CANCEL CULTURE AT WORK: PRINCETON CANCELS EXHIBIT OF 19TH CENTURY
AMERICAN JEWISH ARTISTS
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
The
Cancel Culture which seems to dominate so much of American life has
manifested itself in a rather unusual way. Princeton University has
canceled an exhibit of 19th Century American Jewish artists. The
exhibit was intended to showcase the little known contributions of
Jewish artists in the period after the Civil War. The reason: two of
the artists to be featured served in the Confederate Army.
Last
summer, Princeton agreed to organize the exhibit, which would feature
fifty pieces, including a life-size marble sculpture called “Faith” by
the most renowned Jewish American sculptor of the period, Moses Jacob
Ezekiel (1844-1917). The exhibit, funded by Leonard Milberg, would also
highlight a new collection of essays about American Jews in the Gilded
Age, published by Princeton University Press.
In
December, the show was canceled because two of the artists had served
in the Confederate Army. Moses Ezekiel, probably best known for the
32-foot Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, was the
first Jewish student at the Virginia Military Institute, and fought in
the Battle of New Market. He fashioned a bronze of Thomas Jefferson for
the city of Louisville, which was replicated at the University of
Virginia. The other Confederate veteran was Theodore Moise, who
attained the rank of major in the Confederate Army.
Jewish
scholars are criticizing Princeton’s decision, noting that the works
chosen to be displayed at the exhibit did not relate to the Confederacy
and that by canceling the show the university was in effect censoring
the works. Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at
Brandeis University, said: “One approach is that we have faith in the
audience. We display in full complexity the material and talk about it.
The other approach is that we cancel it. I’m very reluctant to be
part of the woke, cancel everything that doesn’t conform to present-day
moral standards.”
Dr. Sarna is
co-editor of the book of essays tentatively titled “Jews in Gilded Age
America,” that inspired the exhibit. The book, co-edited with historian
Adam Mendelsohn, is expected to be published this year. The show’s
curator, Samantha Raskind, a professor of art history at Cleveland State
University, who is writing a book on Moses Ezekiel, said the artist’s
views on the Confederacy are offensive, but must be studied and put in
context. “I’m not romanticizing Ezekiel,” she noted, “but his legacy is
important. We still need to talk about the good and the bad. To erase
those complications is against everything the academy stands for.”
Raskind,
who spent a good deal of time selecting works for the exhibit, said the
idea was to showcase the diversity of the contributions of Jewish
American artists in the 19th century, “about which very little scholarly
work has been published.” The centerpiece was to be Ezekiel’s “Faith,”
a 64-inch marble sculpture of a boy grasping a flaming lamp in one
hand, as he raises the other hand to the heavens. “faith” is a copy of a
larger 1876 monument called “Religious Liberty,” commissioned by B:nai
B’rith for the nation’s centennial. It stands outside the National
Museum of American Jewish History on Independence Mall in Philadelphia
to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence.
In
the larger monument, Ezekiel portrayed Liberty as a woman in a toga
extending her right arm over the boy Faith, in an allegorical gesture of
protection. The monument, like the work of other Jewish artists of the
time, celebrated Jewish American patriotism and pride rather than
parochial religious interests. The exhibit was also to include an
Ezekiel bust of Isaac Mayer Wise, the 19th century rabbi who was a
leader of Reform Judaism in the U.S., as well as Ezekiel’s sculpture of
President Abraham Lincoln.
“ezekiel’s
ties to the Confederacy are only one aspect of his multidimensional
life as an artist,” said Baskind. Indeed, Ezekiel, who for many years
did his work in a studio in Rome, was knighted by Italy’s King Umberto.
He was visited in Rome by Ulysses S. Grant, the former President of the
United States and Commander of the Union Army. It was Grant’s deepest
hope that North and South would peacefully reunite after the Civil War.
Sadly,
at American universities, free speech and diversity of opinion is under
continuing attack. Writing in The Atlantic, Conor Friedorsdorf
provides this assessment: “Free speech on campus is threatened from a
dozen directions. It is threatened by police spies, overzealous
administrators and students who are intolerant of dissent. It is
threatened by activists agitating for speech codes and sanctions for
professors or classmates who disagree with them. It is threatened by
people who push to disinvite speakers because of their viewpoints and
those who shut down events to prevent people from speaking.”
In
Friedersdorf’s view, “Professors and students see those around them
being punished for their viewpoints and decide to hold their tongues
rather than speak their minds…Last semester, without looking very hard, I
found and spoke to tenured and non-tenured professors and students at
Yale who told me that their speech was chilled. They feared that their
place at the school would be jeopardized if they opined honestly about
campus controversies, or did not want to be targets of intolerant
activists like the ones who spat on lecture attendees because the
activists disagreed with words spoken in the lecture…The evidence that
free speech is threatened on college campuses is overwhelming.”
It
was not always like this. When I was a student at the College of
William and Mary in Virginia, in the years of segregation, I wrote a
weekly column in the school paper, “The Flat Hat,” for three years. I
frequently wrote columns in support of sit-ins and regularly called for
an end to segregation. While many disagreed with my columns, there was
never an attempt to censor anything I wrote or anything written by
others. At that time, inter-racial marriage was against the law in
Virginia and other Southern states. Then in law school, I wrote an
article in the William and Mary Law Review calling for an end to such
laws. I don’t remember any difficulty having it published or any
hostile responses, even from those who did not share my views. There
was much more freedom of speech on college campuses fifty or sixty ago
than there is now.
As we have seen,
Princeton will not even permit the display of art works created by men
who are long dead because they fought for the Cinfederacy when they were
young. In the case of Moses Ezekiel, Ulysses Grant, who commanded the
Union Army, thought highly enough of Ezekiel to visit him in his studio
in Rome. It was Grant’s great desire that North and South would unite
after a bitter war. Princeton, it seems, does not share Grant’s
magnanimity.