Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Thanks so much, John, NtFs, - and fascinating.
I suppose since you shared this in this NtF email list, this is part of NtF history in a sense too.
(In an further out of the box way - beyond wiki World University and School, which is both Quakerly and NtF-informed - I'm curious how we'll all be able to explore further NtF history, for example, in a realistic virtual earth - thinking here conceptually of Google Street View with time slider with Maps & Earth, and Second Life / Open Simulator for avatar bots but realistic ones, where we could convert as a start film-to-3D and then interact with historical avatar bots. Film is already quite mind-expanding - who wudda thunk that film would be possible? And while there's no film of Ezra Cornell, for example, perhaps we'll eventually be able to animate photos / images / drawings / sculptures of him - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Ezra_Cornell.jpg& https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Cornell - and eventually be able to interact with such avatar bots conversationally, or sit in Meeting with Ezra Cornell virtually before he was read out of Meeting, for example :) Am curious about what he might share in Meeting ... this could be about 1825, mind you.
I hope this would be a further example or exploration of "deep reverence ... toward ... Quaker history" - and information technology-wise newly - and potentially re the non-theistic Friends' history of what I'll call 'joining with' Friends' General Conference, a larger Quaker collectivity - that is, of in some ways reading ourselves (NtFs) into a Meeting. Quaker history takes interesting turns re socio-cultural processes.
Thanks for the great Quakerly and university history you shared re Ezra Cornell, co-founder of Cornell, John.
Friendly cheers, Scott
- https://twitter.com/scottmacleod
- https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1034483020625895425 (There's a bit of an older 'history' perspective in this Tweet re archaeology potential, and in an innovative way - see too the hash tag here for #RealisticVirtualEarth )
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Tuesday, August 28, 2018
You might find the following post by Simon St.Laurent in 2007 interesting. It documents Cornell's attitude toward Quakers in his later life as he was in the process of founding Cornell University with a initial gift of $500,000.
John Hunter
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"deep reverence... toward his Quaker ancestry"
My local paper celebrates Ezra Cornell's 200th birthday today, reflecting on the founder of Cornell University. Cornell University sometimes appears in lists of Quaker colleges, though it has always been unaffiliated.
Ezra Cornell grew up Quaker, but was disowned for something he did in the town I live in, as Wikipedia relates:
**********************Ezra Cornell grew up Quaker, but was disowned for something he did in the town I live in, as Wikipedia relates:
Ezra Cornell was a birthright Quaker, but was later disowned by the Society of Friends for marrying outside of the faith to a "world's woman," a Methodist by the name of Mary Ann Wood. Ezra and Mary Ann were married March 19, 1831, in Dryden, New York.The Ithaca Journal reprints an article on the founding of the University from 1956, in which Cornell reflects on his options after enduring abuse from the New York State Legislature:
On February 24, 1832, Ezra Cornell wrote the following response to his expulsion from The Society of Friends due to his marriage to Mary Ann Wood: "I have always considered that choosing a companion for life was a very important affair and that my happyness or misery in this life depended on the choice…"
"I can never forget the quiet dignity with which Mr. Cornell took this abuse. Mrs. Cornell sat at his right, I at his left. In one of the worst tirades against him, he turned to me and said quietly, and without the slightest anger or excitement: 'If I could think of any other way in which half a million of dollars would do as much good to the State, I would give the legislature no more trouble.' Shortly afterward, when the invective was again especially bitter, he turned to me and said: 'I am not sure but that it would be a good thing for me to give the half a million to old Harvard College in Massachusetts, to educate the descendants of the men who hanged my forefathers.'Cornell's work to create an unaffiliated university - and avoid donating to the heirs of those who hung William Robinson, Marmaduke Stephenson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra in Boston - created opposition from those who found the notion of a university without explicit ties to a religious body appalling. As another 1956 article put it:
'There was more than his usual quaint humor in this — there was that deep reverence which he always bore toward his Quaker ancestry, and which seemed to have become part of him.'
With [Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White], Quaker and humanist, evolved the university's radical support of co-education, and its principle of freedom from domination by "persons of any one religion or of no religion" (which earned the university the charge of "godlessness" in sectarian pulpits and journals of the day).The Journal cites a letter from Cornell to a friendly Presbyterian minister that tells of the conflicts:
I am glad that you find much to please you in the plan of Cornell University as studied from the Register. I believe you are the first Presbyterian minister who has not consigned us to purgatory for our infidelity. I should be glad to know if you can show a "clean bill of health" from the church authorities, or perchance you may be sliding down the same declivity to perdition that we are. I should be sorry to see the whole family of Cornells on the broad road to ruin. I had hoped at least we might clutch your skirts for salvation.It's unfortunate that the Quakers disowned Cornell at the time of his marriage, but at least from what I see here, he seems not to have disowned Quakers.
