Nov 28, 2015 2 min read

The Observer-Reporter had a thoughtful editorial on recent campus protests at the University of Missouri (“Wanted: Remedial Course on the First Amendment”, Nov. 13). Now it is being reported that African American and other students at Princeton are calling for the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from programs and buildings at the university he served prior to his election as president, as he was pro-segregation.

This led me to wonder how these students might react if at some future date militant feminism gains strength and it spawns activists who demand removal of memorials to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X on the grounds that they were both clergymen who served patriarchal religions and are therefore agents of sexism with the blood of women dripping from their hands.

Going further, suppose these feminists decide that given how important a role religion has played in the African American community, a compulsory re-education effort is needed which will involve African Americans being made aware of the serious misogynistic errors of their thought. This is not too far removed from the demands of the Princeton students.

Far-fetched? Read histories of the French Revolution, Russia during Stalin’s purges or China’s Cultural Revolution. It is stunning how quickly one can be a people’s hero one day and a counterrevolutionary traitor the next. Today, African American activists are riding high on campuses, but it’s not impossible they could find themselves in the situation described by Arthur Koestler in his classic novel “Darkness at Noon” – “the wolves devour each other.”

Robert Fisher

Corona, Ariz.