The following is the text of the remarks I gave at yesterday's King Day program on our campus hosted by the Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission.

The Prez

Philander Smith College is proud to once again host the vigil. This relationship with the King Commission dates back to the mid 1990s, so we are proud to play a minor role in this event. As president, I have used this time not to welcome you because as you know by now, you are always welcome here.

Instead of a welcome, let me call you to act. I submit to you that Dr. King’s legacy is being attacked, and we need to set the record straight. So what am I talking about? Ten years ago, Michael Eric Dyson wrote “I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.” In that text, he writes:

Terms like equal playing field, racial justice, equal opportunity, and most ominous, color-blind drip from the lips of formerly stalwart segregationist politicians, conservative policy wonks, and intellectual hired guns for deep-pocketed right-wing think tanks… Affirmative action is rendered as reverse racism, while goals and timetables are remade, in sinister fashion, into quotas.

These unscrupulous actors proclaim that King somehow advocated a color blind society, as evidenced by the 34 words in the I Have A Dream speech that spoke of the content of our character rather than color of our skin. Dyson writes, “If King’s hope for radical social change is to survive, we must wrest his complex meaning from their harmful embrace.”

This leads me to yesterday’s utterly ridiculous and blasphemous editorial by Paul Greenberg, entitled “Radical as conservative.” Predictably, he uses those 34 words Dyson points out that stalwart segregationists use. He writes:

Is any passage more frequently cited against the quota system called Affirmative Action? Is any passage so clear a call for what conservatives always seem to be calling for – a renewed faith in the American dream? A color-blind society in which we are judged on our individual merits, not group identity?

Greenberg then attacks with those familiar phrases. Equal-opportunity racism. The new racism. A new intolerance with social justice being any government program the speaker currently favors. Dyson clearly described what happens here all the time- the pimping of Martin Luther King to make a point that King would be flatly against.

So my challenge to you is to read King for yourself. Read one of the dozens of speeches, sermons, articles, and books that give you the broader range of King’s thinking, and then call out those who misuse King to support their personal ideology.

King Day 2010 for me is call out day, and I am calling out Paul Greenberg for shamelessly misrepresenting Dr. King. Every year that I have been here, the paper prints “I Have A Dream,” and then he writes some column telling marginalized people that everything is fair, and your attempt to even suggest it isn’t is racism on your part. He would say you’re hurting because you haven’t pulled yourself up by the boostraps, as he lays on top of you holding you down. To him, you’re racist if you suggest everything is not fair in America.

Greenberg either has never read King, or thinks you’re too stupid to go back and check the facts. Well, I have read King widely. I have read passages from the 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait” where King writes “it is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years” and he questions how could Blacks be “absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him now to compete on a just and equal basis.”

King said “it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line in a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner.” In fact, King specifically wrote, the nation “must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past.”

All of this sounds like affirmative action to me. Sounds like reparations. It sounds like social justice, which for the record, promotes awareness of inequalities, action to redress inequalities, and ongoing habits of mind and actions that continue to redress inequalities. But Greenberg and those of his ilk never share these passages. But I am president of a college whose motto is ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

My point today is that we must protect Dr. King’s legacy as people constantly misuse his eloquence to say something that benefits their ideology. As the villain in the new movie, The Book of Eli stated, having the right words eloquently presented is a weapon. King’s words and legacy are a powerful weapon, but in the wrong hands are used to attack all people, especially those King sought to help the most.

We’ll see if they print my editorial destroying the predictable case Greenberg makes. I hope lots of you will join me. Write a letter to the editor challenging this foolishness. We have to fight to make sure King is presented accurately and fairly. Like I said, I didn’t want to welcome you to your college. This is a community meeting, and we’ve got work to do. This meeting is officially called to order.

Today our SGA stepped up to lead campus efforts to assist with relief in Haiti. They presented as a part of chapel today. I am glad that they responded in such an affirmative manner, and they will have their first task force meeting tomorrow.

We are a United Methodist college, and one of the great relief agencies is UMCOR- United Methodist Committee on Relief. Persons wanting to make donations to a very active organization. In fact, they were already in Haiti doing some HIV/AIDS training when the earthquake hit. Sadly, those workers are missing, including the executive director. If you'd like to make a donation, please visit their website:

http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umcor/

The Prez

We officially opened up the semester with our faculty-staff institute on Tuesday. We have noticed, like most campuses, the number of students struggling with a myriad of personal issues. So I wanted to spend time helping faculty and staff learn how to assist students in a meaningful way.

