Emory President James Wagner's 'Contrition'

I saw the controversy over the 3/5 Compromise last week. I ignored it because it was so stupid.

But here's the headline at the New York Times' homepage, "Protest and Contrition After Slavery Comment." "Contrition"? That's big --- and stupid.

And clicking through at the link is the article, "Emory University Leader Revives Racial Concerns."

There's multiple layers of stupid here. The simple refusal to understand the 3/5 Compromise as a devil's bargain that made possible a constitutional agreement in 1787 is stupid. And the aggrieved leftists are monstrously stupid for applying at presentist epistemology to a political deal made 226 years ago. And it's a stupid lie that the 3/5 Compromise categorized black slaves as three-fifths human. The deal was that states with slave populations would be able to count them as three-fifths of the total number for purposes of representation. Black slaves had no rights, duh. Of course they were dehumanized. The institution of slavery was evil. But it's wicked stupid not to realize that there might have been no agreement on the Constitution had the deal not been struck. The stupid leftists are applying Marxist social justice ideology to attack President Wagner, who obviously wasn't in tune to the raging stupidity of political correctness that has infected America's campuses. Race and racial recrimination are enormous sources of power for the idiots of the radical left. Praising the 3/5 Compromise in such away is like giving away the store. You can call it a day with these retards. The Obama media will play up the non-troversy and the school's administration will capitulate to the stupid aggrieved race-mongers' demands. Rinse and repeat.

From the article:

ATLANTA — A reception Friday at Emory University to celebrate the work of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could have been more poorly timed, but not by much.

All week long, the president of Emory, James W. Wagner, had been trying to rewind a column that he had written for the university magazine. In it, he praised the 1787 three-fifths compromise, which allowed slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person as a way to determine how much Congressional power Southern states would have, as an example of how polarized people can find common ground.

It was, he has since said, a clumsy and regrettable mistake.

A faculty group censured him last week for the remarks. And in a speech at Friday’s reception for the campus exhibition, “And the Struggle Continues: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Fight for Social Change,” Dr. Wagner acknowledged both the nation’s ongoing education in race relations and his own.

“I know that I personally have a long way to go,” he said.

His article has been seized upon by students and faculty who say it was yet one more example of insensitivity from the Emory administration, which in September announced sweeping cuts that some say unfairly targeted some programs popular with minorities.

About 45 protesting students showed up at the reception, silently holding signs that read “This is 5/5 outrageous” and “Shame on James” as Dr. Wagner; Representative John Lewis of Georgia, a veteran of the civil rights movement; and leaders of the S.C.L.C. spoke about the fight for racial equality.

Whether the cuts, which include the elimination of physical education, visual arts, journalism, and graduate programs in economics and Spanish, disproportionately affect racial minorities is in dispute at the university, whose student body is 31 percent minority.

Certain programs that focused on or made recruiting minorities a priority have been shifted to other departments or eliminated, but university officials say the numbers are not as drastic as protesters believe.

Savings from the reorganization will be reinvested in other departments, including neurosciences, studies of contemporary China, and new media studies.

Such academic realignment is starting to happen at liberal arts colleges around the country, said Phil Kleweno, a consultant at Bain & Company who specializes in higher education.

“Not every school can excel in every subject,” he said. “Given where we are financially, these are wise decisions for many universities to make.”

Yes.

More money for programs. What better way to get more money for programs the university can't afford than to shame the president as an unreconstructed racist.

More at the link.

And more of teh stupid here: "Almost Verbatim Emory University President James Wagner: “The 3/5 Compromise is a Model to Which We Should Aspire. Also, the Liberal Arts are Like Slaves and Should Be Treated As Such”."