Speaking Out-Vining- Rodin's Welcome Back The source of this document is Almanac. /penninf

Speaking Out-Vining- Rodin's Welcome Back

The source of this document is Almanac.
/penninfo-srv.upenn.edu/9000/23803/info"

Speaking Out
------------



`The Last Straw'
================

   I'm writing in response to Judith Rodin's "Welcome Back," Almanac  
January 17, 1995, page 1. She has made more than one remark on my 
relationship to Pioneer, and this, frankly, is the last straw. I have to 
speak out, which I have not done hitherto.

   Rodin refers to a foundation "accused of supporting neo-Nazi and
racist agendas." The foundation is the Pioneer Fund, and the recipient 
of its funds is me. Who is the accuser? One Harlan Gerard, an alumnus of 
this university, in a letter to the trustees dated July 21, 1994. The 
letter was forwarded to President Rodin, who responded to the trustees 
on August 23, 1994, in a one and a half page single-spaced memo. Where 
did Gerard get his information? From a book called The Nazi Connection, 
written by a Stefan Kuhl, published by the Oxford University Press in 
1994. By the way, I have received about $200,000 from the Pioneer Fund 
over about a 15-year period.

   In her fifth paragraph, President Rodin writes that "We `permit'
these events [e.g., the funding of me by the Pioneer Fund] because ..., 
in truth, we can never wholly prevent them." She also writes of  
"tolerating the intolerable," "[h]earing the hateful," as a good way "to 
identify and educate the hater," and allowing "offensive" and 
"distasteful" ideas, all in the name of academic freedom. So, why is a 
chill running down my back? One is.

   In the first place, why are Gerard and this book, The Nazi
Connection, authorities on anything? How can we be sure that the latter 
is not full of errors, despite its being accurate about me regarding the 
amount of funding I received in 1992? That information can be gotten 
from the IRS; we don't need a book to tell us how much the Pioneer Fund 
gave me in 1992. In the second place, am I a hater? I have been called a 
"professor of hate." Whom do I hate: the Jews, blacks, the Chinese? 
Finally, are my ideas "offensive," "distasteful," "racist"? I have 
gotten no clear answers to these questions from the administration or 
from anyone for that matter, just platitudes about "academic freedom" 
and "peer institutions." What if the latter were to disappear tomorrow? 
Would the former disappear, too? Let me tell you what I have received.

   No support whatsoever from either the administration or the
faculty. College presidents, ours definitely included, editors, and 
faculty members have been running around scared out of their wits. 
Literally. They can mouth the terms, "academic freedom," "peer 
institutions," "racism," "Nazi Germany," "IQ," "the Holocaust," and 
"eugenics." Then they are struck dumb and fade away. One lesson the 
administration/faculty have learned from all of this: don't ever, ever 
hire a weirdo like me again and certainly don't give him/her tenure. By 
no means give him/her a forum. Which brings us to the media, the Almanac 
included.

   Doubtlessly, you have read or heard about the "Great Ivy League
Nude Photo Scandal," The New York Times Magazine, Jan. 15, pp. 25 ff. It 
was a dead give-away. All the key words were there: "pseudoscience," 
"racism," "Nazi Germany," "IQ," and "eugenics." It was all very 
titillating but they stooped very low and not a few errors were 
committed (my analysis of this particular article in the media is 
available to anyone free: just contact me at 215-898-7750 or at the 
Population Studies Center, 239 McNeil/6298 - Ext. 8-6441). But it's 
getting tiresome. What next, media? The break-up of Russia? Of course, 
we have floods, earthquakes, fires, mudslides, hurricanes, the Menendez 
brothers, the Bobbitts, Dahmer, etc. to keep us distracted. And there's 
always O.J. Simpson (do you remember the white Bronco scene? It was a 
little long and the revolver held at the temple and those cheering 
crowds were a little bizarre, but it was a good ad nonetheless) and 
Susan Smith, the sniveling Smith, ads that go on and on... But there is 
a serious point to be made here about the media. It's doing serious 
damage.

