On November 6, 2006, Tom Tritton, President of Haverford College, issued the following statement:

Over the past week Haverford College has received many comments regarding an opinion piece written by David Langlieb, a recent graduate who resides in Brooklyn, New York, in a section of our alumni magazine entitled “Moved to Speak.”

Regrettably, Mr. Langlieb’s attempt at satire and creative writing failed, resulting in hurt and anger of many people on and off campus, including those in the extended Polish-American community.

While we advocate and support free speech, we also recognize that good judgment is called for in any publication that is issued by the College. Haverford's Quaker traditions of individual dignity, tolerance, commitment to diversity, inclusion, social justice and peaceful conflict resolution have permeated our community for 173 years. In this particular case we have not reflected our most time-honored values. For this we are deeply sorry and apologize. We trust, however, that healing can occur.

To work towards this positive outcome, we also will create immediately a more thorough editorial process for the magazine that is both thoughtful and reflective of the essential values of Haverford College.

Corrections from the 2005-2006 Report of Gifts/State of the College


• James R. Grosholz ’49 was listed as the 1949 Class Chair. He is not the Class Chair for his class.
• Jaclyn L. Scott ’00 and Ira N. Shaw ’00 should have been listed on separate lines.
• Betsy and Augustus Dibble are parents of Nicholas, who is the Class of 2007, not 2009.
• Cynthia and Edward Bartlett CP’08 should have been listed as Cynthia Maier and Edward Bartlett CP’08.
• A memorial gift was made in memory of Edward (Ted) A. Mechling ’61.
• Arthur W. Wright ’60 is the Class Chair for the Class of 1960, not Thomas A. Duff.

No Respect for Others

This letter is regarding the article “Moved to Speak” that was published in the fall Haverford Magazine. The article was written by David Langlieb and it criticizes the Polish community living in Greenpoint, NYC. Mr. Langlieb called that article a satire, but to many Poles living in the United States, if not all, it doesn’t appear as such.
I want to write a few words on behalf of a Polish school under the patronage of Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz where I teach Polish language. I don’t think that any Polish community, including ours, takes this article as a joke. We try to implement the Polish heritage in our children and articles like that do not help us in teaching children where they came from. Also, Mr. Langlieb needs to stop behaving like he is the only person living in NYC or in Greenpoint who finished college. There are many Polish people with higher education, including myself.
I’m Polish, I’ve been living here only a few years, but when Mr. Langlieb was finishing school and getting his degree with which he thinks he can “move the mountains,” I was in Iraq with the U.S. Army making sure that he and everybody else here can have a safe life. I refuse to accept this article as a satire and request that Mr. Langlieb’s articles not be published anymore in Haverford Magazine. I don’t care who Mr. Langlieb is (as far as his heritage), he can be full blooded Polish, a Jew, or his parents or grandparents could have died in the Holocaust, but you don’t treat other people without respect. Respect means to treat other people the way you would like to be treated and I hope that Mr. Langlieb will learn that lesson.

Katarzyna Czajka

Offending People of Various Backgrounds

This evening I opened an email regarding a controversy surrounding an alumni magazine article and responses to it. It is indeed sad if people are being depicted in an ill manner for sensationalistic purposes and in the process offending people of various backgrounds. Each of us have or haven’t been sensitized to particular issues based on our own backgrounds, life experience, ideology, etc. One might hope that a Haverford education would make us more caring and thoughtful.
Upon reading the email, I looked for my most recent Haverford Magazine; I wanted to reference a perhaps crude satire at the back of the magazine that ridiculed the rantings of a homeless person. I thought that reference also was extraordinarily insensitive and inappropriate. Much talk is given about Haverford values. Has Haverford become such a cloistered environment that people cannot compassionately fathom such circumstances in another human being?

Alan Weintraub ’88

The Purpose of Satire

Apparently, the “Moved to Speak” piece in the Fall 2006 alumni magazine has caused a flap in author David Langlieb’s neighborhood and among the Polish-American community. It was picked up in the New York Daily News and brought to my attention by some embarrassed Haverford friends. In a mea culpa issued and reported in the 11/17 Daily News, the author apologizes to “anyone offended by my essay,” which he describes as an attempt to write satire in the vein of Jonathan Swift.

Satire is tricky business, and I wonder how the alumni magazine could have failed to notice that this piece is not funny, not because it is offensive, but because it lacks the essential element of satire: a point. The painful truth or hypocrisy a good satire exposes justifies the offensiveness of the material because that material serves to make a larger point. Without that focus, it just becomes a series of really bad jokes.

I’m all for getting some humor into the “Moved to Speak” page, but whatever is printed there, humorous or not, must have a purpose. That is implied in the name of the feature, which in the past has added nicely to the magazine. We depend on the editors to make sure that “Moved to Speak” does not just become a rotating column.

Michael Kay ‘00