This commentary is by Kevin Ellis, a communications consultant based in Montpelier. He is a member of the board of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VTDigger.
Jim Douglas, former governor of Vermont and Middlebury College graduate, class of 1972, has just given us a meaningful opportunity for learning and growth.
Douglas, who served as governor for eight years starting in 2002, announced last week he will skip his 50th college reunion this year because of the “woke’’ culture at the college.
“I’ll miss seeing my classmates and reminiscing about our college days,’’ Douglas wrote in a piece for the New York Sun, a conservative digital platform based in New York City. “My regret would be greater, however, if I were to pretend that I was happy to be there.’’
The reason for Douglas’s decision is that last year Middlebury removed the name of another Vermont governor, John Mead, from its campus chapel. Mead donated $75,000 for the college to build the chapel. He also happened to endorse the Eugenics Survey of Vermont, an early 20th-century program under which the state examined how to “improve’’ the population through selective breeding, sterilization, marriage restrictions and other barbarisms.
Over the course of Mead’s life, this program successfully forced the sterilization of 250 Vermonters. Vermont’s history with eugenics is sordid and shameful. As I’ve learned from Isabel Wilkerson’s book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent,” the Nazis took many lessons on supremacy from American examples.
Just last year, the state Legislature took this history into account and voted to “sincerely apologize and express sorrow and regret” for Vermont’s role in the eugenics movement.
A few months after the Legislature’s apology, the campus newspaper reported that a working group convened to examine Middlebury College’s relationship to Vermont’s eugenics history and the role Gov. Mead played. The group spent months deliberating and finally recommended the Mead name be removed.
“Following its review, citing his central role in advancing eugenics policies that resulted in harm to hundreds of Vermonters, the working group determined that the name of former Governor Mead on an iconic building in the center of campus is not consistent with what Middlebury stands for in the 21st century,” wrote college President Laurie Patton and board President George Lee.
Patton then sent the working group’s recommendation to the board of trustees, which unanimously voted to remove the name.
All of this brings us back to Douglas and his boycott of his college reunion. Douglas would have us believe the Mead issue is an example of political correctness that threatens the reputation of a “decent man’’ and “generous benefactor.’’
Indeed, Mead left Middlebury to fight for the Union, including the Battle of Gettysburg. He served in the state Legislature, as mayor, as a Middlebury trustee, and as the founder and CEO of a company that made steam shovels for coal companies and Standard Oil. Support for eugenics was mainstream in the early 1900s, Douglas says, and Mead should not be held accountable given the context of the time.
It is a fair point and worthy of serious discussion.
“Is that the sole basis on which a long and distinguished career should be judged?’’ Douglas asks. “Under the scrutiny of the Thought Police, no one’s legacy is safe.’’
Maybe not the sole basis. But it is a factor. I can think of plenty of ugly things that were mainstream when people knew better and should have known better, slavery being the best example. Eugenics and slavery are known evils. We knew it then and we know it now.
The Douglas argument about woke culture and names on buildings is intellectually too easy, especially for someone educated at Middlebury, who has been immersed in political life for decades. In fact, Jim Douglas became a member of the Vermont House straight out of college and served as secretary of state, state treasurer and finally governor. He is one of those politicians you could accurately accuse of never having a real job.
Douglas has always had a way with words. He’s charming and intelligent. His reputation as a moderate Republican in the old New England style keeps him popular in Vermont. But beneath the exterior, there has always been a willingness to cast his lot with the more unsavory parts of the political discourse. The best example happened in 2009, when he vetoed the first-in-the nation same-sex marriage bill that had just passed the Legislature by a large margin.
“I believe … the institution of marriage is worth preserving in its traditional form,’’ Douglas said later in his memoir.
As governor, he could have let the bill pass without his signature, thereby holding firm to his personal beliefs but allowing the will of the people and the Legislature to be heard. Instead, he put the state through a torturous veto-override campaign that ended with the House overturning him by one vote. I have the vote tally framed in my office, one of the great historical moments in Vermont history.
In his New York Sun piece, Douglas accuses Middlebury leadership of removing Mead’s name from the chapel at “the crack of dawn,’’ adding a dose of drama to frame the act as the college pulling a fast one to please the politically correct liberals. A ridiculous claim, given the college’s thorough process that led to the removal of Mead’s name.
Douglas’s decision to skip his reunion is a good chance for us all to confront what is really behind his words — fear of a changing America and Vermont.
Douglas, and white men like him, do not like what they see in modern-day America. Increasingly, they are confronted with the reality of benefitting from a caste system built on the backs of people of color and women.
This system enabled John Mead to be elected governor and become wealthy enough to endow a new chapel to a college. This success was due, in no small part, to the work of others never recognized.
And now those people are demanding recognition and justice. Jim Douglas and many others call it “woke’’ culture. Others might call it payback for centuries of injustice and subjugation perpetrated by a white ruling class that built this country on the work of slaves and women who kept homes and raised families for no pay.
But the white male domination of Douglas’s Vermont, Middlebury College and America is slowly coming to an end. Like the same-sex marriage law Douglas vetoed, the removal of Mead’s name from the Middlebury chapel symbolizes that change. And like the same-sex marriage bill, Douglas is still denying it, casting his lot in with those who still deny history.
“I hope that the institution’s officials reconsider this unfortunate deed,’’ Douglas wrote. “Cancel culture is alive and well at Middlebury, so, for now, I’ll celebrate alone.’’
In a delicious irony, Douglas has taught at Middlebury since 2011 as an “executive in residence’’ and often brings students to the state Capitol. One wonders whether his reunion boycott will extend to his teaching position. At the very least, he could focus his teaching on the issue for the benefit of his students or maybe host a forum in town.
Instead, he announced his decision on a conservative website in New York instead of Vermont. He will indeed celebrate alone, which is a loss for his students, the community and the state and tells us more about Jim Douglas than it does about Middlebury College.