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Saturday, August 24th,
Hi Wallace and non-theist f/Friends,
I was talking with UC Berkeley Tourism Study Group friends yesterday evening at dinner, and Cornell University and the 1960s came up. Two friends at dinner have MAs & Ph.D.s from Cornell (Dean MacCannell '68 and Juliet Flower MacCannell in '71). I mentioned how Ezra Cornell, its founder, was a Quaker but was read out of Meeting, in the early 1800s -
Ezra Cornell was a birthright Quaker, but was later disowned by the Society of Friends for marrying outside of the faith to a "world's woman," Mary Ann Wood, a Methodist. They were married March 19, 1831, in Dryden, New York.
Seems relevant to NtFs, who may be being "read into Meeting" where Meeting here is Friends General Conference (FGC). :)
Wallace and NtFs, do you know of any specific books that would tell me/us more about Ezra Cornell, his Quakerism and his being read out of Meeting - detail-wise, or first hand accounts, etc.?
How are you? How's Ithaca? How's co-housing?
Friendly regards, Scott
--
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President
- 415 480 4577
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Hi Amanda, and NtFs,
What do you find particularly inspiring philosophically, if I might ask, Amanda?
Friendly-wise, I've found the AFSC Mission statement adopted in 1994 particularly inspiring - https://web.archive.org/web/20040110065129/http://www.afsc.org/about/mission.htm (which I was able to find in archive.org, since the AFSC seems to have turned this into a kind of 'outline' in the interim - https://www.afsc.org/mission-vision-and-values).
And I've also found inspiring the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize address to Quakers by Gunnar Jahn
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1947/ceremony-speech/ .
In locating this, I also found another Nobel Prize talk, "Friends Service Council (The Quakers) Banquet speech" by Quaker Margaret Backhouse from 1947 which I look forward to reading - https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1947/friends-council/speech/ .
And these two related 1947 Nobel Peace Prize talks by Henry Cadbury also are interesting -
- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1947/friends-committee/acceptance-speech/
- https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1947/friends-committee/lecture/
Among non-theist Friends' writings - in a kind of 'spiritual' vein even, I've found particularly inspiring Os Cresson's writings, some of which we can read here - http://www.nontheistfriends.org/article/author/os-cresson - at the main http://www.nontheistfriends.org web site.
Friendly cheers, Scott
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Nontheist Friend - NtF - nontheist f/Friend - nontheist friends - atheist Quaker - AQ ... & re 'NtFriend' see http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2018/07/high-cairngorms-nontheist-friends-ntfs.html (in the 'nontheist Friend' label) &
- https://twitter.com/sgkmacleod/status/1013815790133317632
- https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1013815608146722817 Planned @WorldUnivAndSch in Wikidata's 301 languages+
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[NTF-talk] Not Allowing invocation by nonthiests held unconstitutional
A Pennsylvania House policy barring nonbelievers from delivering the opening invocation at the start of House sessions has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge
Anita :-)
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Wonderful news! Thanks for sharing.
WC
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And prayer itself is unconstitutional too, per this judge - "U.S. Middle District Judge Christopher Conner also declared the House's opening prayer policy to be unconstitutional."
Are Non-theist f/Friends familiar with the Friends Journal article from 2008 by George L. Alexander on the separation of church and state - https://www.friendsjournal.
(Would like to bring in John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" https://www.eff.org/
:) ... And we non-theists as NtFs seem to be conversing much in Cyberspace.
Skepticism and dissent - such as re non-theism and prayer in a US governmental body in this case - aren't easy processes for societies in the US to navigate, but the Religious Society of Friends (RSOF) seems to be doing alright re nontheist Friends (NtFs) and Friends General Conference (FGC. :)
In this 'law' vein (see below), I'd like to let NtFs know about a free open HarvardX edX online course beginning soon taught by Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Charlie Nesson - "JuryX: Deliberations for Social Change." Charlie is really great / amazing, and his HarvardX / Harvard Law classes I've taken in the past online have been fascinating. Some of this course will be in Google group video Hangouts as well.
It might be possible to bring up this NtF topic - "Not Allowing invocation by nonthiests held unconstitutional" - for further discussion in this course even.
Friendly cheers, Scott :)
Glad Harvard Law Professor Charlie Nesson has posted WUaS's Twitter post about his upcoming free open edX HarvardX online course -
https://twitter.com/
https://twitter.com/
https://www.edx.org/course/
- at the top of his Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/_eon_ ...
I find him to be connecting and fascinating as a professor - and I may
take this course, which happens via edX and in Google group video
Hangouts too ... and re WUaS networking.
- at the top of his Twitter feed - https://twitter.com/_eon_ ...
I find him to be connecting and fascinating as a professor - and I may
take this course, which happens via edX and in Google group video
Hangouts too ... and re WUaS networking.
--
- Scott MacLeod - Founder & President
- World University and School
- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization.
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Like!
RA
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What's a "world's woman" re the woman Ezra Cornell married, I wonder?
Something to do with - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union - in the 1800s?
There's a lot of interesting history you shared re non-theist f/Friendly 'dissent' (I'll call this), John. Thanks.
Scott
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