Racism rears its ugly head at Dartmouth College. An article in "The Dartmouth", the college's student-run newspaper stated:
"An e-mail that referred to College President-elect Jim Yong Kim as a "Chinaman" and warned the campus to prepare for "Asianification" has sparked controversy on campus, less than three days after the announcement that the Harvard professor and global health leader would be inaugurated as the College's 17th president. The e-mail, which was sent to approximately 1,000 students and alumni, was the Tuesday morning edition of the Generic Good Morning Message, a student written and edited tongue-in-cheek compilation of each day's news."
Tongue-in-cheek? Sounds like the New York Post's view of racially offensive material. Here's part of the email that went out:
"On July 1, yet another hard-working American's job will be taken by an immigrant willing to work in substandard conditions at near-subsistent wage, saving half his money and sending the rest home to his village in the form of traveler's checks," the message states, in part. "Unless 'Jim Yong Kim' means 'I love Freedom' in Chinese, I don't want anything to do with him. Dartmouth is America, not Panda Garden Rice Village Restaurant."
Who is Jim-Yong Kim? He's been selected as the first Asian and first minority male to serve as the president of an Ivy League institution. Just what sort of a man did those little bigots attempt to smear?
Dr. Kim, who was born in Seoul, South Korea, immigrated with his family to the United States at age 5. He grew up in Muscatine, Iowa, where his was one of only two Asian families. He attended Muscatine High School, where he was valedictorian, president of his class and quarterback of the football team. He then went to Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1981.
Since the 1980s, Dr. Kim's career has been entwined with that of Paul Farmer, his medical school friend and the subject of Tracy Kidder's popular book "Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World."
Together, they started Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that focused on drug-resistant tuberculosis, first in Haiti and then in other countries, and helped drive down the cost of medication so that treatment could be widely available.
Dr. Kim received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 2003. He is married to Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston. They have two sons, one an 8-year-old and the other born on Friday.
Dr. Kim is chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He continues to teach undergraduate classes, and plans to teach undergraduates at Dartmouth.
Very funny email, guys. Loads of laughs. Really. |
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