Carl Phillips is an accomplished man. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and he has taught at Harvard, BU, and Washington University in St. Louis. He's been a finalist for the National Book Award and won awards and fellowships from, among others, the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Library of Congress.
In short, Phillips has all the Boston College credentials, but not even he can figure out why he won't be teaching here next fall. Maybe, Phillips wonders, even with all of his credentials, the men atop Chestnut Hill don't see him as the prototypical BC guy.
Phillips, an openly gay professor of English, African, and Afro-American studies at Washington University, thought he may have found a new home when the English department submitted his name, along with one other candidate, as its top two selection to fill the vacant Rattigan Professorship.
He learned differently when University president Rev. William P. Leahy, SJ, denied both of the department's selections. Leahy never delivered explicit reasoning, but Phillips has his own theories.
"It would seem likely that the president had a problem with having an openly gay man hold that position," Phillips says. "He chose to bypass the top two candidates - both of whom are gay men - in order to offer the job to the third candidate. In my experience, it is unheard of that a president would deny the hiring department the right to hire their top choice."
Clearly, Phillips hasn't spent too much time around these parts.
The University predictably denied the applicants' claims - "Boston College is a most open and tolerant university," spokesperson Jack Dunn told the Boston Globe. "Any assertion that sexual orientation plays into hiring here is completely unfounded" - but the damage had been done.
The campus had lost out on a celebrated poet and dynamic personality, the school had once again been on the receiving end of some painfully bad press, and the student body was again forced to endure unwarranted allegations of homophobia.
This was all supposed to have come to an end. One year ago, Leahy's official approval of Allies, BC's first University-approved gay/straight alliance group, should have invalidated the school's homophobic reputation - aligning longstanding close-minded policies with the student body's more welcoming approach. It did for a while, as BC dropped from No. 2 in the U.S. News and World Report's ranking of least accepting schools. But, with Phillips' dismissal, the same questions are being posed today.
In making his decision, Phillips suggests, Leahy may have been asking some questions of his own. "I believe that [the President]'s concern had to do with the more public nature of an endowed chair," Phillips says. "How will the trustees react [to a gay professor]? Will alums withdraw their financial support? How to reconcile traditional Catholic views of homosexuality with the fact that one of your more prominent faculty members is openly gay?
"These would seem to be concerns that would arise," he says. "Clearly, they weren't issues for the English department, but it is just as clear, now, that the English department is powerless when it comes to the president."
It would seem that everybody is. "The faculty and students that I met certainly seemed proof that BC is very accepting," Phillips continues. "One of the particular disappointments about how things have turned out is that the president's decision reflects so badly and inaccurately what the BC community is more widely about."
This campus is not about intolerance and fear. Our student body shows warmth and compassion.
Just make sure to steer clear of the president's office.
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