Who's Next?

 We usually avoid politics quite successfully here at the Music Salon, but occasionally we need to defend music against political inroads. Today is not one of those days, though. Whew! I just wanted to share a piece defending the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC against--what, a mob of barbarians? No, an even more dangerous adversary: its own director, Michael Whitmore. Here is a good discussion piece: Much Ado About Nothing, The Folger Library pledges allegiance to identity politics.

One might have supposed that the world’s largest library devoted to the works and life of Shakespeare would be spared the tsunami of humbug that has overwhelmed so many other institutions and organized activities, from police forces and motor racing to film academies and football. No one would have considered the Folger a racist institution before Floyd’s death or held it responsible for the undoubted injustices in America’s past or present. It was an institution dedicated to pure and disinterested scholarship. Now it is transforming itself into the equivalent of the Marx-Lenin Institute in Moscow, with race instead of class as the master-key to the understanding of history and the world. And just as in Marxist historiography, no one can be a disinterested searcher after truth; in the new racist historiography adopted by the Folger, no one can stand outside his race. He must view everything through its lens.

The Folger’s director, Michael Witmore, issued a statement that proves, if nothing else, that lifetime study of the greatest writer in English does not necessarily conduce to the composition of good prose.

You should read the whole thing, which is not very long. The inescapable conclusion is:

It is clear, then, that the Folger is set fair to become institutionally racist. It intends to hold a series of “critical race conversations,” meaning in all probability uncritical race monologues. “The Folger Institute encourages everyone to engage conscientiously the work of Black and indigenous scholars, and scholars of color, by reading their scholarship, productively incorporating it into syllabi, and using it to frame generative lessons.” In other words, what counts in scholarship is the race of whoever produces it.

Yes, that is the real irony: a previously racially neutral institution is forced by political pressure to become institutionally racist! One wonders why classical music has not had more occurrences like this. Is it just that we are a bit behind, still dealing with the fallout of "metoo"? Are the great classical music schools going to be delivering "critical race conversations" about Beethoven and Chopin? I can't quite see it, but then I would not have expected this kind of drivel from the director of the Folger Library either.

We are dealing with two different pandemics right now: the Covid-19 one and an intellectual one that leading figures in culture, academia and the media seem especially vulnerable to. Signs of infection are mushy thinking entirely devoid of evidence and viewing everything through the lenses of race and sex. We may not have a vaccine for Covid-19 yet, but luckily we have one for the intellectual virus: Thomas Sowell.