Ed. note: Responses to the Oct. 7 editorial “Hoover Institution should renounce Hanson’s racist remarks” continue today.
Dear Editor,
I stumbled upon the recent controversy regarding the Oct. 7 editorial about Victor Davis Hanson’s remarks about race and politics.
I wrote for The Daily occasionally in 1990 and 1991 while completing an M.A. in communication (journalism), and during this time I always found the staff to be one of the best in college journalism, with the fiercest and most knowledgeable copy editors in the business.
Thus I was extremely disappointed by the Oct. 7 editorial.
The content, such as it was, was not a problem. Davis made a provocative argument, and you responded with disagreement. That’s as it should be (though your argument would have been much more effective had you employed some specifics).
The problem was the writing.
“But this sort of homogenous denigration is no intellectual commentary. It is at best vitriolic ignorance. Combining the toxic assumption that all members of an ethnicity group act the same way with the mocking reference to ‘an accent and a trill’ veers dangerously into bigotry.” And it goes on like this.
Let me put on my professor hat for a moment: can ignorance be “vitriolic”? Can an assumption be “toxic”? Can you veer “dangerously into” bigotry? (on this last, you can veer towards something, but once you’ve veered “into” it, then it’s just bigotry, which was actually your point, was it not?)
Not to be all “back in the day,” but, well, back in the day the Daily’s board and the copy editors would never let that many modifiers be employed in one paragraph and would certainly not have allowed them to be imprecise and therefore ineffective. (“Vitriolic” means “like acid,” so certainly rhetoric can be “vitriolic”–which is no doubt what the writer meant. But “vitriolic” does not really describe ignorance very well at all).
You let someone get carried away with the adjectives and adverbs and printed a dog’s breakfast of an editorial. Unless things have really changed at the Farm (which I doubt), you’re better than that. As Prof. James Risser told me once, a true argument written calmly beats a pile of adjectives every time.
Mike Drout M.A. ’91
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Dear Editor,
I think what the anonymous editors at your college paper find despicable about Dr. Hanson’s critique of racial preferences is that what he wrote is true. Thus, not a single substantive critique by the anonymous editors only ad hominem and the crocodile tears wishing for “real debate.”
David McGinley
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Dear Editor,
Most amusing. As usual with academics, the only racist in the room is you.
Howard Houston
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Dear Editor,
When next you respond to Victor Davis Hanson, perhaps you could solicit some help from the upperclassmen. It appears that a reasoned counter-point response is outside the range of your matriculating freshmen.
Eric Beeby
Dallas, Texas
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Dear Editor,
I realize that you are not actual journalist and most of you will not be.
However, if you engage in ad hominem attacks, it is usually appropriate to sign your writings.
Also, as a matter of rhetoric, you can be reasonably sure that, if you are engaging in name-calling, you are not winning the argument and, most likely, you cannot win. Otherwise, you would argue. In the lawyer business, we say, If you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have the law, argue the law; if you have neither, pound the table. In politics and academia, the loudest table pounding is to cry “Racist!”
Fortunately, I don’t think that is effective any more.
Nonetheless, it is an ugly slur and you owe the professor a printed apology and the Daily should sponsor a series: “Is Professor Hanson Right?”
Likely, everybody at Stanford would learn something. The Editorial Board certainly would.
Best wishes for a better paper and editorial page.
Ed Anderson
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Dear Editor,
Shame on you for your incoherent ad hominem attack on Prof. Hanson. Should not the expensive educations with which you have been favored conferred upon you sufficient understanding to express an argument.
Hugh R. Law
St. Louis, Mo.
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Dear Editor,
Your editorial attack on Mr. Hanson was so hilariously un-intellectual, only the multi-syllable words gave any indication that educated people were responsible for its content. Contesting the view that universities are obsessed about race, use race as criteria for entry and aid as Mr. Hason stated, is absurd on its face. Then, attempting to intimidate the Hoover Institute, a university affiliate, into repudiating legitimate intellectual debate is the kind of fascist response that is oh-so typical of those with no logical defense for their position.
Fredric D. Ohr
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Dear Editor,
Read with interest Hanson’s pitch perfect critique of Stanford and with amusement the attack on him. I think Mr. Hanson is a little thin skinned here. After all, who cares what the editors of the Satnford Daily think about anything? I mean people who live in the real world with real jobs and lives?
So you behaved terribly and hurled unjustified insults at him? That’s what twerp undergraduates do, after all. Maybe I am wrong. I haven’t had the pleasure of morons calling me a despicable in print. So I suppose you should apologize to him.
