Famous Haystack Monument Vandalized: More Anti-Christian Hate at Williams College

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The famous Haystack Monument, a pilgrimage point for students of Christian evangelism, has been crudely vandalized twice within the last two weeks by proponents of anti-Christian hate on the grounds of Williams College. According to a recent report in the Williams Record, 

Perpetrators drew graffiti on the Haystack Monument Friday night, marking the second time in two weeks that the monument has been defaced. 

President Maud S. Mandel sent a campus-wide email yesterday (May 21, 2023) notifying the College community of the incident. The monument, which commemorates five Williams students’ 1806 formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, was spray-painted with allusions to Christianity in red graffiti that resembled the May 13 defacement. The perpetrators have not been identified. 

“This time the slogans were ‘Hell is hot,’ ‘Shame on you,’ and ‘Ouch’ as well as an obscenity,” Mandel wrote. A Campus Safety Services (CSS) officer discovered the graffiti while canvassing the area during a standard check, Director of CSS Eric Sullivan wrote in an email to the Record. According to Mandel, CSS has increased its patrol of the area and is working with the Williamstown Police Department to follow leads. 

“Given that the Monument memorializes the Christian missionary movement, some people of faith may be experiencing these incidents as attacks on your religion and on you personally,” she wrote. “You belong here, and I will work for your and everyone’s right to a safe community.”

Maud's email emphasized her intent to get to the bottom of the matter saying that the people responsible would be held to account. She encouraged anyone who might have relevant information to contact Campus Safety Services (CSS) at (413) 597-4444. Tellingly, she added that callers may remain anonymous if they wish. 

She also highlighted resources that were available to support the Christian students who are, at least, the indirect targets of this hateful attack. In particular, she encouraged them to contact the Chaplains’ Office or the Davis Center for support. It will be interesting to see how each office proposes to protect evangelical Christians from the abuse generated by the anti-colonial, anti-evangelical ideologies these offices have maintained for decades. 

Thankfully, Jennifer Kabbany at The College Fix has called national attention to this most recent example of anti-Christian hate on the campus.

An article in a blog site called The Everyday Chirp indicated that "A petition has been circulating encouraging the college to respond to the vandalism with a public statement emphasizing that religious intolerance is not welcome on campus."

Maud recommended students hurting from an attack on one of the most prominent symbols of Christianity on campus seek support from the teams in the Dean of the College’s office and Integrative Wellbeing Services. A quick review of each website showed there was ample information provided about COVID-19, but no mention of the hateful attack on the Haystack Monument. Unfortunately, the plight of Christians at Williams College is illustrated by the comments of student activists including a transgender advocate who approved disparaging Christians here and another who sought to impress upon us her Trans Anger on the heels of the murderous behavior of a trans activist who killed six Christians in Nashville, TN on March 27, 2023.

This week's attack on the Haystack Monument was a reminder of a similar attack that occurred earlier. Again, as the Williams Record reported on May 15, 2023: 

Campus Safety Services (CSS) officers responded to reports that unknown perpetrators defaced the Haystack Monument with spray-painted graffiti, President Maud S. Mandel wrote in a campus-wide email on Monday that alerted the College community to the defacement. CSS received reports from a student through its dispatch center and anonymous tip line on Saturday, shortly after midnight, Director of CSS Eric Sullivan wrote in an email to the Record.

“The graffiti included an obscenity along with the words and phrases ‘Pagan Rule,’ ‘Blood,’ ‘Ouch,’ and ‘Hail Satan,’” Mandel wrote. Custodial staff responded at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday by power-washing the graffiti, though they were unable to remove the bulk of the damage, Sullivan wrote to the Record. According to Mandel, Facilities is arranging for the remainder of the writing to be cleaned.

According to a call log obtained by the Record, CSS alerted the Williamstown Police Department to the graffiti in a phone call Tuesday, and the defacement was filed as a “bias-motivated incident.” The motivation and perpetrators are not yet known, Sullivan wrote to the Record.

The Haystack Monument commemorates the location of the 1806 gathering of five Williams students that led to the formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), during which the students sheltered under a haystack during a thunderstorm. Mission Park is also named for their meeting. ABCFM was a major Christian missionary organization throughout the 19th century and the largest in the United States, sending missionaries to China, India, Hawai’i, and several North American Indigenous nations. “The Haystack Monument has been a focal point for ongoing campus discussions about Williams’ institutional history,” Mandel wrote. “We expect those discussions to continue in the next academic year.”

The incident marks the second time in recent years that the Haystack Monument has been defaced: in 2018, mud was smeared onto the sides of the monument, and three concentric half-circles were carved into the ground between the monument and the benches that surround it. The perpetrators were never identified.

Personally, I remember standing beside the Haystack Monument and being surprised by its emotional power. It is amazing to think of all the good that was done by the young men who, on that spot, made a resolution to bring the benefits of Christianity to individuals living far beyond the boundaries of their own country. The monument is a reminder of the great things that can happen when a small group of people commit themselves to a great project. 

Additional articles regarding the Haystack Monument were released by the Berkshire Eagle, Blaze Media, Christian Broadcast Network, Daily Mail, Everyday Chirp, Fox News, Jewish World Review, Legal Insurrection, and New Boston Post.

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.

