Save Antioch College - The Portal

Published Monday, July 23, 2007
By Dan Gediman
Special to The Courier-Journal

I am writing in response to the mean-spirited Los Angeles Times piece about Antioch College that was recently reprinted in the Sunday Forum. I write from the perspective of an Antioch graduate who just attended my 25th year reunion at the college and who has been closely following the recent events at my alma mater.
There were several key pieces of information left out of the Times piece, most notably the heroic efforts on the part of the alumni to raise enough money to keep the school open. So far they have raised over $500,000 in three weeks’ time with more coming in every day. Their goal is to incorporate Antioch College as a separate entity with its own president and board of trustees.

In addition, the faculty is considering legal action against Antioch University to keep it from enacting its plan to close down the college for a four-year period and then reopen it with an entirely new, non-tenured faculty (Antioch University’s other five campuses are graduate schools staffed with adjunct faculty.) There are apparently statutes that state that if a college reopens within three years of its closing, it is obliged to offer its former faculty their old jobs back with tenure.
This is perhaps the part of the story that has been least commented on in the national media, which has mostly been focused on rehashing some of the more notorious moments of Antioch’s past. One exception is the Journal of Higher Education, which has extensively covered this issue, as it has potentially dire repercussions for the academic community nationally. If Antioch can get away with it, so too can any other institution of higher learning that wishes to save money while gaining greater control over the faculty. Some see this as another sign of the erosion of organized labor in America.

Speaking of those notorious moments from Antioch’s past, I remain unembarrassed and unapologetic about the way the school and its students have addressed the key issues of the past two centuries. They may have sometimes expressed themselves in a messy fashion, but they have been on the right side of history in every major case that I am aware of.

From its very founding in 1852, Antioch admitted both women and people of color, something nearly unheard of in antebellum America. It was the first college in the country to hire a female professor. Antioch was an early and fervent advocate for abolitionism, women’s suffrage and civil rights. It supported free-thinkers of every stripe, and when McCarthyism hit this country, Antioch was one of the few schools to support faculty who held politically progressive views.

Agreed, Antioch’s students were sometimes overly strident — even self-destructive — in their politics, but at least they were deeply engaged in matters of substance, and I for one am glad to have come of age as a citizen surrounded by others who were not a bit cynical about America’s ideals of fairness and freedom for all.

I have to say that I feel like the Antioch poster child. It gave me absolutely everything I needed to not just survive but thrive in my adult life. It provided me with both the inspiration for my vocation, radio, and my avocation, music — two passions that remain by my side to this day. I will remain eternally grateful for all the gifts that Antioch provided to me, and profoundly sad that this place that I love has reached such a point of public ignominy.

Antioch’s founder, Horace Mann, in his final address as college president uttered a sentence that has become the school’s official creed: “Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity.”

I don’t know how much other schools’ graduates take their school motto to heart, but I know that this one has permeated my being for the past 25 years, and regardless of the outcome of the current struggle to keep the school alive, I’m quite certain it will continue to guide me for the rest of my years.

Dan Gediman, Antioch ’82, is the executive producer of the public radio series “This I Believe.”

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