[Vision2020] My letter to the News&Observer, Raleigh, NC

[Nick Gier]

To the Editor:

Pastor Douglas Wilson's booklet "Southern Slavery As It Was" was once used 
at the Carey Christian School, and I would like to comment on this former 
student of mine at the University of Idaho.

When we awarded Wilson an MA in philosophy in 1977, all that we required of 
him was that he use his degree responsibly.  Sadly, that does not seem to 
have been the case.

We became aware of the booklet in October, 2003, and we were shocked by its 
irresponsible scholarship.  Even scholars within the conservative 
Presbyterian movement have urged him to withdraw it from circulation.

Professor Robert McKenzie, an expert on civil war history at the University 
of Washington and a member of Wilson's mission church in Seattle, has 
criticized the booklet.  If a professional historian had written this, says 
McKenzie, he or she "would be totally humiliated."

It has now been demonstrated that at least one quarter of the booklet was 
plagiarized from Time on the Cross, a controversial book that suggests that 
slaves were treated better than previously believed.  Wilson's defense of 
"sloppy editing" is undermined by the fact that the booklet's co-author, 
Steve Wilkins, has lifted passages from at least two other books in his own 
publications.

Wilkins sits on the Board of Directors of the League of the South, a 
neo-Confederate organization that proposes that 15 southern states set up 
their own God-fearing nation.  Wilson claims that he is not a 
neo-Confederate, but his school here in Moscow, Idaho celebrates Robert E. 
Lee's birthday, and a visitor to Wilson's office saw Lee's portrait and 
Civil War memorabilia there.

Even though McKenzie made Wilson aware of problems with the slavery booklet 
sometime in 2002, Wilson did not pull it from circulation until early this 
year.  Wilson promised that after the footnotes were fixed, he will reprint 
it.  We hope that he does not do that, but if he does we will once again to 
have declare that its thesis is not only indefensible but detestable.

For more on the Wilson saga see www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse.

Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus
University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho


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