   The Pioneer Fund has about 5 million dollars in assets (actually,
considerably less, 3.5 million, but let's round it up to 5 million to 
keep things interesting). The Ford Foundation has about 5 billion 
dollars in assets or is 1000 times the size of the Pioneer Fund. The 
Ford Foundation has a beautiful headquarters building in New York and 
branches, with well-paid staff, all over the globe, in almost all the 
important cities of Africa (Cairo, Khartoum, Dakar, Johannesburg, 
Windhoek, Lagos, Nairobi and Harare), Delhi, Dhaka, Jakarta, Bangkok, 
Manila, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, and Mexico City, whereas 
Pioneer has none of these things, to my knowledge. The Ford Foundation 
has paid out over $10,000,000 to something called the National Council 
of La Raza between 1968 and 1992. What does "La Raza" mean in English? 
The Race. What is The Race? It is that special blend of Spanish and 
Indian, with bronze skin, straight black hair, and brown eyes (the so-
called mestizo) that predominates in Mexico and Central America. And yet 
there has not been a peep from the media about this disgraceful state of 
affairs. But what if The Race meant the White Race? The media would have 
a story about this for weeks on end. There have been (and probably still 
are) Ford Foundation grant recipients on this campus for years. The 
silence of our President, Judith Rodin, and of our faculty is deafening. 
No recipients of Ford Foundation monies are ever harassed, ever spoken 
ill of. It is clear to me, at any rate, that, as they say, "money 
talks."

   But, wait, there's more and worse. Henry Ford, whose fortune
founded the Ford Foundation, not only authored the book, The 
International Jew, a profoundly anti-Semitic book that Hitler greatly 
admired and that sold millions and millions of copies all over the 
world, but also received in 1938 the highest award, the Supreme Order of 
the German Eagle, that the Third Reich could bestow on a non-German, was 
the only American cited by name in Mein Kampf, and had a full-length 
portrait of himself in Nazi party headquarters in Munich. Speaking of a 
Nazi connection! Wickliffe Draper, whose fortune founded the Pioneer 
Fund, on the other hand, was and did none of these  things, to my 
knowledge. The hypocrisy of Judith Rodin and of the faculty is mind-
boggling.  I think I deserve, at the very least, an apology and 
retraction. I'm not holding my breath, by the way, waiting for one. I 
know it will not come. But don't think that people are not watching the 
universities now because of these hypocrisies; they're too blatant for 
them to ignore.

   In her ninth paragraph, President Rodin writes the following: "It
is my hope that, in the future, those who know they may offend ... will, 
as a matter of simple courtesy, open a dialogue ahead of time with 
groups or individuals they know will be affected by their [speech]." God 
knows I've tried. I've applied for a column in the DP four times in the 
last four years and been turned down every time. I wrote to a Dr. Rick 
Sims, faculty master of the DuBois House, in Feb. 1993 offering to give 
a seminar entitled, "Blacks and Whites: Cousins, Racially Speaking." No 
answer. Then, last winter, I wrote to a Ms. Robyn Kent, President of the 
Black Wharton Undergraduate Association, offering to give the same 
seminar. Again, no answer. Finally, last winter, I wrote to a Dr. Jeremy 
Brochin, the head of Hillel, expressing the desire to discuss with some 
students there my paper, "Reflections on the Jewish Holocaust after 
Watching Schindler's List," and enclosed the paper. Brochin did write 
back, saying he disagreed with almost everything I had written and, 
later, supplied me with the address of Elie Weisel, whom I had 
criticized in the paper. But Brochin steadfastly protected the students 
at Hillel. He never let me near them. He just ignored my pleas. I think 
it fair to say that the onus of opening a dialogue lies elsewhere than 
with me.

   The trustees and President Rodin have been badly fooled. Neither
cares.

- Daniel R. Vining, Jr.
Associate Professor of Population Studies