Jul
2
2021

A Letter I Sent to UNH Media Relations

Here's a missive I fired off to the Media Relations folks at the University Near Here:

Hi --

Ex-employee here. I like keeping up with UNH goings-on via your news page (https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/news). Recently, I noticed the "UNH in the News" section on that page has a link to an article on the "World Socialist Web Site" titled Introduction to The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History.

Observations:

  1. The "World Socialist Web Site" is considered to be a news source?
  2. The linked article is dated December 4, 2020. Not very recent.
  3. As the title implies, it's a book excerpt, not a news article.
  4. Probably most important, the article's UNH connection is a discussion of the views of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, currently on the UNH faculty. It is not complimentary. One of her recent publications is held out as an example of "ignorant rubbish", and the author accuses her of propounding "anti-scientific nonsense".

As it happens, I don't agree with Professor Prescod-Weinstein's views either. But I'm not sure Media Relations wants to call attention to ideological attacks on UNH faculty. (I assume there's some automated process in place that caused this, which you might want to tweak.)

Best wishes, looking forward to UNH getting back to "normal".

I bet the Media Relations folks will be less amused than I am.

I didn't mention that this is (at least) the second time the WSWS article has been publicized on that UNH page. I blogged about that occurrence back in April.