Unsworth, John remarks on white supremacist flyer John Unsworth remarks on white supremacist flyer MSS 16916

John Unsworth remarks on white supremacist flyer MSS 16916


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Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
P.O. Box 400110
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
URL: https://small.library.virginia.edu/

Ellen Welch

Repository
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
Identification
MSS 16916
Title
John Unsworth remarks on white supremacist flyer January 9, 2021
URL:
https://archives.lib.virginia.edu/ark:/59853/228446
Quantity
0.03 Cubic Feet, 1 letter-sized file folder.
Creator
Unsworth, John, 1958-
Language
English .

Administrative Information

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

MSS 16916, John Unsworth remarks on white supremacist flyer, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

This collection was a gift from John Unsworth to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 24 August 2022.


Biographical / Historical

"New Order": a Wisconsin-based white supremacist group The "New Order" is a white supremacist group with neo-Nazi leanings that is based in Wisconsin, specifically in New Berlin and Milwaukee. Here's a closer look:

Ideology: The New Order identifies its members as "heirs" of Adolf Hitler and advocates for an all-white society. They claim to be "committed to building a better world for future generations of their race," while simultaneously decrying "mindless materialism, self-indulgence, drugs, pollution, pornography, race-mixing, filth, chaos and alienation". Controversy: While New Order leadership, like Martin Kerr (their chief of staff), claims the group is not a hate group and simply advocates "in favor of their own people, not against other races or ethnicities," the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identifies the New Order as a neo-Nazi organization and a hate group. Activity: The group has been known to distribute racist propaganda in Wisconsin. In the past, fliers promoting the group with "White Lives Matter" written at the top were found on a street in Virginia Source: AI accessed 8/15/25 Wisconsin-based, white supremacist group "New Order"

John Unsworth has spent his career as a leader in championing "Understanding Differences" and appreciation for underrepresented groups and encouraging racial equity and healing. He is the university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Virginia, a position he has held since June 25, 2016.

In June of 2016, John Unsworth was appointed Dean of Libraries, University Librarian, and Professor of English at the University of Virginia. From 2012 to 2016, John served as Vice-Provost for Library and Technology Services and Chief Information Officer at Brandeis University, where he was also University Librarian and Professor of English. In August of 2013, he was appointed by President Obama to serve on the National Humanities Council.

Before joining Brandeis University, John was Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 2003 to 2012. In addition to being a Professor in GSLIS, at Illinois he also held appointments in the department of English and on the Library faculty. At Illinois he also served as Director of the Illinois Informatics Institute, from 2008 to 2011.

From 1993-2003, he served as the first Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, and as a faculty member in the English Department, at the University of Virginia. For his work at IATH, he received the 2005 Richard W. Lyman Award from the National Humanities Center. He chaired the national commission that produced Our Cultural Commonwealth, the 2006 report on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Science, on behalf of the American Council of Learned Societies, and he has supervised research projects across the disciplines in the humanities. He has also published widely on the topic of electronic scholarship, as well as co-directing one of nine national partnerships in the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program, and securing grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Getty Grant Program, IBM, Sun, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and others.

His first faculty appointment was in English, at North Carolina State University, from 1989 to 1993. He attended Princeton University and Amherst College as an undergraduate, graduating from Amherst in 1981. He received a Master's degree in English from Boston University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1988. In 1990, at NCSU, he co-founded the first peer-reviewed electronic journal in the humanities, Postmodern Culture (now published by Johns Hopkins University Press, as part of Project Muse). He also organized, incorporated, and chaired the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium, co-chaired the Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions, and served as President of the Association for Computers and the Humanities and later as chair of the steering committee for the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, as well as serving on many other editorial and advisory boards. Sources: https://johnunsworth.name/bio.html

https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-selects-john-m-unsworth-university-librarian-and-dean-libraries

Bromley, Anne, E. "Library Employees Take Up Challenge to Learn More about People Different From Them." UVA Today. 1 November 2018. https://news.virginia.edu/content/library-employees-take-challenge-learn-more-about-people-different-them

Related Material

Related material 2024-0167 John Unsworth records

Subjects and Indexing Terms

  • Hate speech
  • White nationalism
  • circulars (fliers)