In Awe of Eric Knibbs - America's Most Courageous Professor

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - It is difficult to describe how refreshing it is for me to read some of the recent
writing by a tenured ex-Williams College history professor, Eric Knibbs. The guy is amazing. He tears apart the leftist demons running the school while simultaneously dragging in 5th century Christianity, Plato, and the destruction of previously inoffensive statues.

His latest missive is an insightful response to a complaint over on Ephlog that it is a sign of considerable ignorance to ask for evidence from a black professor who thinks a leftist bastion of Marxist ideology is engaging in violence and murder simply because it does not spin on a dime and give black, gay, transgender professors everything they want now. Like Kayleigh McEnany beating the crap out of leftist writers at a White House press conference, Knibbs responds with devastating accuracy. It is worth reading his response twice.

For me, his best work is the observation that leftist ideology leads to the most predictable loss of freedom:

The more coherent expressions of wokery are nothing but a kind of low-resolution applied Foucaultianism. Its proponents believe some variation upon the proposition that cultural discourses structure power relationships. These discourses must therefore be changed or subverted or inverted in order to achieve more just outcomes.

At the crassest, quotidian level, certain words are therefore tabooed, microaggressions defined, etc. (A lot of this is termed “political correctness” by outsiders to the religion, for whom this is mostly puzzling pedantry.)

At more revolutionary levels, the woke attack racist power discourses by destroying statues and public monuments. This is why the woke opposed some faculty signing a petition about the Chicago principles. A college-wide commitment to free expression threatens their pseudointellectual discourse-engineering agenda.

That last sentence is expresses the observation I admire the most: "A college-wide commitment to free expression threatens their pseudointellectual discourse-engineering agenda." 

This puts the fight at Williams over the Chicago Principles into a clear statement that explains what was really at stake for the CARE-Now students who believed humiliating young white liberal students on the College Council was an admirable course of action. It reminds me of why I was exposed to unrelenting hostility when, as a young political science professor, I publicly supported George W. H. Bush and became a Republican candidate for the local assembly seat. At the time, I was startled at how quickly I had gone from being a Marxist acquaintance of the young Barack Obama to my new status as an out and out racist. I was, of course, easy to remove. Embarrassingly, I was perhaps even easier to gaslight. 

Luckily, ex-Williams College professors like Eric Knibbs can now leverage the power of Twitter, and their personal blog sites, to get out the news of how they have been intimidated and mistreated. His story shows how risky it is to be even a well-meaning cynic regarding the left. To his credit, his recent article strikes me as the boldest and most courageous statement I have seen from a Williams College professor, ex or otherwise. As far as I can tell, only political science professor Darel Paul has even come close. 

At any rate, I am pleased to do what I can through my own blog and Twitter accounts, friendships, and connections to assorted conservative websites, to get the truth out to the public. There are angry mobs dominating schools like Williams. 

As Knibbs observes, there are no sensible solutions for "...indefensible demands that the college needs to double down on wokery, triple down on wokery. And, should it do that, the complaint would then be that it has not quadrupled down on wokery, or quintupled down on it, and so forth."

Please enjoy reading his comment in full below the break. You might also wish to follow the debate over at Ephblog by clicking on these links in order. 

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/06/against-race-theology-1/

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/07/against-race-theology-2/

http://ephblog.com/2020/07/08/against-race-theology-3/

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.

Just Resist - Courageous Ex-Williams College Prof. Eric Knibbs Rips Up Race Theology

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Thanks to Twitter, I have uncovered a real jewel for the readers of Williams Liberty and our beloved partner in wrong thought, Ephblog.

It is a blog called Pseudo-Isidore.

This blog site is the intellectual gift of a former, tenured Williams College professor named Eric Knibbs. He describes himself as a scholar of early medieval legal history, and the current editor of the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore. You can learn more about Pseudo-Isidore here. If that piques your curiosity, then you will enjoy reading about the Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore on Wikipedia.

In one of his most recent articles, Eric describes what it was like to be a recently tenured history professor at Williams College during the 2018-2019 school year. This was a year in which white liberal professors found themselves under attack for not being sufficiently woke. He does a compelling job describing what it was like being besieged by radical CARE Now students. As you may recall, these students were opponents of modest efforts to bring the Chicago Principles to Williams College. Moreover, they were the ardent acolytes of two of the most ridiculous black professors in living memory. Eric describes them and their flimsy cause as follows:

Kimberley S. Love, "storyteller, tree-enthusiast" and Assistant Professor of English; and the "poet, filmaker, and interdisciplinary scholar" Kai M. Green, Assistant Professor of Women‘s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

These two paragons of learning experienced Williams College as a violent and an unsafe place, in part because of the free expression debates that unfolded during their third semester there. Thus they published a long screed at The Feminist Wire, detailing the hostilities they faced. “We are Black Queer Feminists, serious about our call to research, service, and teaching,” they declared. “We are not safe.”

What we have been doing to fit our bodies in these institutions is killing us and we WANT TO LIVE! And not even tenure is worth our Black joy.

They illustrated their unsafety by relating an argument they had with an automobile mechanic – unaffiliated with the college – who initially refused to give them a ride home after car trouble.

What is most alarming to Eric Knibbs is that the madness he saw at Williams College is a straightforward vision of what Antifa terrorists, enraged peaceful protesters, and statue haters want to impose on all of us. He summarizes his main point in a TLDR (Too Long; Didn't Read) paragraph:

What, a few years ago, seemed like the regrettable yet limited excesses of the campus left, has suddenly become a political force in the wider world. The Race Theology promoted by schools like Williams College is everywhere now. It’s important that reasonable people who are not part of this dubious religious revival voice their dissent.

I think it is important to read his article in full. Mainly, it demonstrates it is not so funny to be face-to-face with leftist, extremist students who are quick to assert racism as the motive for anything they dislike. These students have little to lose and nevertheless appear to have more influence with the administration than a well-meaning professor like Eric Knibbs. I should add that the article also displays Knibbs' entertaining writing, ability to explain things simply, and his conscientious research. His article is a telling reminder of what an elite Williams College professor would be like in a culture that promoted merit rather than identity politics.

By the way, there is now an interesting discussion of Knibbs' article over on Ephblog where it looks like David Dudley Field '25 will be doing a multi-day analysis. Knibbs is replying to comments made on the Ephblog article on his own Pseudo-Isidore blog.

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.