Author: ANNE HENDERSHOTT
The views of the Authors are not necessarily the views of Enigmose.
Appropriating Black Lives Matter rhetoric to make bogus allegations of racism, three white Grove City College graduates recently attempted to enlist social media to destroy the reputation of Paul Kengor, a popular professor at the college. Though the female attackers — who recently added the moniker “disgruntled leftist and LGBTQ activist” to their Twitter display names — quickly rescinded their demands that Kengor “retire or resign” because of his “white nationalist rhetoric,” the damage to his reputation is significant.
A longtime contributor to The American Spectator, Paul Kengor is the most well-known scholar on the Grove City College campus. Beloved by students and with a wide public following, Kengor is the author of several New York Times best-selling books, including, most recently, A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century. A frequent speaker at youth conferences, including Young Americans for Freedom, and an oft-invited guest to do readings at the Reagan Ranch, Kengor has a reputation for kindness, goodness, and humility.
Dr. John Zmirak, a senior editor at The Stream, recently told a reporter at Church Militant that Kengor is “a model scholar and educator. He is patient, humble, scrupulously fair and single-mindedly devoted to advancing freedom for every human being as the image of God. He is a worthy disciple of St. John Paul II, a man devoted to liberty, virtue and real human rights.”
For those of us who have read Kengor’s books and heard him speak, the allegations of racism and “white supremacist writing” are preposterous and offensive. But the attackers did not stop there. In their original letter to the Board of Grove City College on June 11, 2020, the attackers claimed that Kengor’s writings revealed Grove City’s “deep-seated ideological commitments to white nationalist beliefs and conspiracy theories.” Then the attackers listed some ludicrous examples claiming that Kengor “compares the babies of Muslim immigrants to suicide bombs,” and accused Kengor of queerphobia and anti-Semitism. For evidence of the latter, the attackers claimed that in an op-ed that Kengor published on the horrific Tree of Life shooting at the Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, Kengor refused to identify the shooter as a racist/white nationalist/anti-Semite and instead talked about the shooting as an act of God. Worse, the attackers claimed that Kengor focused on how his own children were nearby the synagogue when it happened and by doing that “centered his family as a victim of the shooter.” Anyone reading Kengor’s op-ed on the Jewish massacre at the Tree of Life can easily see how preposterous the attackers’ allegations are.
An immediate angry response and petition of support for Professor Kengor was launched by several of Kengor’s former students who rose to defend their revered professor. Contrary to these claims of racism, Kengor is himself the father of a black adopted child and has never written or spoken a racist word. Kengor and the Institute on Faith and Freedom that he directs on campus have always supported racial justice in all of their publications. In fact, the Institute for Faith and Freedom website actually has a tab for “Civil Rights and Racial Injustice,” which includes dozens of articles going back to 2003, with Kengor writing more of them than any other contributor. But none of that counts, as the damage has been done. Full Story @ American Spectator
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