Re-writing AGB's legacy and philosophy, and President Alan Hurwitz: A Brief Reaction

When I first read Dr. Alan Hurwitz's letter about the Alexander Graham Bell (AGB) plaque at the National Technical Institution of the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), I was disappointed by his tepid, indecisive explanation for only rewording the plaque about AGB and not removing AGB's name from the building, AGB--a person whose legacy and philosophy is far more engrossed by the specter of problems and oppression than Dr. Hurwitz's letter seems to let on.

In our American society we are always looking for the promise of what's coming up next in our future. AGB's promise is genocidal, and his work involved actually *creating* new forms of bigotry where none existed before, i.e., a "let's pretend they're not deaf" so-called strategy. So what RIT has been doing, in effect, is searching diligently (and implicitly), high and low, in order to find ways to continue to slip in the AGB strategy of suppressing American Sign Language (ASL) and oppressing Deaf people.

I applaud the Deaf studies faculty at Ohlone College for the the ripple effects they have launched by breaking ties with NTID. I expect to see more aggressive break-ups of this type because it is necessary to minimize the "plains de pechiez et plains de vices" philosophy ("full of sins and full of vices," anti-Deaf philosophy) among those who are committed to fulfilling--or attempting to rewrite--AGB's legacy and philosophy.

A friend of mine even suggested that we ask AGB's descendants to reword his tombstone to indicate that he provided no justice--AGB was the great exploiter of the small (as he saw us), causing the supposedly small people to exploit each other. President Hurwitz was therefore exploited by AGB, too, which is a very sad chapter in our intellectual life.