A Sweet Exchange With A Gingrich Supporter
A few days ago i was trying to access a copy of Newt Gingrich’s 1971 doctoral dissertation,
Belgian Education Policy in the Congo: 1945-1960. I discovered that a downloadable copy was not easy to find, but, after a half hour in the woods, I emerged, courtesy of the author of a fine blog, The Philosopher’s Stone, by retired professor Robert Paul Wolff. He obtained a copy of Newt’s dissertation from Tulane, the old-fashioned way, he called, and asked for one. I’ve committed his unusual technique to memory.
I haven’t read Gingo’s masterwork yet. Professor Wolff, however, did:
and, not at all surprisingly;
The political or ideological orientation of the dissertation, if I may put it this way, is roughly that of a Cold War member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Colonization is seen almost entirely from the perspective of the colonial power, not from that of the indigenous population. The rule of King Leopold II, who literally owned the colony as his private property until, at his death, he willed it to Belgium, is widely understood to have been the most horrifyingly brutal colonial regime in Africa.
Read the entire analysis here, NEWT GINGRICH’S DOCTORAL DISSERTATION.
The dissertation is written in a pedantic, serviceable prose, giving no evidence of the Newt that was to emerge as a fully formed Toad. . . .
