Comment on LSU responds to Michigan Conference by Hwdrick Edwards.
As a retired faculty member of LSU, I came to recognize that there are very influential people on the administration and staff of the university, particularly in the College of Arts and Science, who have agendas designed to dispense in one way or the other with certain faculty members. Such faculty members included some who could not be bought or sold for job security purposes. Devious tactics have been employed again and again to eliminate them, notwithstanding the strong evidence for the quality of their work in just about every measurable dimension. Such persons would be treated with “benign neglect”, their accomplishments damned with faint praise, until the opportune time came for decisive action against them. They would not be supported to attend conferences, even at prestigious institutions like Oxford University. They would be denied tenure on spurious grounds and be given the “silent treatment” or obfuscations in response to legitimate inquiries. And much more.
I’m saying all this to suggest that there have been influential operatives at LSU who had worse than dubious ethics regarding truth, honesty, fairness, and transparency. It should not be surprising if such values manifest themselves in larger, more defining issues – particularly when post-modernism informs beliefs and becomes the driving force for values and relationships. I’m not at all surprised that there are good people at LSU; I taught many students who inspired me by their intellectual, spiritual, and moral qualities. After all, there are good people at Harvard and UCLA too. You can find them everywhere. And I had warm fellowship with some faculty members whose honesty, trustworthiness and even friendship I cherish – even when their attitude toward church, many of their beliefs, and critical aspects of their lifestyles were not fully compatible with mine.
My problem has been with the covertness and fundamental dishonesty of an influential cabal whose agnosticism could not accommodate thoughtful people of faith, who seemed to think that if you were a person of active faith you had to be somewhat foolish or weak-minded, and whose old-fashion ethnocentrism and conservatism were covered up with a liberal and progressive veneer. I have no axe to grind and no particular opponent to discredit. I am only saddened that, with all the good this university has done and continues to do, the educational process at LSU has become so vitiated at the very heart of its theology, its philosophy, its certitude, and its relationship with the church. It would have been better if Larry Geraty, whom I thought of as a friend, could have risen above this type of controversial ambiguity.