But you never will. Some of you will feel a twinge of embarrassment later on after you’ve grown up. Most of you will not because after all you will be Stanford graduates, which, if I may generalize from my life experience of 65 years, means that you’ll be idiot liberals in positions of privilege anyway and this episode won’t be remembered by any of you at all.
John Reagan
Santa Monica, Calif.
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Dear Editor,
Your unsigned article charging Victor Davis Hanson with racism is totally reprehensible. Calling someone you disagree with racist without a shred of supporting evidence merely devalues the charge and calls into question your motives.
You owe Dr. Hanson a public apology.
Philip Murphy
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Dear Editor,
Read your diatribe vs. V Hanson w/ interest – just as strident emails should be left in draft and reconsidered objectively, so should you have done w/ your piece.
Thomas Grow
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Dear Editor,
Your sophomoric attack on Victor Davis Hanson vividly demonstrates that Stanford no longer teaches (or you’ve failed to learn) how to frame an argument–as distinguished from name-calling. Judged as a high-school effort, it would be pathetic.
It’s sad that, politics aside, intellectual life at our “best” universities has come to this.
John Graham
Newton, Mass.
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Dear Editor,
I think you owe Victor Davis Hanson an apology for your editorial accusing him of racist remarks.
Racism is a serious charge. If you’re going to make such an accusation against a respected scholar, you should have some evidence. I suggest that you back down now and apologize.
Stephen E. Miner ’84
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Dear Editor,
Your editorial concerning Dr. Hanson simply throws mud. If you have information that rebuts his viewpoint, use it.
James Reed
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Dear Editor,
Re editorial against Mr. Victor Davis Hanson — What are your specific arguments/positions against Mr. Hanson’s statements? Your editorial was intellectually shallow.
John Koonce
Morrisville, N.C.
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Dear Editor,
Thank you for ruining my breakfast with that sophomoric, self-righteous, overwrought-adjective-stuffed editorial slandering Victor Davis Hanson as a racist. One wonders, reading that line about “the toxic assumption that all members of an ethnicity group act the same way”, whether reading comprehension is taught at Stanford anymore. Professor Hanson’s reference to the spectacle of members of various ethnic groups playing up their separateness for political purposes (a game that’s as old as Tammany Hall) can’t remotely be construed as a declaration that all members of those groups engage in that practice – especially read in light of Hanson’s other writing, which a responsible editorialist ought to have examined before mounting his high horse.
And re: the reference to “an accent and a trill,” two words: Loretta Sanchez. Anyone familiar with the honorable Congresswoman/OC Valley Girl, and the miraculous transformation of her diction depending on her audience, understands.
Total drive-by, and unworthy of a newspaper associated with a proud academic name. Grow up.
Thomas Eastmond
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Dear Editor,
To the Stanford Daily: I suspect that you do not understand the severity of Dr. Hanson’s put-down of your paper. First, he demolished your group-thing, evidence-free assertions about affirmative action. You should never again venture out of your cave to express an opinion about anything of consequence. A purely ad hominem attack, with a dearth of evidence, is not acceptable in the non-academic world and disqualifies parties that revert to such infantilism from further participation in reasoned discourse. Second, your attempt to censor Dr. Hanson drops the mask sufficiently to allow the world to see the totalitarian face behind the conventional left-wing facade that you present to the world. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…. Third, your crass response reveals enough about Stanford to make people realize that it is not really an institution of higher learning. If your editorial board is an example of the “best and brightest” at Stanford, as I’m sure you consider yourselves to be, Stanford cannot reasonably consider itself to be a top-rated university in this country. Your parents appear to have wasted their money.
W.R. Calhoun
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Dear Editor,
Really enjoyed your ad hominem attack on the good doctor absent any refutation of his points. Stellar academic work there kids!
Very telling it took someone from Stanford to fail so egregiously.
I appreciate you confirming for me that choosing to attend school in Texas instead of California was the much wiser choice.
Jay Lesseig
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Dear Editor,
These are indeed despicable actions and characterized by the lack of a signature to identify the craven cretin who wrote this editorial. Your childish and oh-so-politically correct slurs are just one more echo of the long-past and tired canard of “Racism”, etc. You wouldn’t recognize an honorable man if you tripped over him.
Daniel J. Steele
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Dear Editor,
I am a consistent reader of Dr. VDH. His views are not racist. They call into question many of the unthinking liberal orthodoxies of the day. Sorry it stings you, but your ability to control the narrative has ended. Man up and have a panel discussion with VDH discussing your charges. Sophomores.
George Murphy
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Dear Editor,
I have followed [Victor Davis Hanson] for a very long while and find him brilliant!
Anna Shursen
Dallas, Texas