Stunning ignorance…from a Princeton professor?

Such is the state of modern-day academia: a Princeton professor writes in her blog that she misses Mitt Romney because if he were still in the race he would be getting all of the tough questions these days rather than Obama. The reason: because of the “Mormon” FLDS church to which she implies Mitt belongs. She even mentions President Monson!

Yes, I know that in fairness her point is somewhat valid: Mitt would be getting questions about the FLDS if he were still in the race. I would hope that he could end the questions by saying: “Um, you’ll have to ask somebody from that religion about that religion — it’s not associated with my church.”

The professor would help her cause a bit if she had written her post to make it clear she understands that the FLDS and the LDS are separate churches. Her post seems to imply she thinks they are one and the same.

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About Geoff B.

Geoff B graduated from Stanford University (class of 1985) and worked in journalism for several years until about 1992, when he took up his second career in telecommunications sales. He has held many callings in the Church, but his favorite calling is father and husband. Geoff is active in martial arts and loves hiking and skiing. Geoff has five children and lives in Colorado.

30 thoughts on “Stunning ignorance…from a Princeton professor?

  1. Ah, because all members of the “elite academia” must surely know everything about everything. Could you not just chalk this up to plain ignorance, Geoff? She probably did not know at all that the LDS and FLDS are not one and the same. You know, “elite academians” are rather unique creatures. They know a heck of a lot about the subject they teach, but are woefully ignorant about many other topics. That’s the problem with specialization.

  2. I am a medical specialist (an Oncologist), but I still can tell you where the pancreas is located.

    Seems much more likely that said blogress (who claims her mother is a lapsed member) is not, in fact, ignorant, but rather willfully deceptive and bigoted.

  3. Erik,

    As a medical specialist, I sure hope you can tell me where the pancreas is located. However, I don’t expect you, as a medical specialist to know what Pangea is.

  4. To be generous to Prof. Harris-Lacewell, I would bet that her ex-Mormon mother didn’t distinguish between the LDS church and its still-polygamist offshoots much either. It’s a touchy subject, but this bi-racial professor of African-American studies, and huge Obama fan to judge by her website, has her own Story of Race and Inheritance that, like Obama’s, probably involves a mother who disliked her own culture.

  5. Ahh, but I do know what Pangea is, and so should anyone with a reasonable education. And anyone who has read/watched the news enough to know as much as Prof Harris knows about the FLDS story would have come across the many disclaimers that FLDS does not equal LDS.

    The best I’ll give you on this one is “willful ignorance” (as in “I don’t want to learn the truth”).

    –Erik

  6. I’m amused at the ignorance of those who are calling the Princeton professor ignorant. You don’t think she knows the FLDS and the LDS are not cousins? Of course she does know that. That’s the whole point with confusing Obama with his Pastor…they’re not the same…. Oh by the way, if Mitt were in the race, he’d still have to answer stupid questions as to why the man he believes to be a prophet had 33 wives and had sex with young women as young as 14. Can you imagine the media drudging through the journal of discourses and the lead stories about “Mitt’s prophet.”

    Come on people…. as Bill Cosby would say right now…

  7. Were you guys talking about Pangaea?

    I’m more concerned about whether you know the difference between the Pancreas and St. Pancras, and can you tell me how to get there on the tube.

  8. Ahh, but I do know what Pangea is, and so should anyone with a reasonable education. And anyone who has read/watched the news enough to know as much as Prof Harris knows about the FLDS story would have come across the many disclaimers that FLDS does not equal LDS.

    Which news is she watching, because plenty of news outlets are making the same mistake she did.

  9. It’s appalling, but understandable given the ambivalence some members of the LDS Church have regarding the FLDS of late.

    I’ve read many comments on the bloggernacle by individuals which fall quite short of condemnation of the FLDS and their practices and range from sympathy toward the FLDS (which understandable given the devastating effect on the families) to empathy toward them as our distant, black sheep cousins to insistence that they have the right to continue their current practice of calling themselves “Mormons,” an appellation the LDS Church used in the Homefront ads in the 1980’s.

    Again, I’m appalled that the Professor would be either innocently or willfully ignorant, or worse, knowledgeable and willing to obfuscate the truth for political purposes. But I wonder how much we as members of the LDS Church share in the blame for the lack of understanding.

  10. Bull Moose, as one Church member with polygamist roots, I can tell you the only reason I care anything about the FLDS is that I have a huge concern about government over-reach. As far as I’m concerned, the FLDS is no different than David Koresh (sp?) and the people in Waco who were mass-murdered by Janet Reno’s thugs in the 1990s. The point is that the government should be concerned about innocent children being raped/abused, etc. But the way to deal with those concerns is through directly addressing that issue and handling individual complaints and concerns as they happen — not by separating 400-plus children en masse from their parents, potentially scarring them for life. Same thing with the people in Waco — that problem should have been dealt with completely differently. The result was hundreds of unnecessary deaths.

