Washblog

I found out about this class from a few friends and fellow WWU alumni, but within a few days, emails from professors, alumni, and concerned citizens were flying all over the state.  The Life Long Learning Academy, a service of Western's Extended Education and Summer Programs (EESP) office - "A curious mind never retires!" - began receiving calls left and right that the Minutemen were holding what most people, myself included, considered to be a recruiting drive sponsored by the Academy.  By early this week, the class had been canceled and the catalog amended.  

Barbara Audley, executive director of the EESP, would not comment on why the class was cancelled, saying only that it was an "academic decision."  But a number of people who spoke with her told me that it seems no one at the EESP actually questioned Mr. Williams' fitness to teach a balanced academic course on an extremist organization he himself was part of, or even asked what the course content would be.  After a week of phone calls, Ms. Audley apparently contacted Mr. Williams for more information on the proposed course and found his explanation unsatisfactory.

Granted, the strength of classes offered by the Academy is that they are taught largely by enthusiasts, they are affordable, diverse, relaxed, and rooted in the community (I'm a fan of the cooking classes, myself). But this whole story is a good example of the system of checks and balances that only an alert and informed community can provide as the nativist movement seeks to legitimize - and institutionalize - itself in a variety of ways.

The nativist tent is a big one, and its patriotic, pseudo-populist rhetoric is, frankly, more palatable than the crude language of bigotry or outright racism.  Many good-intentioned people simply don't recognize the language of nativism.  The scapegoating of immigrants is certainly de rigueur for a broad array of social and economic ills, and its proponents range from the crudest white supremacist-cum-Minuteman to seemingly innocuous and patriotic individuals like Mr. Williams.  In fact, Ms. Audley told one caller that "Yes, his academic credentials were excellent!" and that it was hard to believe that someone with that kind of education would have turned out the way Williams had.

I'm not even going to go there.
cross-posted at www.notinmycounty.org