premise: But because it is put forward by a fatuous Charleston, S.C., college professor, we hear it for what Horwitz rightly calls  a clever glide around race and slavery, rather like the slick-tongued defense of the Southern 'way of life' made by antebellum orators, South Carolinians in particular.
hypothesis: Because it is an Ivy League, New England college professor, it sounds like a damning indictment of race and slavery in the South.