Monday, February 22, 2016

News Flash!! Catholic Law Students Take Over Harvard Law School's Langdell Library, Demanding an Endowed Chair in Thomistic Studies and Renaming of Library after Catholic Woman Hanged by Puritans

African American students at Harvard Law School have taken over the student lounge, renaming it Belinda Hall in honor of a slave owned by one of Harvard's early donors.  The group issued this statement of grievances:
Since the law school refuses to provide adequate institutional support for an office of diversity and inclusion, hire critical race theorists, promote staff of color in the workplace to management positions in their due course, provide adequate contextualization in curricula, educate its professors, its staff and its students around cultural competency, take the steps that are necessary to accord adequate and equal dignity to marginalized students and staff, Reclaim Harvard Law aims to provide that space at the law school. Reclaim assumes the burden of educating ourselves and others in spite of this institution and not because of it.
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Christopher Columbus Langdell:
Anti-Catholic Bigot &
Harvard Law School Dean
Heartened and emboldened by these events, Catholic law students at HLS took over Langdell Hall, the world's largest law-school library. Catholic students charge that  the library's name honors Christopher Columbus Langdell, an anti-Catholic bigot.  Langdell  was Harvard Law School Dean during the late 19th century and enforced a policy of refusing to admit any student to the law school who had graduated from a Catholic college. Langdell''s policy was upheld by Harvard President Charles Eliot, who once wrote that he hated Catholicism "as I do poison." The Catholic protesters renamed the library Glover Hall, in honor of Ann Glover, a Catholic woman hanged by the Puritans on the Boston Commons in 1688.

The Catholic students issues a list of demands, including the establishment of an endowed chair in Thomistic Studies, a 'Catholic-friendly" menu at all Harvard dining facilities during Lent, and an official apology from Harvard President  Drew Gilpin Faust for the prejudicial treatment of Catholics during the Langdell-Eliot years. They also want Eliot House, which was named after President Eliot, to be renamed Feeney Hall, in memory Father Leonard Feeney, a 20th century Catholic priest who was parish priest in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a time and who preached that all non-Catholic Harvard professors were going to hell.

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Father Leonard Feeney:
No salvation outside the Church
President Faust issued a statement promising to burn all Catholic law students at the stake in Harvard Yard if they do not decamp from the law library with 24 hours.  Faust stressed that no student would be burned until after receiving a full due process hearing.
References

Minority Students Take Over Lounge at Harvard Law. Inside Higher Education, February 22, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/22/minority-students-occupy-lounge-harvard-law?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=194526da11-DNU20160222&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-194526da11-198564813