Osler's Razor

         When I was 18, I received a great break in life: I was admitted to the College of William and Mary in Virginia to study history. It was the perfect place for me, with small classes and a vibrant and unfamiliar culture. It was a stretch for me to get in and I knew it; once I was there, I found myself surrounded with valedictorians from all over Virginia and the East. My own record from high school wasn’t quite so distinguished. For a few years I credited my admission to a good recommendation and luck.

         I like to think I made the most of the opportunity. I thrived in my classes and reveled in the chance to live in Colonial Williamsburg, surrounded by living remnants of what I studied. I had challenging, supportive teachers like Ron Rapoport, who was a child of Waco and an important mentor. As a state school far from my hometown just outside Detroit, it was both affordable and exotic. 

         In my Junior year, I got some surprising insight into how I ended up there. A friend of mine worked in the admissions department and when I visited her at work she asked if I wanted to see my admissions file. Who wouldn’t say yes to that? She disappeared into a back room and returned with a brown folder with my name at the top. On the outside of the file, in enormous letters, was stamped “MIDWEST APPLICANT.” 

         So that was it—this straight white guy was given a break and admitted to a great college to add diversity. 

         And you know what? I did add diversity, on things both trivial and significant. I hadn’t grown up learning the fictionalized “Virginia History” most of my classmates did, where the “War Between the States” had nothing to do with slavery, and I brought a strong skepticism to study of that narrative. I taught my friends how to play euchre, a card game unknown outside of upstate New York and the Midwest. When conversations turned to sports, I was the one to talk about hockey. The fact I had a different background than most of the people around me was good for my learning and, I hope, made the place a tiny bit better.

         Being the person adding diversity was good for me; so was the diversity I encountered. 

         Many Americans take for granted the importance of family legacies—that the parents who shaped you were shaped by their own parents, who were molded by the people who raised them, a process by which long-ago ancestors play some role in our identity. As an academic, I also see the impact of academic legacies in which our non-family teachers and mentors give us the same kind of accumulated wisdom drawn from generations of teachers and students.

         My own academic legacy is shot through with true diversity, a generational tussle of ideas and passions. In addition to Ron Rapoport, my mentors include both Randall O’Brien, the former Baylor Provost who fought in Vietnam, and Weathermen leader Bernardine Dohrn, who protested that war. I learned Constitutional law from Paul Gewirtz, whose own mentor was Thurgood Marshall, and sentencing from Daniel Freed, who worked for and learned from Robert F. Kennedy. Of my legacies, though, the most important and likely most impactful comes through Dr. & Rev. Joanne Braxton, who was my Black Literature professor in college and with whom I’ve had a lifelong mentorship up to the present day (among other things, I served as the Vice President for her foundation). 

         In an introductory class, Professor Braxton challenged me constantly and gave me the lowest grade I got in college. I took this as a challenge and took another class with her, fascinated by this Black poet from Maryland. She played a primary role in shaping my ideas on race, writing, and identity, and even before she became a Minister of the UCC, on faith issues as well. 

         And who taught her? One of her primary mentors was the legendary Gerta Lerner, the “Mother of Women’s History” who began her career teaching students like Braxton at Sarah Lawrence before moving to the University of Wisconsin. Another of Prof. Braxton’s teachers and mentors at Sarah Lawrence was the writer Grace Paley, whose heart for activism inspired a generation. Given the brilliance of these female mentors, it wasn’t by mistake that Prof. Braxton’s grounding in the academy was not smothered in patriarchy. 

         After Sarah Lawrence, Braxton got her Ph. D. at Yale.  There, her dissertation was directed by the legendary Black scholar John Blassingame, who served as the editor for Frederick Douglass’s papers and led Yale’s African-American Studies program. In turn, Blassingame’s own dissertation was supervised by his own mentor, C. Vann Woodward, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian best known for his history of segregation, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Looking another level backwards, Woodward’s mentors included W.E.B. DuBois, the first Black man to get a doctorate from Harvard who went on to write The Souls of Black Folks, lead the Pan-African movement, and co-found the NAACP in 1909. While at Harvard, DuBois was deeply influenced by the White philosopher and Harvard Professor William James. And William James? His mentors included his Godfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the remarkable abolitionist minister and essayist of the mid-1800’s. 

         This legacy is a remarkable pathway that crosses from White to Black and back again over the course of two centuries. Am I saying there is a little bit of W.E.B. DuBois and Ralph Waldo Emerson in me? Damn straight, I am—and if you were one of my students, there is some of that in you, too.

         If you want to attack diversity, don’t look to me to help you; it’s what made me.