OGB Archives
Dear President Wente,
Perhaps you will recall the undersigned as having introduced you to your fellow Nebraska resident, Willa Cather, and her wonderful novel, “My Ántonia,” back in January 2022 after a speech by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. It might interest you to know that since then, a Willa Cather statue has been unveiled in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol.
I am writing to you presently about your own statement, co-signed with Provost Michele Gillespie, in a letter to the Wake Forest community about the recent post of Kenan Chair in the Humanities Laura Mullen and her take on the origins of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack Israel.
Mullen’s post, without doubt, was a true and powerful example of creative writing. That is her field. For it, she should have been rewarded instead of being academically crucified. She has been falsely accused of fomenting violence, an accusation that no one with an eighth-grade English education could possibly extract from her carefully chosen words — words echoed, I might add, by the Secretary General of the United Nations — let alone a campus full of apparently only pups that are ostensibly brighter than most Americans. In short, all that Mullen said was that what happened on Oct. 7 did not happen in a vacuum, adding to her posts items routinely unreported and unaccented by almost every major news outlet and newspaper in existence. I dare say that if you had been born into one of what is correctly called an open-air concentration camp or prison that Israel and its own incarnate God (i.e., the United States) euphemistically call “refugee camps” instead of wonderful Nebraska, that you yourself might have become a suicide bomber instead of the head of a once-Baptist institution.
Ironically, while Mullen’s language-leading post only attempted to explain the origin of this violence for those who nurse solely — and, therefore, myopically — on popular media, you and your co-author have — with your own mischaracterization and repudiation of her words — practiced verbal violence upon her, even as you inconsistently protest the use of violence. In so doing, you and your not altogether philological philo-Israeli followers have frightened her, when in fact both of you and the entire Wake Forest community ought to be making her feel not only safe but celebrated in her exercise of not only academic freedom, but academic precision. What you vaguely call a post that “caused significant anxiety and fear for members of [the Wake Forest] community” (i.e., unnamed and protected ghosts), is a post that any truly literate university family would have called a post that enlightened all of humanity. Those who ostensibly felt “anxiety and fear” did not feel that way because of Mullen’s not only harmless but helpful words, but because of the non-sequitur exegesis that they and, sadly, you, have superimposed upon her careful creative writing.
So, what is to be done now? Two things come readily to my mind. One, because you have repudiated Mullen’s words about the origin of the violence on Oct. 7, you do not get a free pass to avoid sharing your own explanation to all of us for how this tragedy has come about. What is your explanation? Let me assure you that the simple sop, “Hamas is simply a bunch of terrorists,” will not suffice. So was Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon and many many more Israelis. Do you really think if in 1917 Lord Balfour had promised 10,000 — or even 40,000 — square miles of deserts in Nevada, Utah or Montana that Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Iran, et al. would give two hoots about Israel and Jews? I don’t think so. Perhaps you or one of your surgically precise historians can explain that conundrum to us.
I continue with what is to be done. Two, your near-presidential predecessor back in the 1880s, one Reverend Amzi Clarence (A.C.) Dixon (brother of the racist laureate and Wake Forest alumnus Thomas Dixon), preached a view about restoration that he learned from a tiny tax-collecting squirt named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is my kind of human being, and he is my kind of scholar and economist. Though he was so small that he had to climb a tree to see Jesus, his words were taller and richer than any redwood in California. He said, “If I have taken from anyone by false accusation, I will restore to him fourfold.” “Fourfold” is why a lot of people are not Christians and maybe even why Wake Forest is no longer Baptist. Whatever the case, that is exactly what Wake Forest needs to do with respect to its sin — yes, sin — against Laura Mullen. By false accusation, you and Wake Forest have taken her reputation and her income by not repudiating her resignation. There is absolutely no other interpretation that can be placed upon what you have done. Wake Forest needs to restore her “fourfold” right now and repudiate the violence it has practiced on her.
For whatever it is worth, in my view, your immediate predecessor, Nathan Hatch, has roots in A.C. Dixon, as did Nathan’s own father. If you doubt my characterization of A.C. Dixon — whose personal papers I microfilmed many years ago for WFU — you can consult with Hatch about his theological roots. A.C. Dixon was asked to become the president of Wake Forest College but he opted to remain in the pastorate. Perhaps that decision was for such a time as this.
In case you have not seen it, I enclose a recent letter from many Harvard faculty to their president, Claudine Gay, about academic freedom. As a chemist, it might interest you to know that one of the earliest cases of academic freedom to be unearthed involved Benjamin Hedrick, a chemist trained partly at Harvard who taught at UNC Chapel Hill. He was fired by UNC president David Swain because he voiced an opinion that in 1856 he was going to vote for the Pathfinder, presidential candidate and opponent of slavery, the Southern-born John C. Fremont. After 167 years, UNC and Swain — about whom a former Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court has written a biography — look rather foolish for that stand. And now, even a month later, Wake Forest already looks rather foolish for what it, you and Michele Gillespie have done to Mullen. Some day, someone will write your biography. I don’t think you and Wake Forest would want to be remembered as Swain is now and has been for sometime by historians. In short, it is time to repent, apologize and most of all, pay up.
Sincerely,
James Lutzweiler
Archivist (1999-2013), Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary