Walt Whitman, the acclaimed “poet of democracy,” made several racist statements toward the end of his life. He called black people “baboons” and “wild brutes,” said America is “for the whites,” and predicted that in the competition for racial survival, “The nigger, like the Injun, will be eliminated.”
It was statements like those that led a black graduate student at Northwestern University to protest a requirement of his chorale course that he perform Howard Hanson’s “Song of Democracy,” with lyrics based on two poems by Whitman, in a university concert. As a result, Timothy L. McNair, a 25-year-old aspiring opera singer, failed the course. His stand, taken at the end of the spring quarter, has put at risk his ability to finish his master’s degree at Northwestern’s Bienen School of Music.
The university has backed the professor who failed Mr. McNair and says that it expects students to complete the work assigned to them. Students have had mixed reactions, with some demonstrating support for Mr. McNair and others defending the professor, Donald Nally.
Scholars at Northwestern and elsewhere suggest that Mr. Nally could have offered his student another assignment instead of failing him.
The controversy over Mr. McNair’s protest raises larger questions: What rights should students have to refuse an assignment when they feel it disrespects them or violates their principles? How accommodating should professors be when students raise those concerns? And what campus policies might help resolve such sensitive situations?
Culture Clash
Mr. McNair, who said he couldn’t bring himself to “put on a poker face” and sing the Whitman piece, filed a complaint with the Evanston/North Shore branch of the NAACP.
George Mitchell, the NAACP chapter’s president, said he understood that professors need to have freedom in the learning process. “But there have to be limits,” he said. “Students also have control over their body and mind.”
Mr. McNair said that before taking Mr. Nally’s class he was aware that Whitman had said racist things. “I was appalled that we were assigned to sing a song about democracy when his vision of democracy didn’t include people that looked like me,” said Mr. McNair, who described himself as one of three black students in a class of about 40.
When his professor assigned the piece, Mr. McNair said, there was no discussion of the poet’s racist ideas even though the syllabus states that students are required to develop “knowledge of the nonmusical elements” of the works selected to be performed. Had there been “an honest discussion,” Mr. McNair said, he would have performed the piece. Without that, he viewed it as another instance where nonwhites were marginalized.
“I’m so tired of being forced to promote the myth of white supremacy by performing works by old white men like Whitman who said blacks were stupid, shouldn’t be allowed to vote, and didn’t have a place in the future of America,” he said.
Mr. McNair sent an e-mail to Mr. Nally and the dean of the music school, Toni-Marie Montgomery, saying that he wouldn’t perform the piece. Mr. McNair provided to The Chronicle a copy of Mr. Nally’s e-mail response, which said that students were not permitted to choose which songs they wanted to sing.
“If you are not going to rehearse and perform all the assigned repertoire,” Mr. Nally wrote, “you should return all of your music and not attend class, as you will not be permitted to sing in the concert nor receive a passing grade.”
Mr. McNair never returned to class. His transcript shows 17 A’s and one B for his other courses, and the F in Mr. Nally’s class. He said that he needs a passing grade in the course to earn a degree in the two-year voice and opera performance program, but that he does not want to retake the course because Mr. Nally is the only professor who teaches it.
Mr. McNair is still enrolled in the degree program for this fall, but his ability to keep his scholarship and his options for continuing remain unclear.
Mr. Nally declined to comment, writing in an e-mail that he was doing so “out of respect for all my students.” Citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law governing the privacy of student records, Dean Montgomery also said she couldn’t comment on the case.
In a written statement she provided to The Chronicle and to the NAACP, she said that, as a dean and an African-American pianist, she has promoted the musical contributions of black composers. “The expectation of Northwestern University and the Bienen School of Music,” she added, “is that our students complete the work assigned to them by their professors.”
Faculty members may make alternative assignments if they believe it is appropriate to do so, she said, adding that the university “has established processes and procedures for responding to complaints from students regarding academic issues and/or allegations of discrimination.”
