As you may have heard, Matthew S. Holland, who has been described as the "rising star in the study of American political thought" has been apointed the new President of Utah Valley University. Brother Holland, who has been a professor at BYU for 17 years, is the son of Jeffrey R. Holland.
After by hiatus from the Deseret News boards which has been at least partially in force since sometime last month, I felt like venturing to see what sort of comments this article had generated.
I had, both living outside of Utah, and not reading the boards forgotten the type of disturbed people who so heavily inhabit them. They are the people who I would accuse of anti-nepotism. Their number one assumption is that the children of any notable or famouse person must be failures, lazy, and good for nothing and thus they only achieve whatever offices and promotions they receive on the aid of their fathers.
I also read the Mormon Times article about African-American LDS people in Utah's reaction to the election of Barack Obama. My main reaction is that I think that we need to end seeing people by race. I do not fault these people though, the media has done a horrible job in its perpetuation of racial stereotypes.
The one that gets my blood boiling the most is the assumption, that I ran into some idiots spouting at BYU, that all African-American students are athletes.
The false notions tied up in that assumption just get me mad.
What people need to do is read the Church News more. Then they would see the photographs of such people as Kerving H. Joseph and his wife Daphnee. They are not notable for being of African descent, in the previous week's Church news there were Naume and Edward Dube from Zimbabwe, but by the fact that Brother Joseph is under 30. He is 29. I am still a bit amazed, since at least since the 1960s it has been rare to call mission presidents under age 40, and almost unheard of in the last 20 years to call those under age 35 as mission presidents. They do not publish the ages of the wives of mission presidents in the Church News, but my guess is that Sister Joseph is even younger, based both on experience and my analysis of the picture, but I must admit it is a guess.
I would not be surprised if we hear more of Brother Joseph in the future. He is from Haiti.
Friday, March 6, 2009
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5 comments:
There are some people who have no limits to what they will gripe about. What I am more sure of is that if another had been apointed president of UVU they would have a different set of gripes.
This largely relates to the person who tried to claim that Holland was only chosen over Cameron because Holland had "a better name". I will in my next post give the Michigan Mormon view on what a bunch of hogwash that person was spouting.
When I was a freshman at BYU, living in the dorms, on my floor of about 40 guys there were about 10 athletes. We had one "african-american" student on our floor, and he was not an athlete. So there you have it, not all african americans at BYU are athletes. One of the athletes was a non-mormon. Living in the associated womens dorm, there was an African (from Nigeria? don't really remember which country now) who was non-mormon.
Johnny, are you sure Holland has been a professor for 17 years? I thought I was in one of his first classes at BYU, based on one of his comments in class. That was when I was an undergrad, about 2002.
Actually Rachel is right and I am wrong. I figured out what I probably did. On his faculty profile it mentions 1991 and BYU. Looking at it again that is the year he graduated as Valedictorian.
He recieved his Ph.D. from Duke in 2001, so it was probably shortly after that he became a professor at BYU, so yes, I was way off on that.
I also see why I got confused. No where in his faculty profile does it say when he became a professor at BYU.
I did learn that in 2006 he was a James Madison Fellow at Princeton University.
Rachel, you were right.
Here is a direct statement that Holland became a professor at BYU in 2001. http://www.utahsbr.edu/PressRelease/PR_2009/PR_Mar_04_2009.html
Sorry for any confusion I have created.
He was also very recently named the outstanding BYU faculty member for service learning.
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