Summary

The Prologue to The Devil and Webster introduces the reader to the history of student activism at Webster College. In six pages of italicized text, the narrator describes the Stump: an old tree stump in the center of Webster’s campus that has acted as the epicenter of both liberal and conservative student protest throughout Webster’s centuries-long history. Some protests mentioned include a push to change the “raging (sometimes drunken) Indian” mascot and an attempt to stop an African-American student from matriculating (2). The narrator emphasizes that the leaders of each of these protests made their demands known to the college administration, which made a show of considering them, after which the protest would quietly disband.

This, the narrator notes, without giving detail, does not help Naomi Roth, the student activist turned feminist and gender studies professor turned president...