Kenneth Starr in The Bison at Harding College
Thirty years before he famously prosecuted President Bill Clinton in the out of control investigations from Whitewater to Monica Lewinsky that eventually resulted in Clinton’s impeachment for perjury, Kenneth Starr was an undergrad at Harding College.
During that time, the war in Vietnam was obviously a hot issue, but the talk in The Bison revolved around a related topic – war protesters and their patriotism. I read several articles from Harding’s paper during that period that probably represented the mainstream view: protesters are unpatriotic and un-American. It is fascinating to me that the same debates still occur here after more than forty years. There are still misguided apologists who invariably condemn dissent, whether it is against the government or the university administration.
Although it may seem surprising in retrospect, young Kenneth Starr, who at the time was a Harding undergrad and active member of the Young Democrats on campus, came to the ideological defense of dissenters. Starr wrote the article below for The Bison in the November 3, 1965 issue. This is a Political Cartel exclusive reprint straight from the archives of Harding University:
Nice find, Manes.
Also, this article was published the year after David Burks served as president of the SA. I saw some of his articles from back in the day during my trip to the past, but none of them seemed to be interesting enough to print, scan, and post here.
Too cool!
We now have exclusives, I like that.
Dissent (especially during times of war) seems to have a reoccurring theme in 20th and 21st century America, doesn’t it?
“Thirty years before he famously prosecuted President Bill Clinton in the out of control Whitewater investigation, that eventually resulted in Clinton’s impeachment for perjury, Kenneth Starr was an undergrad at Harding College.”
Whoa! Hold on. Clinton was impeached for perjury, because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, not Whitewater. Starr conducted investigations on both along with the death of Vince Foster and the Paula Jones suit among others. Check your sources, please.
Right, Starr was first brought in to investigate the Whitewater thing. Eventually it expanded to the Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, and Monica Lewinksy things. Then the perjury thing. I didn’t mean to say that Clinton was impeached because of Whitewater, and hopefully everyone knows that.
On another note, this is historic evidence that The Bison has always been liberal garbage for allowing stuff like this to be printed.
I bet Starr ran the campus.
It’s fun to imagine in what ways Harding will be reactionary 40 years from now.
Also, I love the slogan for The Bison at the bottom of the collumn, “Liberty is found in doing right.”
What is a good word that means the opposite of surprising?
Are there any other famous people who would be worth looking up in the Bison archives to see what they wrote __ years ago?
I once talked to Dr. Ganus about this. Mr. Starr was quite the vocal student apparently. He often wrote about such things from what I hear which led him to start his own paper on campus to give himself more freedom. I think it may have been called “Starrdust”. After an article which was critical of the University policy on drinking, he was kindly asked to leave. Although some reports say he left of his own choice.
It is important to remember that Harding is not as interested in suppressing authority as some think. The important thing is how one goes about dissent. I think the conversations and dialogue we are able to engage in is important on this campus, but we must remember to have the discussion in the Christian mindset. People like me who defend Harding for the most part aren’t just bending over and grabbing the ankles. We defend mainly because questions which are raised in a manner which suspends reality and assumes that Harding must function like every other institution.
Dissent is important but must come with an understanding that Christianity requires a lifestyle which is post-cultural, and post-political. As long as we are willing to admit there is a higher authority, I love a good argument.
I just love coming back to this post. This is the coolest thing we have on this website.
Maybe there are some who can give a rational defense of some policy that the administration has; I certainly wouldn’t rule that out. But it has been my experience that the type of people that Starr talked about are still roaming around this country and this campus condemning any who dissent as disloyal.
For instance, Scotty Kimberly made several comments last week about the Weather Report, but he never gave any sort of rational defense of Harding’s policy of literature pre-approval, nor did he rationally defend the school’s right to suppress viewpoints just because they were critical of the administration. Instead, he just repeated a sort of mantra, essentially saying “that’s the way it is.”
You don’t have to suspend reality to question it. Uncritical acceptance of the status quo is a sign of weakness, I think. That type of blind obedience does not make for good citizens, good students, or good Christians.
Oh! And if that is true about the Starr article about alcohol, I would love to find that! He did write a column in the Bison called “Starr Dust,” but I only found a couple of them in the archives…
About the pre-approval thing. I obviously have had experience with that since I am an editor of a publication. The first reason is that they have to protect the environment of campus by preventing profane or otherwise morally questionable material from being distributed on campus. I have no problem with that since I pay a premium for it. The second reason is more of a legal issue. Harding has tax exempt status and has to guard against literature which promotes certain issues like political candidates and the like. So they have procedures to ensure that independent publications…like Libertas…are not seen as Harding publications. The problem I have is that the two reasons cause a contradiction, not legally but practically. The way I see it is that in a effort to distance themselves from something they have to baisically vet it themselves…hmmm….seems to be a bit backwards. But if you play the game you can generally get away with quite a bit. Our Jeremiah Wright article last spring raised some eyebrows with certain groups on campus who thought it was racist. Harding was willing to let it go to print cause we did what they asked in terms of red tape. So in the end we got to say it and they got to be free of connections to the publication. The content was our business so long as it wasn’t promoting “sinful acts”.
It is hard to defend or even tolerate for me but I know that in the end it does more good in the way of protecting what I pay for..a Christian education.
I can almost agree with the justification for pre-approval on the grounds of profanity or immoral elements (whatever that even means), but that is not the issue here because the Weather Report was neither. It was critical of the administration and culture at Harding, which is not inherently wrong, but we all know that it never would have gotten approved.
This post is now a reference on the Wikipedia article on Kenneth Starr. Refer to reference #2.
Excellent. I love Wikipedia.