The Indian at Dartmouth - Angela Davis speaks at anniversary ceremony - column

National Review, Nov 25, 1988 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

It MUST BE HELL, at Dartmouth College, if you are a member of the faculty or the administration-or, for that matter, a student-and your inclinations are just, well: normal. You might be a political Democrat, while nonetheless questioning, along with the late Hubert Humphrey, the use of civil-rights bills in order to discriminate against qualified white students seeking admission. You might be a graduate who is perfectly capable of looking at a facsimile of an Indian warrior without saying to himself teeth gritted, "The only good Injun is a dead Injun!" The only tolerable conclusion the outsider can reach about Dartmouth these days is that it is being run by ideological loonies.

The big case last winter involved the four students who were given the American equivalent of ten years in Gulag for ventilating their resentment of a professor of music who spends most of his time in scatological ruminations deploring racism in general (he is black). The four students published a verbatim transcript of the professor's lucubrations, requested that he reply, and before they knew it two of them were suspended for 18 months on grounds of "vexatious oral exchange." President James 0. Freedman of Dartmouth launched the one-hundredth attack on the conservative student newspaper, which sits there in Hanover like Ft. Douaumont in the First World War, apparently impregnable and a symbol of the viability of the resistance. The people of 60 Minutes have been in Hanover recently, and viewers may soon see an account of the nine lives of the Dartmouth Review up against the massive forces of the administration and faculty.

But given this background, what happened in the first week in October is breathcatching in its stupidity. It is as it in the middle of a televised debate, George Bush were to turn to Michael Dukakis and say, "You know why I can't stand you, Mike? It's because you're a dirty little Greek immigrant." If that were to happen, Mike Dukakis would become the next President of the United States with the votes of every non-Turk in America, including this columnist.

What Dartmouth did was to celebrate the 15th anniversary of co-education at Dartmouth. And the principal speaker was . . . Angela Davis, the best-known female Communist in the United States. She was, during the turbulent Seventies, among the Ten Most Wanted fugitives on the FBI list. She was apprehended and tried for complicity in murder, and a mouthpiece got her off. She went from trial to the Soviet Union to a triumphal tour, in which she denounced the United States and all its institutions. She was given the Lenin Peace Prize. And in the last two national elections she ran for office: for Vice President of the United States on the Communist ticket.

She was introduced at the august ceremony in Dartmouth by a dean, Mr. Dwight Lahr. The press was not permitted to record her speech, and only an edited videotape will be released (obviously, somebody in the office of Dartmouth's President Freedman decided that the celebration inaugurated by Angela Davis should be less than absolutely prime time). But a facile editor of the Dartmouth Review took notes on Dean Lahr's introduction, which included the following: "Angela Davis's life is an example of how one committed black woman activist has chosen to make a difference." We must be grateful that Angela Davis's example is not more widely imitated, else there would be a progressive shortage of white mates. . . . The dean went on to name her accomplishments, among them that she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, which, said in that way, seems indistinguishable from the Nobel Peace Prize. And he ended by saying, "It gives me great pleasure to introduce Angela Davis, who will address us on the topic, 'Women, Race, and Class.'"

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one to beat, given Carter's "misery index," a 21 per cent prime rate and a rising tax burden. The second standard is far tougher, and Niskanen goes so far as to conclude that "there was no Reagan revolution." To be sure, during Reagan's tenure, monetary policy brought down the rate of inflation, marginal tax rates were cut, and antitrust policy finally abandoned the witch-hunt mentality. However, the twin deficits (budget and trade) mushroomed, leaving the next Administration with major problems. And, in the end, the goal of substantially higher economic growth has not been met. The key to growth is productivity, which has increased at only 1.5 per cent annually since 1984. A larger labor force (mainly due to the increased participation of women), not better efficiency, has been the primary source of economic growth. Productivity in manufacturing, where the application of technology is most useful, has been good, but productivity in the service industries has been on the decline. And as manufacturing falls relative to services in the economy, average productivity is dragged down. To sum up the Reagan economic record, the trade deficit caught him off guard, and dealing with the budget deficit also presented problems. Reagan was unable to hold down the level of government spending, which is now at the same level forecast by the Carter Administration. Politics prevented any serious assault on the welfare state. With taxes held down, the deficits expanded. Niskanen does not believe that spending restraint alone will be able to balance the budget, but he nonetheless argues that the case for spending restraint is "overwhelming." His book is a lucid mixture of economic theory and political pessimism.