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<font face="Times New Roman, Times">To the Editor:<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.”<br><br>
It has now been demonstrated that at least one quarter of the booklet was
plagiarized from <i>Time on the Cross</i>, 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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
For more on the Wilson saga see
<a href="http://www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse" eudora="autourl">www.tomandrodna.com/notonthepalouse</a>.<br><br>
Nick Gier, Professor Emeritus<br>
University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho<br><br>
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