International Man of Mystery: Williams College Observers Ask, Who is Eric Knibbs, and Why Did He Resign?

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Secure in a dream job in medieval history at Monumenta Germaniae Historica (MGH), Eric Knibbs is an American ex-pat who is now free at last to speak his mind regarding Williams College. He is unencumbered by the burdens of advancing in a contemporary American academic career and physically distant from the anti-racist zealots who are ripping apart our nation.

To see what he escaped at Williams College, all you need to do is read up on a recent missive from the history department confessing its support for rioting and violence throughout the nation.

So, who is Eric Knibbs? 

Eric is a scholar of early medieval legal history, and the current editor of the False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore. He is part of the MGH which is now housed in the prestigious Bavarian State Library in Munich, Germany.

We can learn a little more about him by looking over his old bio at Williams College which tells us, "Eric Knibbs is a historian of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in early medieval canon law and the phenomenon of medieval forgery. He received his Ph.D. from Yale in 2009, and has done postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich."

He does look like he was a young phenomenon. He published his first book within two years of getting his Ph.D. prior to starting at Williams College. The bio reports: "He is the author of Ansgar, Rimbert and the Forged Foundations of Hamburg-Bremen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), which argues that most of the early documentation for the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen, a fixture of German historical scholarship that has long been viewed as fundamental for the history of Christianity in Scandinavia, is either forged or falsified. In fact, the archdiocese emerged much later than scholarship has assumed, and our understanding of Frankish expansion and missionary history during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) has been accordingly distorted." 

I suppose you could read him, from a leftist perspective, as a scholar fully devoted to uprooting Christianity by demonstrating the insincerity of some of its proponents going as far back as the Middle Ages.

I assume that Eric wrote the following comments himself describing the nature of his research saying, "His current research focuses on the extensive and notoriously difficult legal forgeries associated with Pseudo-Isidore. Concocted in the ninth century, the fake laws of Pseudo-Isidore remained undetected until the early modern period and exercised an incalculable influence on the legal tradition of Roman Christianity. By studying the sources of the forgeries, their early manuscript tradition and the broader political and religious context in which they emerged, he hopes to shed new light on the identity of the forgers, the context of their work, and their enormous significance for early medieval history."

Selected Publications

Books:

Amalar: Liber Officialis/On the Liturgy, English translation, facing-page Latin edition, with notes, introduction and index. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 35 and 36 (Harvard University Press, 2014), 2 vols, 1231pp.

Alcuini Eboracensis: De fide sanctae Trinitatis et de incarnatione Christi libri tres. Latin edition with introduction and critical apparatus; together with Prof. E. Ann Matter of the University of Pennsylvania. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). 250 pp.

Ansgar, Rimbert and the Forged Foundations of Hamburg-Bremen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 270 pp.

El cartulario del monasterio aragonés de San Andrés de Fanlo: Siglos X-XIII. Latin edition with introduction and notes; together with Prof. Carlos Laliena Corbera of the University of Zaragoza (Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 2007). 255 pp.

Articles:

“Pseudo-Isidore in the A1 Recension,” in Karl Ubl and Daniel Ziemann, eds. Fälschung als Mittel der Politik? Pseudoisidor im Licht der neuen Forschung (Hannover, 2015), 81–95.

“The Interpolated Hispana and the Origins of Pseudo-Isidore,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung 99 (2013), 1–71.

“Pseudo-Isidore at the Field of Lies: Divinis praeceptis (JE †2579) as an Authentic Decretal,” Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law n.s. 29 (2011/2012), 1–34.

“The Manuscript Evidence for the De octo quaestionibus Ascribed to Bede,” Traditio 63 (2008), 129–83.

Why did he resign after getting tenure at Williams College? 

At this point, I am trying to balance my desire to help Eric get his story on the record with my desire to have a life. I am tempted to read through every blog post and truly understand his noteworthy scholarship and its relevance. It is too deep in the weeds for me. Nevertheless, I think it should be clear to any objective reader that he is the real deal - a scholar of exceptional productivity. He is the sort of academic specialist who I imagine might be offended and bothered by attempts to sabotage his efforts by asserting they are not sufficiently woke. 

As a young professor at Williams College in the last 1980s, I remember having an epiphany that the school was the sort of place designed to allow an obsessed academic to focus on their scholarly pursuits in perfectly comfortable and serene conditions. The pay was not much, but you could blissfully lose yourself there. You could concentrate, and never bother to look up from what obsessed you. This, in the end, that wasn't enough for me. It looks like the failure of the school to provide that comfortable cocoon for Eric meant it wasn't enough for him either. 

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.