anyone and
the alumnae magazine continued to repeat the same untruths.
What
Was the Lie?
The particular headline that got her attention in the Winter 1995
issue was large. It proclaimed with great authority:
In
1899, the president of Harvard called colleges for women 'superfluities.'
She
couldn't help but wonder. Had a president of Harvard really been
so foolish as to tell a Wellesley audience that a women's college
was "superfluous?" This quote appeared to be false on
its face. Dare she say it looked like "propaganda?"
She could not believe that the well-known president for 40 years,
Charles William Eliot, one of the most distinguished educators
of his day, had said such a thing. Yet, it was also difficult
to believe that the alumnae magazine would tell such a transparent
lie.
This
prompted a trip to the Wellesley College archives where she looked
up the speech that incited the article.
Her
instincts had been correct. The headline was total fiction. What
President Eliot said in his speech at Wellesley in 1899 at the
inauguration of a new president was, "The colleges for women
are still regarded by many
people as luxuries or superfluities..." [emphasis added]
He
did not agree with the
people who believed that women's colleges were superfluous.
So
why did Wellesley College tell a falsehood like that? A third
grade student could do better scholarship than this. What was
going on and what were the reasons behind it? Could they not read
this simple text correctly?
The
distortions didn't stop there. As she continued to read, she saw
many other examples of inaccurate scholarship and attempts to
mislead the reader. In fact, the entire article, including the
graphics, was a grand display of feminist deceit. Its thrust was
to prove that the prominent men of America had fought against
the education of women and that there were "battle lines
over gender" which existed at the turn of the century among
"America's most progressive educators."
The
article didn't bother to inform the reader that Wellesley College
was founded by a man
who cared deeply about the education of young women, Henry F.
Durant. It didn't tell that there were many other men, including
President Eliot, who were most supportive. It only attempted to
divide women from men.
Another
headline in the article described the speech as:
The
'Hateful' Wellesley Inauguration Address
Who
Wrote This?
The article was written by an alumna of Wellesley, Prof. Helen
Lefkowitz Horowitz, '63, who is a Professor of History at Smith
College. It told about the reaction to the speech by one of the
women in attendance, the President of Bryn Mawr College, M. Carey
Thomas, who called the speech "hateful." Thomas was
depicted as a heroine by Prof. Horowitz.
However,
Horowitz had just written a book about Thomas in which she said
that Thomas had "a selective memory, enjoyed mythmaking,
and was capable of outright lies." Prof. Horowitz has "quivered
in rage at her lies and deceits."
Horowitz
revealed absolutely nothing about that in her article and instead
depicted Thomas as a champion of women, who returned to Bryn Mawr
and told her faculty and students that Eliot said the world of
knowledge "from the time of the Egyptians to the present
existed only for men." Both the female students and the faculty
at Bryn Mawr in 1899 and their counterparts at Wellesley in 1995
were led to believe that President Eliot did say that. A reading
of his speech, however, shows nothing of the kind. Perhaps one
can excuse Carey Thomas because she was probably telling her recollection
of the speech. But we assume that Prof. Horowitz had the written
transcript in front of her.
Truth
Is Not Important
After reading the article, Sally felt certain that others would
pick up at least some of the mistakes and they would make the
corrections in the next issue. But to her surprise, the next issue
continued the slander. It had a laudatory letter from an alumna
who was misled by the article. She said it made her "chuckle,"
and she recounted being told as a student at Wellesley that they
were much smarter than Harvard students.
She
wrote, "Charles William Eliot must have whirled in his grave."
The magazine headlined her letter with a puerile, "Tut, Tut,
Charles William Eliot!" and included a stiff picture of him
in 1899 attire that was meant to ridicule him.
But
that issue was probably printed before they received Sally’s corrections.
However,
the next issue wasn't. And it continued the calumny. It had a
letter from another alumna with the headline, "Luckily -
Women Can Do It." This alumna said the article was a "zinger,"
and she remembered a sign she had seen in a Harvard toilet, "Whatever
women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half
as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."
