Sad. Looks Like David Kane '88 is Being Attacked by Harvard Students and Faculty for Being Normal

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - I have noticed over the last couple of days that the Ephblog site was down. I was going to send an email but assumed that everything was basically okay. Now, however, it looks like more is up than I imagined. My friend, David Kane, is a statistics instructor for Gov. 50 at Harvard. It looks like the kids at Harvard finally figured out he was the proprietor of Ephblog. 

The stuff that concerns them enough to boycott his class is the mildest of conservative talking points. According to The Crimson, Kane's bigotry is best captured as follows: 

Some entries posted by “Field” on EphBlog make references to “Black Supremacy” in the NBA, claim that over 90 percent of Black students at Williams College would not have been admitted if it were not for their “Black’ness” [sic], and question Williams College’s condemnation of white supremacist group Identity Evropa without similar condemnation of the Black Lives Matter and Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movements.

As far as I can tell, the nonsense hit the fan after Kane showed the insensitivity to invite the beloved Charles Murray to speak at his class. 

After The Crimson reported that Kane invited Charles A. Murray ’65 to deliver a talk as part of the course, another student suggested that “Field” might be Kane, Queen said.

It looks like Kane has maintained the confidence of his employer and appears to be handling himself well. As far as I can tell, the comments on this article and the others I reviewed are overwhelmingly pro-Kane and pro-free speech.

This is a great opportunity to remind ourselves of Kane's extraordinary skills and record. According to his Harvard biography, "David Kane is the Preceptor in Statistical Methods and Mathematics in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps from 1988 to 1991. Prior to returning to Harvard in 2018, he worked in quantitative finance for two decades, mostly as an equity portfolio manager at firms including Numeric, Geode, Millenium, Point72 (formerly SAC), Acadian and Hutchin Hill. In 2016 he was a Professor of the Practice at Middlebury College. He teaches Gov 50: Data and Gov 52: Models."

Maybe this deplatforming nonsense is coming to an end. I haven't had time to sift through all of this yet. Here are the articles I've found so far. 

The Harvard Crimson - Students Allege Harvard Instructor David Kane Made Racist Posts on Blog

The Harvard Crimson - Charles Murray to Speak in Gov 50 Lecture Series

The Harvard Crimson - Faculty Members Call EphBlog Posts ‘Horrible’ and ‘Deeply Disturbing’

The Harvard Crimson - Harvard Undergraduate Council Endorses Removal of Gov 50 Instructor

The Harvard Crimson - Gov 50 Preceptor David Kane to Resume Lecturing Despite Calls for His Removal

The College Fix: Students drive out Harvard instructor after he invited Charles Murray to address their class

One of the most interesting full articles is below the break. 

The Usual Suspects: Ephblog Searches for the Mystery Professor Who Threatened Violence Over the Chicago Principles

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Although Maud appears to have got the woke student activists out of the headlines for now, I'm still very interested in uncovering the the identity of the professor who threatened violence to stop the Chicago Principles from coming to Williams College. Earlier Ephblog came up with four professors whose background seemed to fit the report we read earlier from Luana Maroja. Click on the link below for the full Ephblog article.

Admit Your Privilege, 5

The enterprising leader of Ephblog, David Dudley Field '25, is intrigued by the educational benefits of having this potentially violent mystery professor share her personal experience regarding the anti-free speech riots at UC Berkeley. He writes:

A professor threatening violence is nuts! Is anyone else shocked by this? But, at the same time, tell us your story! EphBlog loves a riot. What was the Berkeley riot like? What did you do? What lessons did you learn? Perhaps you could share those lessons with your Williams students . . .

Field '25 recommends the student journalists at the Williams Record investigate Luana Maroja's story and reveal her identity. This might happen. In my experience, Nicholas Goldrosen, the current editor-in-chief, seems eminently fair. He has treated me fairly and I admire his courage for doing so. The work should be relatively easy because Ephblog has already revealed the names of the professors who are the most plausible suspects.

Ephblog reports one useful resource is the Williams College Course Catalog (pdf) which describes faculty backgrounds. The faculty with the most recent degrees from UC Berkeley include Sarah E. Olsen (PHD 2016), Ianna Hawkins Owen (PHD 2016), Kailani Polzak (PHD 2017) and Yana Skorobogatov (PHD 2018).

After a bit of on-line research, I would probably suggest Field '25 cross Sarah E. Olsen off his list. She was teaching at Amherst (or is it amHerst?) during the two years prior to her arrival at Williams College in the Fall of 2018. I think it is safe to assume she wasn't active in the rioting which led to the cancellation of Milo Yiannopoulos’s speaking engagement on February 1, 2017.

Ianna Hawkins Owen is an Assistant Professor of English who took her PhD in African American Studies from UC Berkeley. My Google research shows she was at UC Berkeley at the time of the riots. She was enjoying a post-doctorate fellowship which ran from 2016 to 2017. She arrived at Williams College in the Fall of 2017 and is part of the same cohort which included woke faculty activists Kai Green and Kimberly Love.

Kailani Polzak was probably not at UC Berkeley in January 2017. I'm thinking this only because I found she was a C3 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History at Williams College for two years starting in 2015-2016. Accordingly, it doesn't look like she was at UC Berkeley during the riots. Nevertheless, she does seem to be a woke faculty member. She has been involved in the effort to establish an Asian studies position. She is also a member of the same faculty cohort as Green, Love and Owen.

Yana Skorobogatov is a native Russia speaker with a strong interest in the Soviet Union. She is an assistant professor of history. Like Owen, it looks like she was definitely in the UC Berkeley area at the time of the riots. She seems pretty woke too. While at Berkeley she taught a courses on incarceration and global history. The only thing that would make her less likely to be the mystery professor is that she would have been in her first semester of her employment at Williams College. Specifically, she would have been publicly calling for violence within the first three months of her tenure track job.   

"Of course," Ephblog cautiously asserts, "just because this professor was at the riot does not mean that she has a degree from Berkeley, but this is the place to start." Field '25 concludes: "I also suspect that this is more likely to be a new faculty member since most already-hired Williams faculty would have been teaching during the February 2017 Milo riots."

All of this would be easily cleared up if I got a couple of phone calls from participants at the event or if Professor Luana Marojo is willing to give me the name. My number is 949-338-5921. You can email me at johndrew25@msn.com. I'm happy to protect your anonymity.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.