Vanderbilt professor outrages Confederate progeny

The Washington Times ^ | December 3, 2002 | Robert Stacy McCain

[OldCorps]

A Vanderbilt University professor has stirred outrage in Dixie by declaring that Confederates were "cowards masquerading as civilized men" who should have been executed at the end of the Civil War. "Every Confederate soldier deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows," Jonathan David Farley, an assistant professor of mathematics, wrote in a commentary in the Tennessean, Nashville's largest newspaper. The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), the professor wrote, is an organization that "honors traitors." Vanderbilt sparked conflict over Southern heritage this year when the university said it would strip the word "Confederate" from a dormitory, Confederate Memorial Hall, built in the 1930s with donations raised by the UDC. Mr. Farley's Nov. 20 column in the Tennessean increased the furor. Mr. Farley has complained of threatening e-mails and phone calls, while the newspaper has received letters from across the country. "The majority of the letters have been from out of state, because it became an Internet thing," said John Gibson, the reader editor of the Tennessean, adding that out-of-state letters "rarely" are published in the paper. Tim Chavez, a columnist for the Tennessean, described one 66-year-old reader's frustration over Mr. Farley's views: "This just burns me because I don't know what to do about it," the man said. "If someone compared your ancestors to mass murderers, what would you do?" Mr. Farley called Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest "a 19th century Hitler," called Confederate heritage groups "the new holocaust revisionists," and said that "the race problems that wrack America to this day are due largely to the fact that the Confederacy was not thoroughly destroyed, its leaders and soldiers executed, and their lands given to the landless freed slaves." Allen Sullivant, chief of heritage defense for the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), said Mr. Farley is "entitled to his opinion, even one that's based on misinformation, ignorance and bigotry." In response to complaints from SCV members, Mr. Farley has posted e-mail replies that "drip venom," Mr. Sullivant said. Replying to one SCV member, Mr. Farley vowed to "form our own armies to expose and smash you. Very simply, we represent good and you represent evil." Mr. Sullivant said such "blatantly, openly hateful" messages show that Mr. Farley is "just one of these people who's got a real chip on his shoulders." A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Farley, 32, is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford universities. His parents are both academics. His father, an immigrant from Jamaica, holds a Ph.D. in economics, while his mother, an immigrant from Guyana, holds a Ph.D. in history. On his university Web page (www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~farley) Mr. Farley poses beside a large poster of Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, whom he calls a hero. Mr. Farley has been politically active since moving to Nashville from Berkeley, Calif., in 1997, mounting a Green Party campaign for Congress this year, describing the two major party candidates as "two old white men with identical views." He challenged Rep. Jim Cooper, Tennessee Democrat, in the Nov. 5 election, placing a distant fourth with 1,205 votes. Last year, Mr. Farley wrote an article criticizing Chelsea Clinton for supporting the U.S. anti-terrorism effort. "One of Bill Clinton's redeeming traits is the fact that, when he studied at Oxford, he opposed America's war," Mr. Farley, then a visiting scholar at England's Oxford University, wrote in a British newspaper, the Guardian. "Maybe sometime, Chelsea, you will too." A Vanderbilt spokesman said that Mr. Farley, who is not tenured, is protected by the university's academic-freedom policy. "Professor Farley is speaking as an individual, he does not represent Vanderbilt University's policy, and his statements are neither supported nor endorsed by the university," said Michael Schoenfeld, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for public affairs.

[headsonpikes]

"Chuck you, Farley."

Says it all.

[Constitution Day]

(smiles)

[WhiskeyPapa]

uh oh.....

[elbucko]

I mean, executing all Confederate soldiers?

We didn't execute any German soldiers at the end of World War II..

Gives pause for thought about the academic left.

[laotzu]

One may argue that my ancestors were uncivilized or barbaric, but; our village chiefs never sold us into slavery.

[Malcolm]

Most of the southern soldiers DID get the death penalty, and I'm sure in the years that followed, those that survived wished that they had also died in that war. I wouldn't respect any foreigner's opinions on that, no matter what they were. That war was a mistake and those who made that mistake paid dearly. No need to revisit that just to opine that even more punishment was warrented. Only a person who believes in unforgiveness could hold such views. Therefore, they're worthless.....

[schaketo]

Get a rope!

[elbucko]

...Fulbright was one of the most rabid anti-American, pro-Communist, Stalin apologists who ever lived..

Yes he was. And so few Arkansans, let alone Americans, know of Fulbright's traitorous activities especially while a United States Senator.

[Cicero]

The people at Vanderbilt who hired this guy were morons. Regretably, Vanderbilt has been trying to use infusions of money to catch up with the Ivy League and Berkeley. Now they're going to catch a little flak for it.

[cajungirl]

Oh, I think we ought to ignore him {grandpa rolling over in his grave sound here,,}

[TopQuark]

Jonathan Farley

Assistant Professor
Mathematics Department
Vanderbilt University
Office: Stevenson Center 1407
Phone: (615) 343-4120
Email: farley@math.vanderbilt.edu

=================================================

He is far from a moron: he's done some pretty good work, judging by the journals where he has published. His supervisors were Birkhoff and Priestley, top people in the field.

He is not a moron but surely is a leftist extremist.

[toddst]

I believe this would be a good time to introduce a bill in the Tennessee Legislature bringing back dueling. I have a suspicion there are perhaps some good Tennessee decendants of Confederate soldiers that just might decide to challenge friend Jonathan Farley to learn something about that good Southern tradition.

[Clara Lou]

What a jackass.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

It is fitting that this moron is a Fulbright scolar. J. William Fulbright was one of the most rabid anti-American, pro-Communist, Stalin apologists who ever lived.

Don't forget his role as mentor to young Wm. J. Clinton.

[ArcLight]

Farley's comments suffer from a common flaw of leftist rhetoric--a brain-dead extremism that distorts the truth even when the truth is on the leftists' side.

It's not enough to state accurately that the Rebs were traitors who sought to demolish the Union in order to preserve their "right" to buy and sell black people like cattle. That's a severe enough indictment for anybody, except knuckleheaded lefties who must find some way to equate the Confederacy with Nazi Germany, because that's a leftie's idea of the ultimate evil.

Of course, the Confederates were most emphatically NOT Nazis or anything nearly as bad. They didn't want to exterminate blacks; merely to own us and force us to work for them.

I wish Farley could have been more rational and thoughtful in making his point, because I agree with him to a considerable degree. This Lost Cause crap is some of the stupidest codswallop imaginable. There was nothing noble about the Southern cause. Nothing. Not a blessed thing. They were fighting to preserve an evil political and economic system. E-V-I-L, as in "axis of." The destruction of the Confederacy was the best day's work the US military ever did, next to dusting Hitler and Tojo. And frankly, if Grant and Sherman had left the leaders of the Confederacy festooning every oak tree between Washington and Richmond, it would have been no more than that lot deserved.

[SandfleaCSC]

I sent him my favorite Che picture:

[boothead]

Did his Mother have any children that lived???????