Free Republic

“Today is ‘Juneteenth,’” Dr. Carey Stronach states in the small, crowded blue room of the Rayburn House Office building on Monday, June 19 at the “Survivors of the Academy Luncheon.” “The day that slavery ended, 151 years ago.” “I bring this up,” Stronach, 65, continues, “because, recently, certain freedoms have been violated at Virginia State University (VSU).” The caucasian Dr. Stronach, who has been a physics professor at VSU for forty years, recently retired two years early from the historically black college because he was sick of the “mistreatment of the faculty and staff by a highly politicized administration.” Along...

Carey Stronach’s story, which he will tell himself at Accuracy in Academia’s next Capitol Hill briefing, is particularly heart-rending and contains many ironies. The 66-year-old physicist spent four decades teaching at a historically black college—Virginia State University (VSU)—one of the few white professors on the Petersburg campus. He befriended a political dissident on campus and vocally and aggressively championed her cause in speeches and articles. Her name is Jean Cobbs. Dr. Cobbs was fired at VSU after a decade of harassment by the administration there. In three-and-a-half decades at VSU, the black sociologist created the Department of Social Work, got...