This commentary is by Jeff Benay of Fairfax, a member of the Vermont Commission on Native American Affairs. He has been involved for decades in Abenaki public policy and education.
I was visiting with a cousin whose mom and dad met when they were both students at the University of Vermont. I was genuinely pleased that this child, a student at another northeastern liberal arts college, had contacted me. My wife joined us as we dined at Leunig’s in Burlington.
As we spoke, my cousin whispered about the state of affairs in the Middle East. I asked why she was whispering. She explained that her friend, a student at UVM, had told her not to let anyone know that she was Jewish.
I shuddered to hear the reason why, one that in my gut I already knew. She explained that Jewish students on campus were feeling alienated and afraid. They were lamenting the lack of any cogent response by the administration to the recent barrage of antisemitism, a torrent of hate-filled rhetoric.
In an atmosphere where Vermont’s own Abenaki students on campus are already afraid to share their heritage because of the vitriol aimed at them; where these students are having to confront daily taunts they are “fakes” and are “appropriating“ the Odanak Abenaki culture from southern Quebec; where professors, once proud to say they stood with the Vermont Abenaki, now dare say nothing in fear of retribution from colleagues and students; the UVM campus is reduced to rigid ideological camps, where one side claims “purity,” and the other “silence” in fear of being ridiculed.
This is the current state of affairs at UVM, where Vermont Abenaki leaders are told repeatedly that student acquisition of “critical thinking” skills is sacrosanct to the UVM administration. Yet, it would seem that the idea of holding two opposing thoughts in one’s mind, and still retaining the ability to think, once popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is now reduced to narrow prescriptive epistemologies, certainly not for the faint of heart.
Please tell me this isn’t so. Throw me a “life lie,” what Henrik Ibsen coined in the “Wild Duck,” as an antidote to the horrible moral decay of the times.
I know the UVM president is a humanist who favors Ibsen, or at least that’s what I read, so please, “Mr. President,” lend to your school culture an ethos of care and commitment in the celebration of thought. Affirm that individual differences not be held in scorn, yet in the knowledge they may contribute to a more just and humane way of looking at one another.
If UVM can be such a place, we may all be heartened in the realization that civility is accorded each of us because we may dare to think differently about certain ideas, yet confident that “discourse,” as such, is something to be nurtured, not stifled.
This is an affirmation of humanity which must guide us through the turbulence of the days and months ahead.
