Georgetown’s Philodemic Society: The Bias and Bigotry of the Diversity Bullies

By Manuel A. Miranda

I listened closely as the vice president of the Philodemic Society, senior Lily Howard, told potential members that the Society welcomed everyone.??It was a beautiful moment and I believe she was quite sincere. I was tempted to say “huzzah” but I knew also that she was not telling the truth.??The Philodemic leaders were already circulating a "no admit" list of conservative students in violation of University policies.

Lily Howard was the same young woman who offered the "Dan Ernst Resolution" purporting to remove my membership and to ban me from debates for expressing a different viewpoint than her playmates; a considered viewpoint I would have been glad to defend in honest debate.??That is not to say the woman was intentionally lying; I am certain she did not think that she was. Like most card-carrying wokesters, she did not think about the contradictions. Notably, her apparently tolerant comments were met with silence from her fellow travelers.??They had to think about it.?

In my last article about Georgetown's Philodemic, I noted that the racists, who bamboozled and bullied both the Society and the University into a racist scheme to have the once-great debating society accept that it had a “racist past” and to rid the Philodemic’s walls of “white faces,” were almost all gone but that some racists remained. I wrote: “It's obvious.” I stopped to consider if my statement was defendable. It might have been truer to say that it’s obvious “to me” but my son also witnessed it when we went to the Annual Merrick Medal Debate last Spring and sat next to a bigot.??

In fact, I fell short. After a little journalism, I can say that the racism in the Philodemic Society is rampant and noticed by many.??It is not just directed to the “white faces” in portraits, but to all Caucasians and most especially those who do not express a woke ideology when they come to debates or seek membership.??If you are a white male or a Catholic you are called offensive epithets in whispers.??If you are white or a Catholic of any ethnicity or gender you are viewed by the race-clique with suspicion.??The irony is that the racists are a minority but the majority is either too polite to say anything, or they think it is not worth their time. They have been cowed.??

Likewise, liberal students of the Jewish faith fail to speak up at the anti-Semitism in the Society. Last Spring, a member openly expressed a death wish for Israel. While countervailing opinions over policies involving Israel and Palestine are perfectly acceptable. A “death wish” for the Jewish nation is much more than just that.??It passes into anti-Semitic hate.??No one spoke up in protest. Anti-Semitism is part of the campus left’s accepted?gestalt.?????????????????

You might well say that what I am observing may not be racism at all. You may think it's?simply viewpoint discrimination by the campus left. No. It is racism. Whenever you count others by the color of their skin and prejudge them according to their race, you are a racist. I will admit, however, that perhaps we need a new term for a new variant of racism.???

After eight or more years of attending annual diversity trainings, students are arriving on campuses either fully indoctrinated or loaded for bear. The latter was forced to read Ibram X. Kendi, and the other profiteer thought-leaders of America's new racism, and they rejected them and still mock them. The former arrived on campus not only indoctrinated but feeling indignant, arrogant, entitled and superior.?

As an undergraduate at Georgetown, an immigrant and the first generation to attend college, I was a Community Scholar. Like the diversity-benefited students of today I was given every opportunity.??Unlike them, however, my Hispanic and African-American friends and I felt gratitude and grace. Today the diversity-benefited are ideological and feel entitled - and entitled to meet white students with prejudice and antagonism. Perhaps “racist” is too strong a word. “Diversity bullies” might be a more accurate description of what we are seeing in Georgetown’s Philodemic Society.??Whatever the term, the bottom line is that fair-minded students are being driven away or made uncomfortable by just a few bullies in Georgetown’s oldest?society.?

They are obsessed with their own identities, - and with yours!

Ironically, while white men are excluded from the Philodemic’s walls, the most blatant exclusion among undergraduates is of women.??The greatest?animus?against fellow students is directed at the women who express conservative views, let alone pro-life views. In fact, Philodemic women are soon to have a women's-only debate. The debate will be over the benefits of cosmetic surgery!??I will leave the obvious to the reader, but it is hard to believe this is what we get after 35 years of feminist thinking on the Hilltop. The great Leona Fisher must be spinning in her grave; if she's dead.???

The more relevant observation over the cosmetic surgery debate is that Philodemic women would find it hard to find another topic on which they might disagree. Philodemic undergraduate women are?95%?to the left, whether militant wokesters, anti-capitalist and anti-property rights socialists, race hustlers or diversity bullies.??They have driven away or made uncomfortable any other type of thinking woman. To be clear, 95% is almost all.??

What is most striking about this is that the woke women, and all the wokesters in the Society,??appear not to want an intellectual challenge in debate or in their membership.??They are even afraid of what might be debated. The reason for this is obvious and brings us back full circle to the impact that the last few years of race hustling had on the Philodemic.??

Last spring,?The Georgetown Review?published a series of pieces about the Philodemic and the?perversion of its historic hall.??The best was written by the historic preservationist and scholar Dr. Joseph Flahive,?pointing out?how civilized countries don't destroy their historic heritage to solve past grievances and explaining the history of the Hall as a memorial of national reconciliation.???

Writing anonymously under the pen name John Agar, another writer posed the question “where did the Philodemic Society go wrong?” Starkly, he suggests: “Maybe it was that they didn’t listen to their mothers when told not to defecate where you debate, or to confuse the two.” More poignantly, Agar notes that “the oldest collegiate debating society in the Western Hemisphere, went wrong….” when they “surrendered to the racialization-of-everything agenda that swept the country a few years ago.?“ They stopped being a debate society, eager to give a voice to all viewpoints, and became merely?"an issue advocacy club."?They have even put their "slavery committee” into their bylaws to bear it as a permanent albatross!??

Until the Philodemic Society restores debate and devotion to “the cultivation of eloquence” as its only purpose, the Philodemic will continue to be hostile to white students and to conservative women, or anyone who might hold a different viewpoint.??That 95% of Society women are wokesters is damning proof of the prevailing bigotry.??The fact that all the portraits of “white faces” have been removed from the Hall is proof of the racism that has prevailed.

Not long ago, the Philodemic Society took on grand projects, built relationships with societies on other campuses, raised funds, created medal competitions, new traditions and a library, now, they are gazing at their navel.???At least Philodemic women are justified in navel gazing, they are debating whether liposuction or a tuck.??

The author is the founder of Alumni Philodemica and a reviver of the Philodemic?Society.