By now, hopefully you’ve read William Jacobson’s explosive report on the race hoax at Oberlin. If that story was of interest to you, check out this post by Robert Paquette at See Thru Edu which probes Oberlin’s related history.

OBERLIN’S RACE-BASED McCARTHYISM

Oberlin College proudly proclaims on its website that from the time of its founding in 1833 it has “thrived on progressive causes and social justice.” Indeed, Oberlin’s founders, many of whom were young radical abolitionists, intended to carve out of the Ohio wilderness their own little Puritan-style city on the hill. But the road to heaven-on-earth proved rocky. Oberlin had recurring financial problems. Wealthy philanthropists like Gerrit Smith, who would become one of the secret supporters of John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, donated about 20,000 acres of land in the Ohio River Valley to bail Oberlin out.

Scandal also rocked the institution. One of its members, a prominent evangelist and abolitionist named Horace Campbell Taylor, was found in 1843 to have pilfered money, engaged in numerous sexual shenanigans, and forced one woman whom he had impregnated into having an abortion. Theodore Dwight Weld, the foremost abolitionist in the western United States, who had poured his heart and soul into Oberlin, investigated. He found an even worse crime: Oberlin officials knew what Campbell had been doing but had dragged their feet and covered up in dealing with the miscreant in their midst. The whole handling of the affair, an angry Weld declared, indicated that the Oberlin’s “reformers found it easier to reform others than themselves or their colleagues.”

Oberlin’s current president, Marvin Krislov, presiding over an endowment approaching 700 million dollars, has not suffered the financial problems of the first ones, but like them, he fancies himself a champion of progressive causes. A graduate of Yale Law School, Krislov served as general counsel at the University of Michigan and played a prominent role in the university’s successful defense before the Supreme Court of affirmative action in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).

As Oberlin’s president, however, Krislov stands at the center of a scandal that Cornell University law professor William Jacobson calls the “greatest race hoax since Tawana Brawley.” Indeed, thanks to Jacobson and intrepid reporters at The Daily Caller, abundant evidence has surfaced to indict the holier-than-thou Krislov and his lieutenants for having indulged in one of the most shameful acts of moral turpitude in its history.