Howard University exemplifies cancel culture, but not without our help
What it means that Socrates, Plato, and MLK are out at the HBCU
vol. 3 issue 23
vol. 3 issue 23
Greetings,
As part two of our three-part series on the intersection of psychedelics, mental health, and democracy, on Sunday, May 16, 9AM EDT, I will release a podcast I am particularly excited to share with you.
It’s an interview with New York Times bestselling author, Brian Muraresku, whose The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name shows how modern-day studies into the mystical effects of psychedelics can be traced all the way back to the Eleusinian mysteries dedicated to Demeter, goddess of the harvest, to later Dionysian mysteries on the eve of Christendom, and especially to the Eucharist ceremony Jesus taught his followers.
Muraresku cites plenty of sources from the Antiquities indicating that drinking a special brew led to initiates experiencing a sort of rapture where they communed directly with the All beyond what is mortal, and found they no longer feared death.
Although he was taken aback by my reference to Galileo, I suggest to Muraresku, a devout Catholic, that what he’s achieved in uncovering what might be one of the biggest lies in hierarchical history — that the Eucharist was originally a psychedelic ceremony — is no less of a lance at the heart of The Church than the astronomer proving that the Sun and not the Earth are the heart of our solar system.
It’s a juicy piece of podcasting, and I considered releasing it now, but I thought it might be better to kind of warm you up, give you a chance to prepare…so if you have some time this week end, consider having a look at HBO’s Exterminate All the Brutes, as it will give you a good idea of how the perpetuation of a lie by the status quo can hem generations upon generations into thinking something is true when it really is just an outstanding feat of cultural branding.
You might also want to have a listen to this podcast about how European settlers, high on their Christianity-inspired quest to acquire stuff, justified stealing from and killing indigenous Americans. It’s an illuminating conversation with Michael Heller, a professor of real estate law at Columbia Law School.
Heller is the author of Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives and The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives.
But if you do neither of those things, then, eavesdrop on a conversation I had with my friend and sometimes docu-mental guest, poet and activist, E. Ethelbert Miller. More on that in a sec.
Ethelbert is also the former director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University, a jewel in the crown of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. That is, he was until the university decided that history was too expensive, and that sucking up to the status quo, where currency is the only coin of the realm, was the only way to survive, and so sacked nearly 90 of its mostly liberal arts faculty, among others.
You can read about that dubious decision in 2015 in this Washington Post piece.
Howard’s president, Wayne A.I. Frederick justified the decision to the Post: “We have to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive workforce…Our students will be seeking jobs and careers where African Americans are underrepresented, where there will be fewer people to advocate on their behalf. So they need a very strong academic environment, the kind of preparation that Charles Drew meant when he said excellence of performance will transcend all boundaries created by man.”
Yeah, well, I might point out that “transcending all boundaries created by man” as a goal re-stated by a man with the initials for artificial intelligence in his name is rich, but instead, I return to the matter at hand, which is that this is the actual kind of “cancel culture” that Muraresku and I get into in the podcast because believe it or not, where the question of Jesus and psychedelics inevitably leads is to how and whether democracy will survive if we don’t understand how firmly rooted in the Antiquities is our nation and especially our Constitution.
Which is why in the podcast, Muraresku brings up an op-ed co-written by Harvard philosophy professor, Cornell West, decrying another move by Howard University, this one to utterly eliminate the Classics department.
From the op-ed:
Academia’s continual campaign to disregard or neglect the classics is a sign of spiritual decay, moral decline and a deep intellectual narrowness running amok in American culture. Those who commit this terrible act treat Western civilization as either irrelevant and not worthy of prioritization or as harmful and worthy only of condemnation.
Sadly, in our culture’s conception, the crimes of the West have become so central that it’s hard to keep track of the best of the West. We must be vigilant and draw the distinction between Western civilization and philosophy on the one hand, and Western crimes on the other. The crimes spring from certain philosophies and certain aspects of the civilization, not all of them.
The whole piece is worth your attention, though. I hope you will take a moment to read it. Here’s the link again. It also reminds us that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. referenced Socrates three times in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”.
When I shared all of this with Ethelbert and asked him what he thought, here’s what he replied:
I’ve exchanged emails with Cornel West about this matter. I reminded him that Howard tried to eliminate the Philosophy Department several years ago. At many schools the humanities have been under attack. College and universities are run like corporations and not educational institutions.
If a department has few majors it will find itself on the chopping block. The pandemic can always be used as an excuse to eliminate things that had been targeted in the past. Higher education has been lowered to primarily help students go into the sciences and business administration field. The cost of a liberal arts degree is expensive and what “practical” knowledge does it provide a student?
Today it’s obvious the institution is led by cafeteria workers who prefer to offer students a buffet instead of a serious four year meal. I suspect they will come for the Classics in the morning and African American Studies at night. BTW…I heard that UDC was eliminating their History Department.
If we are not taught the classics how will we fight the heathens in our midst?
Howard University responded to Dr. West and his co-author with an op-ed in the New York Times defending the University’s decision, noting that they have to do what is fiscally responsible, and that unlike Harvard, as a public (ie, federally funded) university, they don’t have the private endowment to teach business skills AND how to be a good citizen.
Write Brandon Hogan, Howard’s director of undergraduate studies, and Jacoby Adeshei Carter, chairman of the philosophy department there:
While the top predominantly white institutions rarely need to consider eliminating departments, the top H.B.C.U.s struggle to do everything that they wish to do for their students. That is the real spiritual catastrophe.
Translation: it’s inconvenient in this country to teach people how to think. What matters is teaching them how to fall in line. We as a nation will invest in that, but not the former.
It’s as much of an indictment of Howard as it is our elected officials and anyone who professes to care about democracy.
I will meet you back here on Sunday with a rock-your-world podcast about what Jesus apparently knew about psychedelics, and how restoring a classical education for all citizens are linked. All of them. Regardless of race. Inextricably so.
Until then, peace.
Whitney