Among Hampshire College graduates, perhaps Ken Burns did most to bring national attention to the school. And just possibly Burns’ iconographic films on US history may have brought unwanted attention to Hampshire in 2016, when community members engaged in painful conversations about flying our national flag.
Someone or some ones burned the Stars and Stripes at Hampshire on the night before Veterans Day 2016. Meanwhile, at Brown University “students ‘stomped on and tore up’ flags at a ceremony honoring veterans.” “At American university in Washington DC, students burned flags” and shouted profanity against America. All such actions might have offended some people, but only Hampshire had as an alumnus filmmaker Ken Burns.
I drove past Hampshire on Route 116 when veterans were protesting there. The energy was palpable. A former Marine who had fought at Falluja would be quoted by the New York Times stating “‘it’s like a spit in the face to us.’” And seeing the energy of the protest, I wondered if it might spell an end to Hampshire College.
Conversations about the U.S. flag within the college reportedly focused on the Paris terrorist attacks of the previous year. Without having been there, at a guess Hampshire College students and faculty of Middle Eastern origins could have been encountering societal prejudice from ignorant people who supposed they must be terrorists because of their ethnicity.
Whether or not the founding principles of the college included furthering social justice, that certainly would become a value of Hampshire’s. Interestingly, we may now see concerns over “micro-aggressions” reflected in the 47th president’s statements on what he calls “fake news.”
Mary Hall
South Hadley