Sally
was a little taken aback that the intellectual discussions at
Wellesley now are at the level of signs on bathroom walls.
At
this point, someone might say that the administration and faculty
cannot be responsible for every article that appears in the alumnae
magazine. That is very true. But this article did not contain
just a single mistake; its whole thrust was to misinform the reader
and to make her believe that this distinguished president of Harvard
and men in general were against the education of women. But much more
important, even after the trustees, faculty and administration
knew about the article, they kept silent and became accomplices
to this blatant act of character assassination and poor scholarship.
Other
Lies and Distortions
What were some of the other falsehoods and distortions?
·
The article said Eliot had presided over the establishment of
Radcliffe College, the women's college at Harvard "with great
reluctance." That is not true. He was, in fact, most supportive
of this new school for women.
·
It made this war-like statement, "Eliot then struck the knife
home." That certainly is a colorful metaphor but is it scholarly?
And is it accurate? The reason for the metaphor was that Eliot
did say that women's colleges should be careful not to injure
women's "bodily power and functions." If that comment
wouldn't make a woman angry, what would? The only problem is that
this was a total distortion of what he said. Yes, he did say the
words, but a reader of the Wellesley article never learns that
he also said the same thing about men. Immediately after the above
quote, he stated, "This has not been accomplished for young
men; for in past centuries the elaborate education of men has
too often resulted in serious impairment of their physical vigor.
Indeed, to this day there are many cases at universities for men
in which bodily excellence is sacrificed to intellectual, or intellectual
to bodily." He was clearly not a chauvinist as they tried
to portray and he was certainly not wielding any "knife."
·
It said that Eliot was "a person who once had stood as an
obstacle" in the course of Thomas' own life, because she
wanted to matriculate at Johns Hopkins. This statement is ridiculous.
Horowitz blames Eliot for the fact that Johns Hopkins was not
made coeducational. However, she admits in her book that Thomas
had "dreamed of Vassar since she was a fourteen-year-old"
but was enthused about Cornell by a teacher and therefore attended
that school instead. It was Thomas' own father, as a trustee,
who voted not to make Johns Hopkins coeducational, with the approval
of her mother. It may be that Eliot advised against making the
institution co-ed, but to say that he stood as an obstacle in
Thomas' life was sheer fiction.
In
any event, how can Wellesley, which still believes in keeping
women separate and isolated from men, possibly condemn Eliot for
the same belief a century ago?
The
bottom line is that President Eliot made a challenging address
to the Wellesley College community in which he said they were
in a position to prove to the American people that the education
of women would be profitable to society.
The
bitter irony is that this type of scholarship by Wellesley a century
later allows the enemies of women's education to say that it is
displaying those very qualities that they predicted would emerge
if women were educated, "too emotional" and "not
logical." If President Eliot is whirling in his grave, it
is because of disappointment that his challenge made 100 years
ago to Wellesley College is not being met.
The
question now is, will anyone at Wellesley ever
tell the alumnae the truth about what Charles William Eliot said
in 1899?
The
saddest thing is that when Sally reported all of this to conservative
magazines and newspapers, they all yawned and said, "Wellesley
does this all the time." Is its reputation really that bad?
The only one that showed any interest was National Review which printed a squib on August 28, 1995 at page 12.
Is
Wellesley Relevant Today?
One cannot help but wonder whether an all-women's school
such as Wellesley is truly relevant today. Is it inevitable that
such an institution will become so one-sided that its members
are talking only to themselves and they no longer recognize what
is truth? In this day and age, can they be isolated from the other
half of the human race and still maintain a clear and balanced
view of the world?
The
college seemed to agree last year. It printed a major article
by a graduate of the early 1990s who said that Wellesley is an
escape from the real world. She wrote, "We knew we were living
in a safe place for four years, and upon graduation we would get
our faces slapped by the reality of the cold, cruel, capitalistic,
patriarchal world."
She
wrote that it was like living in a womb. “Other students saw this,
too. We even called our college the Wellesley womb," she
said. That's quite an indictment of this one-sex school.
|
