Tutu Excluded
Double Standard at the University of St. Thomas
Bishop Desmond Tutu has stood all his life for nonviolent peace-making and an end to racism. Obviously, he would be upset about the Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians, and has said so.
For that stance he was uninvited from speaking at the Catholic University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.
(See also Richard Silverstein on this issue). The "quote" attributed to Bishop Tutu supposedly comparing Israel to Hitler and Nazi Germany was completely made up by the Zionist Organization of American (which has a long history of such cult-like lying and smearing) and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency printed it without fact-checking.
The Israel lobby strikes again, limiting what can be heard in public in the United States about those policies of Israel that are contrary to basic human rights norms.
And here is the kicker. UST is guilty of a whopper of a double standard. Two years ago, the university allowed Ann Coulter to speak on its campus.
Ann Coulter once said of Muslims, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Coulter can speak at UST. But not Desmond Tutu.
Labels: Islamophobia
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/04/2007 12:42:00 PM
18 Comments:
I graduated from the University of St. Thomas when it was the College of St. Thomas. In the spring of 1964 about 200 students got sick from the dormitory food, and a food riot erupted. Four students were expelled for posing in front of the stone school name monument with a sign that said "We've been poisoned." A picture of the students appeared on the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
St. Thomas, being a Catholic institution, has its own filtered version of free speech. The school's hierarchy, though they would not admit it, almost certainly views Archbishop Tutu as a heretic. Though Vatican II loosened the Church's view of other religion, there is still a pining for the old days of the "Holy Roman Empire." The current pope is a throwback to those days, rekindling the view that the only way to get to "Heaven" is through the Catholic Church.
St. Thomas has experienced exponential growth in the past few decades, and has caught itself in a bind. By adding curricula and expanding its enrollment beyond the strictly male Catholic population, the school has invited the inevitable conflict between open dialog and Church authoritarianism.
As this latest embarrassment plays out, I can't help looking back fondly at the hanging-in-effigy of the food service director in 1964. It was dissent unheard of at St. Thomas, and likely at any other Catholic institution of higher education. I was one of the poisoned students, and was sought out to lead the food riot, because I had vomited outside the dining hall. I declined, not believing the violent expelling of tainted food to be a qualification for leadership. I did attend the riot, and it was a riot to see priests in long dress-like black outfits running around trying to catch students. A great time was had by all - a bonfire, effigy burning, a makeshift folk group, lots of noise, and the truly classic chasing scene. Monty Python couldn't have done it better. It was the birth of free speech at St. Thomas. Now it is time for a rebirth.
It was also a Catholic university -- DePaul University -- that denied Norman Finkelstein tenure because he supposedly has said "hurtful" things. (And BTW, he has a letter posted on his website from a peace group looking for signatories for a letter of protest regarding the Bishop Tutu incident.)
So what is going on here? Is the Catholic hierarchy now on board with that whole "Fourth World War" thing now that the pope has declared Islam a violent religion? Or perhaps they think that the Palestinian people are "hurtful" to Jews by merely existing, so anyone who acknowledges their suffering must be barred from speaking or teaching?
Or maybe they've simply decided to take their thirty pieces of silver and turn away from suffering that is inconvenient to acknowledge?
Where are the voices within the Catholic church protesting this?
Someone needs to ask St. Thomas what criteria they are basing their decisions upon.
Has it changed since Ann Coulter was invited?
If not, what was the difference between Ann Coulter, and Desmond Tutu?
Transparency is the key, and if this fine institution doesn't answer then it is clear that the decision makers know that they are not applying the same standards to all speakers.
Interestingly, the U of St. Tom quotes Tutu on its Legal Services webpage:
(http://www.stthomas.edu/ipc/legal/justice/default.html)
"Be an engineer of social justice.
The Community Justice Project offers an opportunity for students to integrate the University’s mission into their Clinic experience as they work for justice and reconciliation. Following the sub-Saharan African ideology of "ubuntu," students will focus on creating systemic changes that will further humanitarian goals. According to Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1999,
"A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.""
Ann Coulter is quoted on the Recycling Program page:
(http://www.stthomas.edu/recycle/steward.htm)
"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'
-Ann Coulter, Fox-TV: Hannity & Colmes, 20 Jun 01"
I myself find this juxtaposition revealing.
Increasingly in the US non-Jews can't publicly criticize Israel, even someone as distinquished as Archbishop Tutu. We also are not allowed to criticize the $billions in free military aid Congress and the President provide annually to Israel. Instead we are supposed to be in a permanent state of guilt over events more than 60 years ago, when many of us weren't even born. Meanwhile Palestinian who are trying to flee Iraq can't because no country, including the US, will accept them.
I believe the only real solution is to start to build trust between Palestinians and Israeli's, because no permanent peace agreement can come without that trust. As General Petraeus calls it in Iraq, working from the "ground-up" to achieve reconsolidation - rather than imposing "top-down" reconciliation as so many in Congress are furiously demanding of the Iraqi government. Therefore to me Archbishop Tutu is the type of person we ought to be listening to, not trying to suppress him.
Just to remind people what Ann Coulter has said about different topics:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.
I think our motto should be, post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'
So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.
Southerners are truly our warrior class.
If Chicago had been hit, I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York's defense. New Yorkers would have been like, 'It's tough for them; now let's go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows"
A truly despicable and offensive individual she is.
