Department of What. The. Fuck.

By Kathy G.

Washington University, the highly respected research university located in St. Louis, Missouri, is planning to award Phyllis Schlafly with an honorary doctorate.

Dude, I am so not kidding. See here.

Excuse me, but I'm gonna lose my lunch. While I'm retching away in the toilet, you can read the message below, which is from the Facebook group, No honorary doctorate for anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly:

Wash. U. will honor anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly at commencement.  WHAT?

This is the woman who lives the hypocrisy of having a career that takes her around the country lecturing "family values" groups on how women should stay home.

This is the woman who said of husband-wife rape, "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape [sic]."

This is the woman who described sex education classes as "in-home sales parties for abortions." Do her views fit with the future the men and women of Wash U's graduating class see for themselves and their peers? Probably not. Then why honor her with them? Wouldn't having someone like her in the midst of Wash U's female graduates be incongruous at best, offensive at worst?

E-mail Chancellor Wrighton and let him know what you think!  Wrighton@wustl.edu.

Invite your friends, talk about what's going on.  This should at least be an issue.

Other people to contact are:

Jane Stone, coordinator of the Board of Trustees: jane_stone@wustl.edu

William Danforth, Chancellor Emeritus: 314-935-9850.

Okay, I'm back. I wonder -- would any university even think of awarding an honorary Ph.D. to a person whose most prominent contribution to American public life was as an anti-civil rights crusader? Or an anti-Semite?

Another thing that is so very disturbing about this is that Phyllis Schlafly holds so many truly nutty views about things other than gender. This is unsurprising, given that she was once a card-carrying member  of the John Birch Society (the Birchers, you may remember, believed that President Eisenhower was a conscious agent of the international communist conspiracy).

She is deeply anti-intellectual and throughout her life has shown nothing but contempt for the values of scholarship and intellectual honesty. She has also promulgated all manner of bizarre conspiracy theories. For example, she has been identified as one of the leading proponents of conspiracy theories about the National American Union -- the belief that “behind closed doors, the Bush administration has collaborated with the governments of Mexico and Canada to merge the three nations into one Socialist mega-state." She has described Mexican immigrants as "invaders" seeking to take control of America.

In short, Schlafly is not just a misogynist who has done great harm to the cause of women's advancement in this country, she's also crazy as a loon about virtually every other issue under the sun. And we are supposed to honor her -- why, exactly?

This is a monstrosity and a farce. If Schlafly is awarded a doctorate, every decent person connected with Washington U should hang their heads in shame. It will be a very sad day indeed for women, for academia, and for America.

Comments

[Donald A. Coffin]

And, in contrast, Northwestern University has decided not to give Jeremiah Wright an honorary degree. (A decision I personally think was pretty craven.)

If you have never read Schlafly's original claim to fame, "A Choice, Not an Echo" (1964), you should. It's all but unbelieveable today, but was a best-seller then.

[BenSchiendelman]

Do you suppose it could be intentionally ironic?

[arbitrista]

Wow. Schlafly? Really? I really don't know what to say. She's just contemptible.

[Scott McLemee]

I interviewed her about a dozen years ago for an article for "George" magazine about Carroll Quigley, who had once been Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown University.

The Birchers loved Quigley because they could quote certain parts of his writings as evidence that the Council on Foreign Relations was a front for the Illuminati, or something like that. I would have to get out my notes to be sure.

Suffice it to say that Schlafly was mad as a hatter.

[Mary Racine]

She is a U of Washington grad (undergrad and law school).

I read Donald Critchlow's biography for a women's studies class. (The prof wanted a conservative woman for balance.) What was interesting is that while the book talked about her self-published newsletter and books from the 50s and 60s, it very cleverly omitted much mention of their contents. Knowing a bit of cold war history, I knew why - including them would have made it impossible to keep his biography in the sympathetic mode. Readers would understand just how nuts she was. The prof (and one or of we older students) had to explain to the kids what Birchers were.

One thing that the book made clear was that she was well on her way to irrelevance - she tried to take over the Republican Women's Committee in 1968, but lost badly to a more moderate candidate. Once she took up the anti-ERA cause she was back in the limelight again for good.

Others in the class found the book hard to take, but I was fascinated. The tales of Republican convention skulduggery from the sixties felt oddly familiar.

I really need to read Rick Perlstein's Goldwater and Nixon books.

[wilson]

Yes, Schlafly is "mad as a hatter" so sayeth the supporters of the SCUM Manifesto! LMFAO!

Thanks for my daily dose of Feminist Hypocrisy.

[Kathy G.]

Wilson, excuse me, but who, exactly, is a supporter of the SCUM manifesto? Did I or any commenter on this thread even mention it?

And do enlighten me how utterly sane and sweetly rational Schlafly's ideas and worldview are. Can't wait to hear it!

[lw]

Thanks for posting this. I'm a WU alum, and just wrote to express alarm and ask whose idea at WU this was.

[Sinfonian]

Great. I've already decided to withhold donations to my undergraduate school until they dump former FCC chair Michael Powell as chair of their Board of Visitors (http://tinyurl.com/36t3ew ), and now I'll have to boycott my law school as well.

Why do these schools persist in making such asinine decisions? For my undergraduate alma mater, I know Powell's presence is purely political. But Wash U? Sheesh.

I'll be blogging on this shortly myself, I assure you.