Does Williams College care about anti-Christian vandalism?

But nowhere in either message does she condemn the attack for its hatefulness or express outrage at the bigotry it reflects.

Williams today is a typical liberal arts college, with highly selective admissions and an extremely left-wing campus orientation. But 216 years ago, it was the site of a crucial moment in American Christian history.

In 1806, five Williams College students — all of them devout Congregationalists inspired by the Second Great Awakening — gathered in a field to pray and discuss their interest in evangelizing. As they conversed, a thunderstorm broke above them and they sought shelter under a haystack. There they resolved to embark on a mission to Asia, translating the Bible into native languages and spreading the teachings of Christianity. It was a novel idea: At the time, most American Protestants believed that missionizing should be pursued at home, not abroad.

But the students took the idea to heart and prayed under the haystack for divine assistance in bringing it to fruition. Four years later, they formally launched the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. It would become the largest and most important American missionary organization of the 19th century. The Haystack Monument, a 12-foot-high pillar of polished silver-blue Berkshire marble, was dedicated on the spot in 1867; it bears the epigram "The Field is the World."

Williams College is no longer an important center of religious life, but the site of the haystack prayer meeting retains significance for some Christians. In the words of Boston attorney Jennifer Braceras, a former member of the US Commission on Civil Rights, "it is holy ground." Williams, however, has metamorphosed into an institution where many regard Christianity with suspicion. As Braceras notes, many on the contemporary academic left regard the 19th-century drive to spread Christianity as tainted by American and European imperialism and there have been calls for "context" to be added to the memorial.

Perhaps that explains why the desecration of the Haystack Monument this month barely drew a rebuke from Mandel. Other than remarking that vandalism is illegal and that removing graffiti "costs time and money," her first letter to the college community gave no indication that she found the attack on the school's foremost Christian emblem offensive. Anyone "concerned about the impact of this incident on themselves or our community," Mandel wrote, could go see a chaplain or someone at the college's diversity/equity/inclusion office.

When the monument was desecrated again a week later, the president issued a second letter conceding that "some people may" — may — "experience these incidents as attacks on your religion." But nothing in her letter deplored the attacks, or described the back-to-back episodes of anti-Christian ugliness as intolerable, or warned that the perpetrator would face severe consequences?

When New Boston Post, a conservative news site, asked whether the Williams administration condemned the vandalism against a Christian monument, a spokesman would say only that the school is "focused on removing the graffiti from the monument" and on "making resources available to anyone in our community who was affected by the incident or feels concerned."

Individual Christians at Williams College may be upset or hurt or shocked by the sullying of the "holy ground" of the Haystack Monument.

But if they're waiting for the school's leaders to take the attacks as seriously as they would if another group were being targeted, they'll be waiting quite a while.

Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission."