THE TRUE RACISTS IN THE PHILODEMIC, A RESPONSE

THE TRUE RACISTS IN THE PHILODEMIC, A RESPONSE

By Manuel A. Miranda

A few weeks ago in The Georgetown Review, Georgetown sophomore Gregory Brew, a new member of the Philodemic Society, defended the removal of portraits in the Society’s historic room in the national landmark Healy Hall.??In the spirit of debate, I am responding to my fellow Philodemician. First, what struck me most is how much Mr. Brew got wrong even after “hours” going over the history and mission of the oldest society on campus.??He starts by misapplying the society's motto and purpose.?

Since 1830, the Philodemic has dedicated itself to the “cultivation of eloquence.” Birthed in America’s republican era and in the oppressed Catholic experience, the founders sought to create a society where students could learn the art of oratory and rhetoric “in the defense of liberty” so as to prepare them for the democratic project of the new nation that the University’s founder, John Carroll, had been so prominent in securing.??“Liberty” in1830 was, of course, a solely political concept. it meant neither freedom nor equality, and did not include subjective woke concepts of either equity or social justice.??Slavery was legal.??It is hard to know how the defacement of the Philodemic Hall, a room that is part of the legacy of Patrick Healy S.J., a man born a slave, by historical revisionists at best and racists at worst is in keeping with that purpose as Mr. Brew concludes. Mr. Brew does not see the whole picture.

Four years ago, an errant set of race activists in the Philodemic pressed for the removal of seven of the 34 antique portraits on the walls since 1910, but they also suggested the removal of all the portraits.??They called also for the defacement of historic context artwork.???The seven were accused of being slave owners, Confederates, and KKK members.??In fact, of the seven, only one owned slaves, that was William Gaston, the school’s first student for whom Gaston Hall is named, and he was an abolitionist. None were KKK members.??Oops.?

One, a lifelong Jesuit priest and an accomplished Georgetown president who finished Fr. Healy’s work, was neither a slave owner, nor a KKK member, nor a Confederate.??In fact, Father James Doonan was the first Georgetown graduate to become president of the university. He was a first generation college graduate. Having been raised in a devout Irish Catholic immigrant family in Atlanta, GA, he was included with the seven solely because he was a Southerner!??Oops.??A great injustice. The Jesuit community should be ashamed for letting this injustice occur to one of their own.??It is for good reason that Jesuit vocations are low.??In the past few years, it seems all they do is throw their men under the bus.

Like the University President’s office, Mr. Brew swallowed the bamboozle completely.??He writes: “Stephen R. Mallory, another one of the men in the portraits, was the former confederate secretary of the Navy.”??The errant committee did write that very thing.??The problem is their shoddy work.??The portrait is not of C.S.A. Navy Secretary Mallory.??It is a portrait of his son who studied at Georgetown and went on to serve as a United States Representative and Senator from Florida in the 1890’s.??He died in office.

Mr. Brew also falls for the great race hustle.??All the men on that Victorian array of portraits are there because of one thing only, they distinguished themselves in public life in the 45 years after the Civil War was ended, and they donated to the University and the Philodemic to secure the great room, including the five-only who in the War aligned with the Confederacy and the State’s they called their country, two of them as mere teenagers.??It is a boldfaced lie to suggest that any portraits were placed on the wall in 1910 because of anything that ended 45 years earlier. Sadly too many, like Mr. Brew, have believed it without scrutiny.

The race hustle does not stop there.??The hustlers have argued that because of the seven portraits and because the Philodemic debated, many times since 1830, issues connected to slavery, it bears, as Mr. Brew puts it, a “troubled history.”??This defies the definition of a debating society.??Mr. Brew confuses debate with issue advocacy. He likely does not know that the errant committee is seeking to place a gold plaque in the Philodemic Hall commemorating themselves, of course, and noting the Philodemic’s “racist” past. This latter causal reasoning??is what my sainted grandmother would call?mierda de toro.

Almost every year, perhaps every year, the Philodemic debates the question of abortion. In fact, my client, William Peter Blatty, offered to endow the yearly debate. Each year the house divides, sometimes the pro-abortionists win, sometimes the pro-lifers. Under the reasoning of the one-trick-pony race hustlers, maybe there will be a plaque in the Philodemic Room someday pointing out the Society’s “troubled history” with either baby-killing or violence against women.??It is ludicrous causal reasoning.?

Of course, left out of the equation is that in 1949, under the presidency of Richard Alan Gordon, later a great Georgetown law professor, it was the Philodemic Society that called out a campus-wide walk out in protest of the Jesuit administration’s policy of segregation in the College.??The Jesuits relented in 1950.??Many of us knew Dean Gordon. He helped revive the Philodemic in 1989.??His was an effort deserving of a plaque.?

At the start, I suggested that this effort was racist. “Racism” and “racist” are not words that should be thrown around lightly just because you disagree with someone.??But it is not unfair of me to do so here.??The race hustlers have had no problem referring to those who disagree with them about the “reimagining” of the historic Hall as “racists” and “white supremacists.”???Notably, no one has argued against removal of a few portraits, but the extremists have been hysterical over any dissent.??One can just look at senior Aida Ross’?twitter tirade of February 20th,?in which she published on social media that her classmate must not “care for black people”!?

?In fact, the “racists” have been completely open in repeating everywhere and to everyone that their goal is not to remove a few Confederates but that they want the removal of all the “white faces.” They say “white faces” all the time! If Mr. Brew visited Howard University and made any comment about all the black faces he would be a racist.??That is what people who see only skin color are.??Always.??Everywhere.??

Finally, Mr. Brew asks the important question: who should replace the targeted few???He suggests “Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglas, Ronald Reagan, Jane Addams and Philodemic alumnus Antonin Scalia.’” That is adorable.??Bless his heart. Me too. In fact. the racists are seeking to put up portraits of radical activists with no relation to either Georgetown or the Philodemic, mostly black, each more radical than the last, like transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson to replace Jesuit Father Doonan..?One is author James Baldwin.??Baldwin was a Black Nationalist turned Marxist who, along with Michel Foucault is most credited for?politicizing education to obtain ideological ends. Biographically, Baldwin was pro-abortion, an atheist, a constant critic of Christianity and "whiteness." He made exceptions for his penchant for adolescent white boys. He lived in France since age 24.??Not all of these factoids are damning. The certain scandal is that his public advocacy was altogether inconsistent with Georgetown’s Catholic identity, and, if anything, he favored a totalitarian truth, not debate. They want to replace 19th century Confederates with a 20th century racist who frequently suggested the inevitability of race violence, as he did at the end of his famous exchange with William F. Buckley. ?

There are two more things that Mr. Brew apparently does not know. The first is that the controversy has been most divisive.??Over this, there are now two Philodemic alumni associations and the tear is not likely to mend.??The second is that the Philodemic Society is being bamboozled by the University President’s office and as soon as finals arrive and summer break begins they will commence a drastic redesign of the historic Philodemic Hall to suit their own purposes. The racists who Mr. Brew applauds gave them the opportunity they long desired. Unless they are stopped.

Manuel A. Miranda, SFS’82, is the 1990 founder of the?Alumni Philodemic?and the Secretary of the Sodality for the Historical Preservation of Philodemic Hall.