A premier Adventist institution, twice over: the quiet transfer of 1964, and the 2008 apology to Martin Luther King that Milton Hare accepted from the graduation stage
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
Pacific Union College in Angwin, above St Helena, is a premier Seventh-day Adventist institution, and the Jonathan Hare record intersects it twice, at the two ends of one man's life. In 1964, when Jonathan's eighteen-year-old mother — Adventist missionary royalty on both sides — became pregnant by his seventeen-year-old father after a canoe ride on his grandfather's private lake, the college discovered what a hasty and beautiful wedding had been arranged to conceal. There was no formal expulsion; the young couple was strongly encouraged to transfer. The institution preached forgiveness and prioritized its reputation, and the family's scientific pedigree made UC Berkeley an easy landing. The record notes what the episode taught, because the architect never stopped citing it: institutions drift from their stated principles under reputational pressure, quietly, one shuffle at a time.
Forty-four years later the college awarded Milton Hare an honorary doctorate. It had opposed his efforts to desegregate Adventist churches in the 1960s, and in 2008 it issued a formal apology to Martin Luther King Jr for opposing the civil-rights crusade. Milton — by then a highly active member of the Oakland Seventh-day Adventist Church, serving beside his old friend Paul Cobb, for whom Jonathan carries the middle name Paul — accepted the apology on King's behalf as the graduation speaker. His speech ran well over the allotted time and was exceptionally well received. The full arc is the episode below.
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