by J. Edward Pawlick, Publisher

Wellesley College has used lies before to teach hostility against men.

My wife, an alumna of Wellesley, knew that a lead article in her alumnae magazine was not telling the truth as soon as she opened it back in 1995.

It was one of the events that caused us to establish Massachusetts News.

She had to wonder. Was this large, obvious feminist lie being told by Wellesley College and a professor at Smith College on purpose, or was it simply a mistake? She is no longer wondering.

Now she wonders 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 radical feminists during their stay there?

My wife was so disappointed that she prepared a 16-page piece 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 and expand the same untruths.

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, feminist 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

The article was written by an alumna of Wellesley, Prof. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, ‘63, who is now 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 it "hateful." Thomas was depicted as a heroine by Prof. Horowitz. However, Horowitz did not reveal that she had just written a biography of 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 the 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 student body and the faculty back 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 as my wife did.

Truth Is Not Important

After reading the article, my wife 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 had made her "chuckle." 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 my wife’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."

My wife was a little taken aback that the intellectual discussions at Wellesley now are at the level of signs on bathroom walls. Can anyone possibly imagine such childishness from anyone in this age?

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 become accomplices to this blatant act of character assassination and poor scholarship.

Other Lies & 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 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 addition, how can Wellesley, which still believes in keeping women separate and isolated from men, possibly condemn Eliot for the same belief a century ago?