There’s been a lot of talk lately about what it means for an institution to claim a Quaker identity. See for example the great conversation started by Wess Daniels.
Here’s a refreshing take from an independent campus newspaper from historically Quaker Swarthmore College James Sutton:
I do find the rhetorical deployment of Quaker Values in almost every on-campus debate to be disingenuous, to say the least. Call me cynical, but I seriously doubt that most Swatties care much at all about the almost 400-year-old denomination. Outside of having a slightly higher percentage of students from elite Quaker prep schools like Sidwell Friends, it’s a safe bet to say that the vast majority of Swatties have gone their entire lives blissfully untroubled by the Inner Light. How many even know why Quakers are called Quakers?
I remember being on Swarthmore campus one time years ago when a prospective student tour came walking by. I chuckled at the honesty when the tour guide mentioned Quakers but quickly reassured any nervous tour goers that it wasn’t Quaker anymore. As Sutton writes, “It would be entirely possible, even easy, however, for a Swarthmore student to spend all four of their years at the college having essentially no engagement with anything approaching Quakerism.”
As I wrote on Wess’s thread:
A useful metaphor for me is asking how much “Quaker DNA” an institution has. None will be 100%. Some types will on average have more (eg, monthly meetings vs a school) but even w/in a class some will be more in the Quaker stream and this can change over time.
A college will always have multiple influences. The greatest will always be the culture and expectations of higher ed. A school will also have a longer-running reputation and influences arising from its most important academic or sporting programs. Somewhere way down might be an ongoing identity from a historical denominational identity. Some schools court this — Guilford and Earlham come most immediately to mind In the Quaker context — and some have reduced it to a vague and very occasional invocation of “Quaker values.”
Recent Comments on Quaker Ranter Daily