[12][6] Jazz multi-instrumentalist and ethnomusicologist Nathan Davis, PhD, was Cole's academic advisor when he was working on his master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

[2] Cole has performed with Ornette Coleman, Jayne Cortez, Julius Hemphill, Sam Rivers, James Blood Ulmer, and Fred Ho.

[13] Prologue The Dartmouth Review – an arch-conservative publication[3] founded in 1980, not affiliated with the college but operated by students – had been part of an aggressive movement to criticize Dartmouth's academic programs in non-Eurocentric disciplines, including Women's Studies, African-American Studies and ethnomusicology.

The Review had published provocative criticism of its interpretation of political correctness on subjects ranging from Apartheid in South Africa to sexual orientation to race.

Part One Beginning in 1983, the Review ran a series of antagonistic articles that harshly ridiculed Cole, personally and professionally.

[32] Part Two In 1988, four students who were Review journalists – John William Quilhot (with a camera), John Henby Sutter (with a tape recorder), Christopher Baldwin (with a printout of the Review's editorial policy statement), and Sean Nolan – all white, showed up to Cole's classroom, after class, to give Cole a copy of the editorial policy and demand an apology for his remarks during the second of two phone calls made in an attempt to give him an opportunity to reply to the article, "Dartmouth's Dynamic Duo of Mediocrity", of February 24, 1988.

[34] When 60 Minutes aired a segment about the lawsuit November 13, 1988, Morley Safer, the host, left out the Review's political connections.

[35] Quilhot was subsequently invited by then Senator Dan Quayle to spend his summer suspension as an unpaid volunteer in his Washington office.

"[29] A year later, as a guest lecturer in Bill Dixon's class at Bennington College, Cole reflected on the cost of success in a White world: "I was taught all my life that if you get an education, things will open up.