Eph You! Leo Levine '26 Impresses Trans Anger Upon Williams College

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - It looks like Trans Anger is blooming on the Williams College campus. Check out this article by Leo Levine '26. She is a girl who wants to be treated like a boy. The article's headline seemingly justifies the behavior of trans people who become ideologically motivated mass killers: "They are killing us, and you are doing nothing." 

The over-the-top rhetoric is truly frightening. Levine calls legislation designed to protect children as "nothing other than a deliberate attempt to make Trans people of all ages the target of extermination."

Elsewhere, Leo Levine writes that common sense efforts to push back against transgenderism in public life are nothing short of a "rallying cry for genocide."

In what sounds like a threat to us, she writes, "I wish to impress upon the College’s administration and cisgender members of the College community my Trans Anger." 

In Leo Levine's view, members of the trans community are about to be victims of a holocaust, through a crime that will "...become another event that invokes the phrase “never again.”

This explosion of Trans Anger strikes us as particularly tone-deaf because it follows on the heels of the murderous behavior of a trans activist who killed six Christians in Nashville, TN on March 27, 2023. This was just 15 days prior to the publication of Leo Levine's incendiary article.  

Expressions of "Trans Anger" are disturbing given the sheer number of mass murders conducted by members of the trans community. 

In less than five years, as John Nolte has written, we have had four people who identify as transsexual committing a mass shooting. 

• In May of 2019, a Colorado woman who identified as male shot up a school, killing one and wounding eight. 
• In November of 2022, a Colorado man who shot up a gay nightclub, killing five and wounding 18, was identified as transsexual.
• On Monday, 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a woman who identified as a man, entered a Nashville Christian elementary school with a firearm. She murdered three adult staffers and three nine-year-old children.
• In November of 2018, Snochia Moseley, a man who identified as a woman, wounded three and killed three after opening fire at his place of employment in Aberdeen, Maryland.

As Nolte points out, in less than five years, "these are four mass shootings committed by people who make up about one-half of one percent of the population. So that works out to around 2.75 mass shootings per million transsexuals over four years. 

Suppose the roughly 325 million American heterosexuals committed mass shootings at that rate. In that case, you’d be talking about somewhere around 900 mass shootings over four years, and I’m talking real mass shootings—schools and places of employment."

Information about Leo Levine is sparse. It looks like she attended Walt Whitman high school in Bethesda, Maryland from 2018 to 2022. She studied sociology and did tech work in the drama department. Right now, she is a freshman studying sociology. A quick glance at her Facebook profile shows little more than a series of updated photos of herself. She is one of the social chairs for the Williams College Jewish Association (WCJA). 

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.

Why Are Liberal Girls So Sad?

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - For a long time now, I have thought there was something unhealthy about Williams College. I know while I taught there two of my fellow professors committed suicide. 

More recently, one transgender professor was caught walking in the streets naked in the midst of a psychotic breakdown. It is a weird place, with a tight culture, that rewards the most extreme liberal nonsense. It makes sense to me that Williams College makes its student mentally ill. 

Here is a great article about why leftism undercuts one of the few techniques known to combat depression and anxiety. It is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT and it works like a charm. 

The gist of the article is that leftist thought is the reverse of CBT in that it makes depressed and anxious people more depressed and anxious. Even worse, it rewards people for engaging in self-destructive behavior. 

The article is by John Haidt and it is called, Why the Mental Health of Liberal Girls Sank First and Fastest: Evidence for Lukianoff’s Reverse CBT Hypothesis. You can read it yourself in Haidt's substack blog, After Babble. 

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.

Anti-Racist Über Alles: Williams College Advertises Woke Job Teaching German

 

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - The woke madness at Williams College knows no rational boundaries. Conservative critics of the institution are amused at a recent job ad for a position in the department which apparently shows little interest in one's ability to teach German and overwhelming interest in squeezing as much woke ideology as possible into the curriculum. 

Here is the text from the actual job advertisement: 

The Williams College Department of German & Russian is excited to invite applications for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of German, beginning Fall 2023. 

The successful candidate will join a growing, dynamic program that is committed to inclusive and anti-racist pedagogy, to decolonizing and expanding the field of German Studies, and to working across disciplines. Specialization is open, with a particular interest in candidates who work in the areas of migration, race and anti-racism, post- and decolonial approaches, disability, and/or memory studies. 

Excellence in language teaching is a prerequisite, as is a genuine interest in undergraduate education in the Liberal Arts. The department is looking for candidates with an interdisciplinary, intermedial, and/or comparative research agenda. Members of the German and Russian department regularly collaborate with other programs and departments such as Comparative Literature, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Environmental Studies, Africana Studies, and Art History, among others.

When I taught at Williams College in the 1980s I remember one young German professor forcing conservative Christian students to watch a movie about gay bathhouses in Germany. It was obviously disgusting propaganda. As one conservative student said, "I won't be using any of those words when I visit Germany."

Ironically, a quick scan of the German department shows there is already plenty of woke nonsense being taught by its professors including Christophe A. Koné who teaches a class on Afro-Germans and German Comics. Likewise, a new visiting assistant professor of German, Susanne Fuchs, is returning to Williams College to teach courses in German literature and language with a focus on environmental justice, social activism, and queer identities and readings.

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.

This Week in Pictures: Williams College Edition

 

This Week in Pictures: Williams College Edition