The Society Against Academic Dishonesty (whoever they are) has not grasped the point at issue in the argument surrounding the naming of Catt Hall.

I refer to the quarter-page advertisement (page 8, Dec. 3) entitled “The Kluxers” that begins with Milton McGriff’s claim that Carrie Chapman Catt was a white supremacist and ends with his published statement: “History ultimately will decide who is silly, sophomoric and ignorant of the past, not newspaper editors.”

People can be silly, sophomoric and ignorant of the past without engaging in academic dishonesty. Let’s assume just for the sake of argument that McGriff is dead wrong. Being wrong by itself never made anyone dishonest.

If everyone who ever published an interpretation of an historical character that turned out to be based on too little information, tidied up archives, falsified records or facts taken out of context were judged dishonest, we would have to close down every history department in the country — unless it was the scholar who did the tidying and falsifying. That would be dishonest.

Unless SAAD can demonstrate with credible evidence that McGriff has falsified documents or that he has knowingly published false statements about Catt, an accusation of academic dishonesty is grounds for a libel suit.

I have said before and say again that the quality of argument surrounding the character of Carrie Chapman Catt and the appropriateness of naming a building after her has been grievously poor.

I have challenged those who say the numerous quotations put forth by the September 29ers are not representative of her arguments in favor of women’s suffrage to prove it. Four students (together) so far have taken ONE passage quoted by those protesting the renaming of Old Botany and recontextualized it, whether successfully is still open for discussion.

Show me the context of ALL those often-repeated quotes that seem on their face to justify the outrage of those whose “recent flawed efforts to discredit her” are sufficient for the formation of a Society Against Academic Dishonesty.

To my knowledge, those objecting most strenuously to honoring the woman have never denied that she did good things, particularly late in her life after women’s right to vote was guaranteed.

Honest and credible arguments can be made on both sides of the issue about whether “a regular jingoist in [her] youth” — Catt’s own words — could grow up and out of it and be thereby exonerated. One thinks of George Wallace, who some say was not a racist but used the racism of others to promote his own political fortunes.

I do not know, nor claim to know, the truth about Wallace or Catt. What I do know a little bit about is argument, and I can tell you what accusing someone of dishonesty for disagreeing with you or arguing with too little information is called. You won’t like it.

Sometimes when the information is spread out in front of you, it is possible to reduce the number of possibilities to stupidity or deceit as when, for example, a president’s “lost” documents or tapes are suddenly “found.”

They may have been misplaced out of incompetence or out of an effort to conceal damaging revelations, but it is not possible to claim that because of George Wallace’s wheelchair conversion, he never blocked U.S citizens from entering a schoolhouse door.

I won’t presume to judge whether SAAD is merely confused about the nature of academic dishonesty or whether “The Kluxers” with its framing quotes from McGriff is a deliberate effort to discredit an opponent whose arguments they cannot counter fairly in an open field.

Should we believe Catt’s own words when she says “I was a regular jingoist in my youth”? I am willing to listen to an argument that we should not. I have yet to hear such an argument made: whether out of dumbness or deceit, I choose not to judge at this time. A dozen more post-1919 essays will not persuade me.

O.K., you students at this first-tier research institution, the best land-grant university on the planet, who can tell me why I remain legitimately unpersuaded?

Virginia Allen is an associate professor of English.