At least that’s the view of lefty profs at Washington University in St. Louis, Schlafly’s hometown. They want the school to rescind an honorary degree it plans to give her at commencement on Friday:
Goldman has gathered about 240 faculty signatures on a letter to Wrighton asking the university to rescind the degree, as Northwestern University recently did when it decided not to honor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor whose controversial remarks garnered national attention.
It’s amazing how listening exclusively to the mainstream media-lefty academic white noise can skew one’s view. In the mid-’70s there was no more demonized person in America than Schlafly, and that was in the days when there were only three networks, PBS and newspapers that got their wire stories from the same source.
The Equal Rights Amendment was the hot topic and Schlafly was its bete noir. I knew her as just some crazy housewife with Neanderthal ideas, because that’s what was reported. Imagine my surprise, upon entering grad school at Duke, to find nearly a whole shelf of her books in Perkins Library, on topics ranging from feminism to arms control to Henry Kissinger.
Schlafly graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University, got her master’s at Radcliffe and a law degree from Washington University. Her life accomplishments are stellar. The “crimes” that Washington University’s left-wing academics feel disqualify her from honors are backing Barry Goldwater, and her very effective opposition to feminism and Soviet expansion.
Her reaction? As Schlafly-like as ever, even at 83:
“They are a bunch of bitter women,” she said of her detractors. “It was 25 years ago that we buried the Equal Rights Amendment and they are still whining about it.”
Her suggestion to them?
“Get a life. Move on. Try to do something with your life.”
