"Former" NC State Visiting Professor (and I use the P word loosely) Kamau Kambon's speech last Friday at Howard University in Washington, DC, has many scratching their collective heads. For the record, Kambon proposed the extermination of white people. Because, of course you know among other things that white people are the scourge of the planet. This has long been a token "truth" among liberal intellectual elites: Columbus ruined the Western Hemisphere, bringing disease that killed indigenous peoples, etc., etc. Therefore it's only "reasonable" to expect that NC State University's pointy-heads would relish having someone with Kambon's intellectual take on things teaching its students.
Having taken a few courses in West Raleigh over 30 years ago, myself, I cannot fathom such. The climate apparently was much different then -- Textiles, Engineering, Agriculture, Architecture, Design and Computer Science -- those were among the most popular majors then. We'd never heard nor thought of such a major as "Africana Studies". My how times must have changed. Of course, "Women's Studies" and "African-American Studies" were not majors at UNC-Chapel Hill when I was a student here in the following few years, either.
I'm not so sure Kambon would have gotten away with such clearly inflamatory speech in the early to mid '70's, but what do I know? We were trying to get out of going to Vietnam, and looking for whatever it was that we would be happy doing for the next 40-50 years. We were too busy to try to figure out how to dispose of 87% of the American population.
Whoever thought Kambon had anything relevant to "teach" to NC State University students ought to be relieved of his or her tenure. Baring that, a public embarrassment would be in order. Maybe on State's Jumbotron at the next game at Carter-Finley with his/her picture and the caption "You're **$PO@#(&%) FIRED" underneath. And how about let's not give this "educator" any more input on future hirings of visiting professors, huh?
UPDATE (Fri, 10/21/05 at 8pm): According to Jon Sanders at The John Locke Foundation, the NC State Provost (Larry Nielsen) has released the following statement on Kambon's inflamatory speech:
"The remarks recently attributed to one of our former employees do not in any way represent the values and standards of the university. This type of speech is counter to any reasoned discussion on the issue of race relations, and is absolutely unacceptable in the NC State community."
Good. Now, as for whomever thought he'd be a good addition to the faculty "pool"... see above!
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Thanks for your input. You note correctly that extreme "final solution" points of view have existed, continue to exist, and in the minds of some will likely exist in the future.
I do not pretend to see into the mind of Kamau Kambon, nor do I really care to, but I cannot believe he used those words for any other reason than he believes what he said.
Any harsh condemnation and appropriate actions by NC State University (or any other organization connected with Kambon) is certainly justified. I'm just surprised his comments received such minimal coverage. Well... no, I guess I'm not.
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