A few students who were in class with Mr. McNair, speaking anonymously because they feared retaliation from their fellow student, defended Mr. Nally. They said he is a good teacher and not a racist. One said that the class did discuss the historical context of Whitman’s poem, though not his political ideas about race. That student said that while some students in the chorale course “laughed off” Mr. McNair’s protest, others were angry that he had complained to the local news media, and said he had a history of accusing professors and students of racism and homophobia.
Some students in the class described Mr. McNair as “stubborn” and “defensive for no reason.”
“If he gets upset, he leaves class without explaining himself,” one student said. “It’s become a running joke.”
But the student also said that Mr. McNair had raised valid questions: “How do we as a modern society reconcile our views with composers and poets who lived hundreds of years ago, who don’t believe the same things that we do today? Do we discredit their work? Do we try to separate who they were from their work? That conversation needs to be had at Northwestern. It would be really enlightening.”
Teachable Moment Lost
“There were so many possibilities,” other than failing Mr. McNair, said Imani Perry, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University and a Whitman fan.
“These kinds of conflicts get exacerbated in contexts where there isn’t meaningful racial diversity,” Ms. Perry added. “The student spoke up. That requires a lot of courage. The consequence in the end is that he gets an F, and that has an enormous chilling effect on future students.”
David S. Reynolds, an English professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who is noted for his biography Walt Whitman’s America, said Northwestern may have squandered a teachable moment. “It would have been an interesting moment in the class to say, ‘These are great words by this poet, but maybe we should stop to talk about what was going on, talk about the contradictions of American democracy among white people.’”
At the same time, Mr. Reynolds added, “this particular student should recognize that there’s virtually no white person in 19th-century America who comes close to meeting the expectations about racial views we have today.”
Some people say that the complexities of teaching an increasingly diverse student body raise the possibility that this type of situation will happen more often. “How can you be educated in the West and not expect to have to grapple with, learn, and be expanded by far more egregious racists than Walt Whitman?” Ms. Perry asked. “That’s not an apology for the racism of historical figures. It should be acknowledgment of the complicated nature of our history of ideas as well as social and political history. You can’t just say ‘I’m not going to read or work with the writings of a racist’ if you are educated in the U.S., Europe, or anywhere in the world where there has been colonialism.”
Betsy Erkkilä, a professor of English at Northwestern who has written extensively about Whitman’s work, said she would have sought a deeper conversation with Mr. McNair about the poet. “While some of Whitman’s private comments were appalling, in his published work he embraced all people,” she said. “Whitman published against slavery. He recognized black people’s humanity and potentiality. It’s too bad that these few little comments that are marginal and not part of the published record become the basis of rejection for all of Whitman’s imaginative and visionary work on behalf of democracy in America and worldwide.”
Ms. Erkkilä and others noted that prominent black writers and thinkers, including Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Gil Scott-Heron, and Cornel West, had paid homage to Whitman’s work.
But, Ms. Perry said, “it’s problematic to make the assertion that because prominent black intellectuals of the past liked Whitman that every black grad student has to embrace him.”
Ms. Perry questioned, though, whether Mr. McNair’s complaint was really about Whitman’s piece or about some larger issues.
“His feeling of outrage might have something to do not just with the Whitman selection,” she said, “but with the context of, when you’re one of a very small number of black people in a class, particularly a black male, you’re usually under a lot of surveillance that can be an isolating experience.”
Mr. McNair said that many people think he should pick his battles or keep quiet. “They think I should be grateful to have a scholarship and to be a student at Northwestern,” he said. “They think I should just shut up. Because I’ve spoken out, people are using that old trope of an angry black man to try to delegitimize what I’m saying.”
Correction (7/25/2013, 3:47 p.m.): The piece in question was by Howard Hanson, with lyrics by Walt Whitman. Hanson set parts of two Whitman poems, “Thy Mother With Thy Equal Brood” and “An Old Man’s Thoughts of School,” to music and called the choral piece “Song of Democracy,” not “Song for Democracy.” There is no poem by Walt Whitman called “Song for Democracy.”