Three Courageous Williams College Profs Push Back Against Cancel Culture

WILLIAMS COLLEGE, MA - I was pleased to see a letter to the editor in the most recent Williams Record which featured three Williams College professors protesting against extremist students promoting a “cancel culture” in which they have demanded the immediate resignation of Suzanne Case ’78. Case is under attack for her role as the chairperson of the Hawaiʻi Board of Land and Natural Resources and her support for the construction of a Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).

The professors wisely cited Barack Obama who inexplicably came out against cancel culture last week stating: “This idea of purity, and you’re never compromised, and you’re politically woke, and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly… The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” 

The permanently enraged campus left is worked up over the construction of this telescope because they argue it will be built on a historical sacred site. The trio of responsible college professors point out the silliness of this claim. They assert it was already ruled by the Hawaiʻi Supreme court (Oct. 2018 decision), that there "...is no actual evidence that the site and Access Way area was ever used by Native Hawaiian practitioners." The telescope itself sounds outstanding. 

The Thirty Meter Telescope is a new class of extremely large telescopes that will allow us to see deeper into space and observe cosmic objects with unprecedented sensitivity. With its 30 m prime mirror diameter, TMT will be three times as wide, with nine times more area, than the largest currently existing visible-light telescope in the world. This will provide unparalleled resolution with TMT images more than 12 times sharper than those from the Hubble Space Telescope. When operational, TMT will provide new observational opportunities in essentially every field of astronomy and astrophysics. Observing in wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared, this unique instrument will allow astronomers to address fundamental questions in astronomy ranging from understanding star and planet formation to unraveling the history of galaxies and the development of large-scale structure in the universe.

It is hard for me to figure out if these professors are joking when they suggest that a failure to build this wonderful telescope might exacerbate the state’s reliance on non-sustainable, low-paying, “colonializing” industries such as tourism. Really? At any rate, I'm glad to see there are faculty members at Williams College willing to point out that demanding people get fired because you disagree with them is getting to be a negative, self-destructive habit for too many Williams College students. 

The professors who authored the letter include Luana S. Maroja, an associate professor of biology, who has been at the College since 2010. Steven Miller, a professor of mathematics, who has been at the College since 2008. From my time at Williams College, I still remember the third professor from my face-to-face contact with him. He is Jay M. Pasachoff, the Chair and Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy, has been at the College since 1972. 

The Williams Record was also kind enough to provide space for two other pieces which pushed back against the unreasonable student protesters including a letter from David Y. Ige the Governor of Hawaiʻi and from Suzanne Case ’78 herself. All in all, it was a good weak for the opponents of cancel culture.

The full letter from these role-model scholars is below the break.

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.