VU's Confederacy of Dunces
Some people are wondering what's up with Vanderbilt University in light of the news that Vandy will remove the word "Confederate" from "Confederate Memorial Hall," thus dishonoring the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who paid to have the dormitory built in 1935.

Although the story says Vandy doesn't want to forget the UDC's generous gift and how it helped educate so many southern women, the school is in fact rushing to erase that history by giving the dorm a generic, designed-to-offend-nobody name: "Memorial Hall."

Has Vandy been taken over by the PC brigades? But of course. And the name of that dorm is the least of it.

Check out this article from the archives of Front Page Magazine, by noted author David Horowitz.

Here is a liberal excerpting of it:

I spoke at 23 universities this spring and appeared at Vanderbilt on April 8. The invitation had come from a conservative student group called Wake Up America, which was formed three years earlier for the purpose of bringing speakers to campus. Despite its dedicated agenda, however, Wake Up America has only managed to put on four events in the three years of its existence. This is not because of a scarcity of conservative speakers ready to speak on college campuses. It is because Vanderbilt refuses to provide funds to Wake Up America to underwrite its aspirations. Vanderbilt’s attitude towards Wake Up America is in fact anything but supportive. Vanderbilt officials have treated the group like an alien presence from the moment of its conception.

Thus, when Wake Up America’s founder, Dan Eberhart, approached the Assistant Vice Chancellor and head of Student Life, Michelle Rosen, to gain approval for his group, she told him, "there is no need for your organization because a student group already exists, namely the Speakers Committee." This was an Orwellian subterfuge. The Assistant Vice Chancellor knew that the Speakers Committee was a partisan student group dedicated to bringing left-wing speakers to the Vanderbilt campus. James Carville, Ralph Nader, Kweisi Mfume and Gloria Steinem, for example, are recent visitors, courtesy of the Committee. These are pricey celebrities and the Vanderbilt student activities fund has granted the Speakers Committee $50,000 a year in the past to make their wish list real. This year the Student Finance Committee, which administers the fund, has increased the Speakers Committee grant to $63,000. By contrast, in its entire three-year existence Wake Up America has never been granted a single cent to bring conservatives to the Vanderbilt campus.

The Speakers Committee is actually only one of an array of left-wing groups that are the beneficiaries of Vanderbilt funds. In a recent press release announcing the disbursement $1,143,963 to student groups, the Student Finance Committee defined its purpose in these noble words: "to fund activities that will have broad campus appeal and that will guarantee a diversity of activities within our community." A glance at the roster of funded groups reveals, however, that this diversity principle does not extend to the realm of ideas.

While Wake Up America, receives no funds, the Vanderbilt Feminists receive $10,620; the Vanderbilt Lambda Association (a group of gay leftists) receives $12,000; the (left-wing) Middle Eastern Student Association receives $4,700; the (left-wing) Black Students Alliance receives $12,400; the (left-wing) Organization of Black Graduate & Professional Students receives $13,120; the (left-wing) Vanderbilt African Student Association receives $1,500; the Vanderbilt Association of (left-wing) Hispanic Students receives $14,200; and the (left-wing) Vanderbilt Asian American Student Association gets $15,000.

Horowitz also makes this recollection about his April 8 appearance at Vandy:

Despite a downpour, about 250 people showed up for the speech in Wilson Hall and listened civilly while I described "How The Left Undermined America’s Security." The attendance was even more gratifying than usual because the Vanderbilt Hustler, which was the student paper, did not inform the campus community of the speech (or report on it after I gave it).

Thanks to Todd Anderson for first bringing the VU/Confederate Memorial Hall story to my attention.