    I for one have absolutely no affinity with/sympathy for the FLDS beyond the fact that they are another fringe group being trampled by overweaning government power.

  11. By the way, I still stand by the original point of my post, which is this professor is showing a stunning amount of ignorance about her own country’s history and the difference between the mainstream LDS church and its many off-shoots. In my mind it is the equivalent of an economics professor at Princeton saying the Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were “both Christian civil rights activists.” Any economics professor who had spent more than 10 years studying in a university environment would certainly know the vague outlines of the difference between Malcolm X and MLK, and if he did not we would all agree he was pretty darned ignorant. So, we can excuse this woman as being a “specialist,” but the truth is she is showing an extraordinary amount of ignorance for somebody who should have a basic amount of education.

    As for the media who equate the FLDS and the mainstream LDS church, I have actually not seen that in any news story on the FLDS, and I have read literally hundreds of them. Almost all of them have a standard line saying the FLDS is a “renegade group not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints based in Utah.” But I am sure there are plenty of examples — journalists can be pretty darned ignorant sometimes too.

  12. BM, I actually agree to a point. I am surprised at all the angst at Mormon blogs. I agree with what Geoff said about worrying not only about Federal overreach but also singling out a group for special treatment because they are “religiously weird.” I also think that given the enormous amount of conflation by many between the FLDS and LDS that people think, “hey, they may do this to me.”

    Having said all that I wish there were at least as many posts condemning and worrying about the FLDS and other such groups as there were ones attacking the government over the FLDS situation. Surely the government has done wrong. But so too has the FLDS. Why the emphasis on only one side?

  13. Clark, I think you make an excellent point, but the likelihood that I personally will suffer because something the FLDS does is minimal. The likelihood that I personally will suffer because of government over-reach is actually quite high. That’s why I emphasize that.

    But you are correct regarding the FLDS, which is a despicable group and deserving of condemnation (and has received very little condemnation on LDS blogs, btw).

  14. I think most government overreach won’t affect me. It’s almost always someone else – usually in the inner city or high crime areas.

    The reason we need worry about government overreach is the same reason we have to worry about the FLDS. Because we are one large community and the pain of one ought be the pain of all. I look at the suffering of the young in the FLDS and it hurts to think of it. That’s why we ought worry.

    (I’d say we ought feel the same for the families of Haiti but I think we have a duty to make our local communities Zion at a higher level that places far removed- which isn’t to say we neglect them as far too many do.)

  15. Clark, your thoughts remind me of John Donne: “No man is an island … [A]ny man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

    Maybe I’m naive, but I fear man more than I fear government. I believe the ability of men and women to cause suffering using their own agency and ignoring the Spirit of Christ that dwells in all outweighs the ability of the government to cause suffering (taking the DMV out of consideration, of course).

  16. Clark,
    I think the reason there isn’t more condemnation of the FLDS is the fact that none of us have any stake in them. We all have a stake in U.S. government, however. My voice of condemnation of FLDS abuse isn’t really going to do anything: the criminals at this point (in Texas, anyway) are inevitably going to be prosecuted (as, it appears, will innocent people). But overreaching against minority groups seems more and more to be modus operandi, both of Texas and of the U.S. government; because I’m invested in our constitutional liberties, it makes sense that I’d raise my voice in condemnation of a government’s overreach of such principles.

  17. This to me is a very complicated issue. The FLDS, and other similar polygamous communities, perpetuate an atrocious system of sexual abuse, preying on young women. While we want the state to get involved, they can’t. The FLDS is quite good at evading state action. It seems we’re torn between permitting more and more young girls to have their persons and lives utterly violated and ruined while awaiting the state to find a way to take action, or to have the state take swift and decisive action using extraordinary means.

    And while the example of Koresh is germane, it doesn’t apply as well because Koresh did not establish a multi-generational system of systematic sexual abuse.

    I really don’t care about the whole polygamy thing. It’s irrelevant. And from what I have read, it is abundantly clear that the US authorities don’t care either. They were and are more concerned about abuse.

  18. Perhaps I am biased. I know of societies and systems — in Pakistan — where young girls are abused and preyed on while no one can do anything or no one does anything. Those who try to remedy the situation are shouted down, expelled, or otherwise delegitimized. Women have little to no choice in most areas. So it pains me greatly to see such things occuring in The Land of Opportunity, where such things should never be permitted.

  19. Another reason we might be under an obligation to end the perversities of the FLDS, else it will come to our condemnation: Jacob 2:31-33.

