Seattle University has put its dean on administrative leave following a student uproar over a liberal arts curriculum that they claim is “too Western.” The dean’s misdemeanors included recommending that students read a book by civil rights activist Dick Gregory entitled Nigger.
MORE: Seattle University Puts Dean On Leave After Protesters Claim Curriculum Too Western
Even by today’s blinkered standards of student activism, SJW students have got this one horribly wrong. Nigger, Gregory’s 1964 autobiography which he co-wrote with Robert Lipsyte, is a modern civil rights classic.
Gregory’s book has sold over seven million copies and continues to be popular with African-Americans for its unflinching depiction of racial injustice at the height of the civil rights struggle. The book was digitally re-issued in 2011 by First One Digital Publishing in honor of Black History Month.
Gregory, who is also a comedian, is a liberal darling. It’s safe to say that President Obama is a fan of Nigger, given he told Marc Maron’s podcast that Gregory is one of his favorite comedians “when he was really on the edge.” Bill Clinton told Gregory’s friend Steve Jaffe, “I love Dick Gregory, he is one of the funniest people on the planet.”
Gregory was a close ally of Martin Luther King Jr., and King’s wife honored him in 2000 at a special tribute held for him at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., together with Stevie Wonder, Isaac Hayes, Cicely Tyson, Mark Lane and Marion Barry.
I recently finished this book and it’s fantastic, go read! Nigger by Dick Gregory Robert Lipsyte https://t.co/aihzJMDpDA
— Lemonade (@SarcasticPoet33) May 9, 2016
Gregory himself has set Seattle University straight over the slight. His book apparently causing a black Seattle University student trauma means the wheel has gone full circle: Gregory lost business in the 1960s owing to his civil rights stance.
The New York Times called Nigger, upon publication, “a moving story of a man who deeply wants a world without malice and hate and is doing something about it.” Maybe the students at Seattle University should apologize to Gregory and the school’s dean for adding to that malice and hate.