We set the stage with Michael Hutchinson, assistant to the president who leads our Black Male Initiative. He shared some of the stories he had regarding his work with the men on campus. Many of the faculty and staff were shocked by some of the challenges our students face.

We then brought on Dr. Ruth Harper, professor of counseling, and Mr. C. D. Douglas, director of minority affairs, at South Dakota State University. Dr. Harper is editor of a new book regarding counseling skills. They covered a number of issues that today's college students deal with. Those who don't work in higher education really don't know the depth of the issues.

We then broke the group up.

And after answering questions regarding our students, the groups began their discussions.

We ended by having the groups report the significant areas of challenge they see in our students, and our presenters gave us some take away strategies to assist students. So this was a helpful exercise and helps us continue to try to educate the whole student.

The Prez

Elders featured on AETN tonight (from Arkansas News)

LITTLE ROCK — Dr. Joycelyn Elders, a lightning rod for criticism for her views on sex education as Arkansas health director and the first black U.S. surgeon general, will discuss her life in an interview tonight on the Arkansas Educational Television Network.

The one-on-one interview, part of AETN’s “Men and Women of Distinction” series, is scheduled to air at 9:30 p.m.

Elders, 76, will discuss her childhood, her struggle to make it to Little Rock for her first day of college and stories of her residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences that influenced her to become an advocate for children’s health and an opponent of teenage pregnancy.

Born the daughter of a sharecropper in Howard County during the Great Depression, Elders earned a scholarship to Philander Smith College in 1949, becoming the first in her family to attend college.

Inspired by a lecture by Edith Irby Jones, the first woman to attend UAMS, Elders joined the U.S. Army’s Medical Specialist Corps and trained as a physical therapist to treat wounded Korean War veterans.

With the help of the GI Bill, Elders earned a medical degree and a master’s degree in biochemistry from UAMS, where she was later appointed chief pediatric resident specializing in pediatric endocrinology.

In 1987, then-Gov. Bill Clinton appointed Elders director of the state Department of Health. She drew the ire of conservative groups by advocating the dispensing of contraceptives at school-based health clinics.

After Clinton was elected president, he appointed Elders as U.S. surgeon general in 1993. She was forced to resign less than a year later.

At a United Nations conference in 1994, in response to a psychologist’s question whether masturbation could be a useful tool in discouraging school children from becoming sexually active too early, Elders said masturbation was “something that is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.” Her comments created a firestorm of criticism from conservatives already put off by Elder’s pro-choice views.

After Clinton forced her out as surgeon general, Elders return to UAMS to practice medicine. Her autobiography, “Joycelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper’s Daughter to Surgeon General of the United States,” was published in 1996. She resigned from practicing medicine in 1999 but has continued to lecture on issues regarding AIDS, adolescent sexuality and national health care.

AETN’s “Men and Women of Distinction” series features interviews with prominent Arkansans known for their citizenship, character and accomplishments. The series has previously featured former governors and U.S. Sens. David Pryor and Dale Bumpers, as well as former Gov. Sid McMath and Judge Morris Arnold.

Yesterday during lunch I went over the the Clinton School of Public Service to hear Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute (and formerly of Syracuse University). It ended up being a great session about fundraising.

http://www.arthurbrooks.net/

His research basically proved the Scriptures (and he talked about that fact as well). So essentially, give and it will be given back to you in good measure.

People who contribute charitably actually increase their wealth. He cited data on the wealthy who gave before their level of wealth. The charitable also are happy people, and are viewed as leaders, both qualities add value to the person and increases their earning potential.

In fact, those who give are 43% happier than those who don't. He shared that if Americans, already the most charitable people in the world, increased our giving by only 1%, that would add $39 BILLION to the economy! Now that's a real stimulus package.

So this was a great lecture. The lesson is simple: give and you'll be better for it. In fact, he argued that those who give actually get more than the charitable organization that receives. Of course, Philander Smith College is a great place for you to give so that you can receive all of these benefits.

The Prez

Here are some scenes from the annual Little Rock alumni Christmas breakfast.

Rev. Maxine Allen

Lydia and Adria Kimbrough

Danita Paige

Psalms 150

Our speaker, Attorney Carla Johnson '2005

The family of the year: The Loves. Their parents sent NINE children to PSC.

And they presented a check for a book scholarship (part of a multi-year commitment)

Board Chair Larry Ross challenging alums

Closing with the Alma Mater

Yesterday we invited a few community leaders to hear about the progress of our justice project. This semester, our major focus was convening our advisory board in October. That was a huge success and we will publish a short summary of the meeting. Our next step is to work on developing a signature academic program to compliment the new initiative. This will be my spring 2010 project.

The Prez