  20. Muslihoon, I’ve never read those verses in Jacob and applied them to post-Manisfesto polygamists before now. Blame it on intellectual laziness. It’s tempting for me to declare that the Lord is answering the FLDS with a “sore curse, even unto destruction” through the Texas state officials, but I wouldn’t be so presumptive. It is tempting though …

  21. Regarding any similarities between the current issue in Texas and David Koresh, I previously posted the following in the comments over on M&A:

    Those commenters trying to equate the FLDS investigations with the BATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco really need to lay off the conspiracy-kool-aid. The Branch Davidians were amassing an arsenal because David Koresh taught his followers that the end-times would be ushered in by their “war” with the United States Government. The BATF had gathered enough evidence to get a magistrate to approve a warrant to search Mount Carmel for illegal weapons. The Davidians were tipped off prior to the execution of the warrant, and Koresh’s “Mighty Men,” a paramilitary organization within his religion was armed and ready to fire on government officials lawfully carrying out their duty.The Great State of Texas was not involved in the raid (other than the TNG helicopters used as distraction), and there was no threat of removing families; just an investigation of illegal weapons held by a dangerous group of traitors, a charge that proved true in the opening minutes of the raid. David Koresh and Warren Jeffs are more like Charles Manson in philosophy than like Joseph Smith.

    I’m no expert but I’ve have researched the situation from a sociology of crime perspective. My point in bringing this up, is that the continued vilification of the Federal Agents who were shot and killed while attempting to serve a valid warrant and the subsequent armed standoff by Koresh and his paramilitary group really rankles me. When we perpetuate the conspiracy myth about the deaths of the barricaded Branch Davidians, we embolden murderers like Timothy McVeigh to take on an “overreaching” government, and more innocent lives are stolen. Responsibility for the deaths of the Branch Davidians is on David Koresh’s head, not the FBI.

  22. Geoff B:

    It’s not clear to me that the professor is conflating FLDS and LDS. She may be working off the historical connection, with the FLDS as an offshoot, and leaving the historical connection unsaid instead of spelling it out.

    Maybe she’s assuming her readers already know that the FLDS and LDS are separate but historically connected.

    I think you’re reading her article/blog entry in the most unflattering light, as if her critics here are reading her article with a chip on their shoulder and looking for an offense.

    Your assuming she’s ignorant and making accusations, when it’s possible that her only mistake is to not clarify what she believes is the connection, ie: being the same church versus two different but historically connected churches.

    The line that gives it away, that she knows they are separate but somehow connected is this one: “… would be fielding calls all day to explain Mormonism, polygamy and the relationship of Romney’s faith to the cult compound in Texas.

    Now, put that into context with Obama having to explain Wright, and I can see how you are infering that she means Romney is as closely connected to the FLDS as Obama is to Wright.

    However, the similarity of closeness is not her point. Her point is having to be on the defensive as Obama is.

    Her following questions: “Does Mr. Romney believe that 14 year-old girls should marry? Does Mr. Romney plan to take additional wives in order to fulfill the moral requirements of his religion? If not why has Mr. Romney stayed affiliated and raised his children in a church with whom he so vehemently disagrees? ”

    She’s probably giving examples of unfair questions that the press would ask. She could be implying that the press’s questions of Obama are as unfair as those.

  23. Bookslinger, the same thought actually crossed my mind after I posted this, but I’m pretty sure that she really did think they are the same church when she posted this. Take a look:

    “Yeah, Yeah, we know he gave some big speech about this issue earlier in the campaign, but how does he respond to what those women with the long skirts and weird hairdos said on the Today Show this morning?

    Would Romney have thrown the Thomas Monson under the bus and even more provocative, would Monson have tossed Mr. Romney there?

    Come on Marc, you know that would have been great to witness! Maybe a little black liberation theology would have looked tame next to the FLDS.

    By the way, I have special permission to tease about Mormonism. Although my mom left the Mormon church 40 years ago, she did graduate from BYU in 1964 and I even have a great,-great grandfather who was imprisoned for polygamy. But that is a story for another time. For now it is fun to just imagine how nice it would be if Mitt were still in the race.”

    She is directly comparing President Monson to Jeremiah Wright, meaning that Romney (as supposed member of the FLDS) would have to defend President Monson as supposed leader of the FLDS in the same way that Obama (as member of his church) has had to defend Jeremiah Wright (as leader of his church).

    Read the comments on the post — she has done nothing to come on and say, “oh, by the way, I know they are two different churches.” And most people are reading it the same way I am, which is to say that she really did think they were the same church. Hopefully, she has read the comments and now realizes they are two different churches.

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