I have been pleasantly surprised by the University Times' publishing my letter that protests against the race-baiting institutionalized by the university's "Diversity" structures. Those seem to multiply like rot - in the body long crippled by the progressive ideology adopted by the majority. I was surprised not only because the letter was clearly outside of the ideological mainstream, but also because my prior letter had been ignored - both by its original addressees, all the university's top machers, and by the UT editor. Understandably, it had no impact. Here it is.
Dear Editor,
Like all Pitt [University of Pittsburgh] faculty, I have received an email signed by Dr. Kathy Humphrey, Senior Vice Chancellor for Engagement, inviting participation in “the 2020 Diversity Forum, Advancing Social Justice: A Call to Action.” The upcoming event was introduced as featuring “Dr. Angela Davis, who has dedicated her life and work to the fight for social justice and human rights.” I am sharing my reply, to which I have received response from neither Dr. Humphrey, nor from Chancellor Gallagher and Associate Vice Chancellor Pope, to whom I forwarded it.
“I am gravely concerned that Angela Davis is featured in any forum outside of her ideological circle. Angela Davis was well familiar to everybody in the Soviet Union as a devoted member of CPUSA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the KGB that never deviated from its directives. She was the face of the anti-US Soviet propaganda and earned the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet government that murdered and imprisoned true fighters for human rights, about whom she could not care less. A celebrity cherished by the Soviet authorities, she refused requests to speak to them for imprisoned Soviet dissidents, but she has embraced convicted terrorist murderers Rasmea Odeh and Marwan Barghouti. For the enslaved Soviet population, she was a despised symbol of foreign support of the Soviet activities directed at the destruction of freedom.
She is an unrepentant communist who still laments the Soviet Union and is admired by the communists in today’s Russia—for the kind of “social justice” she stands for. She is a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement. It is no accident that she has floated up these days, when the imperfections of this society, aggravated by extraordinary circumstances, are used as a pretext for attacking its foundations and cutting it at the seams. I doubt she could contribute any perspective of value to Pitt audience. Nobody would ever think about any “conversation” with Nazis, but communists, whose ideology has caused no less death and suffering around the world and still suffocates billions, are still viewed as deserving attention and time.
As a refugee from the Soviet Union, I hope communism is not part of “diversity” that is sought by this society. I respectfully request that Angela Davis be disinvited from participating in the forum.”
I hope there is still time for removing Angela Davis from the program scheduled to start on July 28. Her participation is certain to discredit the forum and negate anything positive that it is planned to accomplish. Communism is not “a more just society” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating.
None of the Pitt leaders I addressed has replied. Angela Davis’s participation in the event is now a fait accompli. The “forum,” which entertained no discussion, let alone a critical one, with expressions of admiration for Davis’s activities from both Drs. Humphrey and Cudd, has been discredited. Communism is not “a more just community” that an American academic forum is supposed to help creating. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said about Davis’s cruel refusal to help dissidents in the Gulag, “That is the face of Communism. That is the heart of Communism for you." I never thought, when I left the now extinct Soviet Union, that I would be made to remember that face 30 years later, plastered on my American university’s computer screens.
I watched, nauseated, the old Communist witch spewing her wisdom into the current racialist swill. The "Diversity Forum" was neither forum nor was there any diversity (see also Maher's Pandemic and Mayakovsky's Throat).