It is beyond the pale how incredibly powerful AIPAC and the pro-Isreal lobby truly is. Imagine the howls of laughter and derision if someone suggested that "USA and France (or insert random country here) goals are the same".
Boggles the mind.
This is not surprising. I bet it is multifaceted.
First, Catholics are shifting right. Just watch EWTN, no left representation. The stereotyping of Muslims, regular dialogue with Jews and none with Muslims.
Next, the economy means Universities look for funding. Those that fund can set such agendas. The problem with capitalizing things like health care and education ect.... means that they loose the nobility of the calling.
Last, the Church was hurt with its Anti-Semitic history. It does not want that reputation back again.
If not, what was the difference between Ann Coulter, and Desmond Tutu?
Taken out of context, this is hilarious.
Thanks again, Juan for linking to my post about the ZOA's manufactured Tutu smear quote.
I had no idea Coulter had spoken at St. Thomas. It's be a hoot if someone could find a tape of her remarks at the time.
I first learned of this incident from www.muzzlewatch.com, a site maintained by the Jewish Voice for Peace (http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/. Muzzlewatch describes itself as "Tracking efforts to stifle open debate about U.S.-Israel Foreign Policy."
For Muzzlewatch's coverage, see http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=257. From what Muzzlewatch reports, there was no organized campaign against Tutu by Jewish or Zionist orgnaizations. The St. Thomas administration consulted a tiny handful of Jewish "spokesmen," some of whom expressed objections to things Tutu had said, but none of whom is reported to have called for banning him. The report includes several strong statements in support of Tutu by Jewish faculty members at St. Thomas (one of them a South African anti-apartheid activist).
No private school is required to give equal time to opposing views. Furthermore, to welcome Coulter and not Tutu need not signify a double standard.
The St. Thomas authorities can base their policies on a work, "De rationibus fidei contra Saracenos," authored by the school's very own namesake. There is no defense of Islam or its adherents, since the creed knowingly denies the Gospel and the authority of the Church.
Coulter would more or less agree on the illegitimacy of Islam. She merely says it less delicately. Furthermore, she attacks liberalism as a "godless church," which parallels the sentiments of Pope Benedict. Coulter also opposes abortion and gay marriage. She may not be Catholic, but the officials may affirm that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
This is not Catholic bashing. Tutu would not be invited to speak at Jim Jones, Oral Roberts, or Liberty universities, either.
Tutu to Sabeel>...People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.
"Coulter can speak at UST. But not Desmond Tutu."
Tells you everything you need to know about the state of "liberal" academia. As if Bollinger's shameless pandering wasn't enough.
One more belated comment-
Haaretz has an editorial pointing out that the current situation in Israel and the "occupied territories" is more similar to "political apartheid" than an occupation. It is quite telling about the political realities in the US, today, that Israelis can openly ackowledge the similarities to apartheid in Israel, but Americans cannot. To simply ackowledge that self-evident truth is enough to get a professor to lose tenureship, to get a speaker barred from a college campus (by the same neocon nutjobs who hypocritically wail about the "closing of the American mind"), to kill the career of a media commentator, or to bar a polician from ever attaining high office.
Sadly, not only does this ensure that the American political and media elite remain forever a barrier to mideast peace, but it also feeds into Jewish conspiracy theories and helps to make "rising anti-semitism" a self-fulfilling prophecy -- just as basing foreign policy on a notion of a "Fourth World War" makes that war a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The Likudniks, neocons, and Christian Zionists have effectivly succeeded in conscripting the whole of America and the middle east -- perhaps the entire world -- into one mass suicide cult.
UST is one more example of why I, a formerly practicing Catholic, no longer attend Mass. There are Catholic voices that protest the war in Iraq and speak out for truth and justice for all people. Peace is supposed to be a Christian value. Evidently, donations are more important. Whatever. The Vatican pays lip service to peace, but keeps a wary eye on the deep-pocket conservative Catholics, and won't offend the golden-egg laying geese. Ann Coulter is a hate-monger, a fanatic, and a liar. If UST thinks she adds anything to their academic standing, that speaks volumes about their standards. As for Bollinger, in my opinion, he embarrassed himself and Columbia University, by his crude behavior. It reflected on him, more than it did on the Man from Iran.
The whole issue was discussed at length right here:
http://www.mnspeak.com/mnspeak/archive/post-3996.cfm
Thanks to John Koch for his thoughtful advocacy.
However, by way of counterargument, I would first state that while no private university is required to give equal time to opposing viewpoints, neither is any private university protected from public scorn when it refuses to do so. UST has the perfect right to elect whom it chooses to speak on its campus, and the perfect right to be excoriated in the public arena for its decisions.
Second, as to the existence of a double standard, I would argue that even if we put aside Tutu's status as an archbishop in determining how "Catholic-friendly" he is as a figure, the real starting point is UST's stated reason for disallowing him. He (supposedly) criticized Israel's treatment of Palestinians. If that makes him insufficiently friendly to the Jewish cause...well, UST is a *Catholic* university. If that makes him excessively intolerant of other faiths...well, see Ann Coulter. Regardless of how UST *might* have made their decision in a consistent manner, they have not in fact one so.
I think that Fr. Dease's decision to not invite Archbishop Tutu was a mistake, which needs to be corrected.
Ann Coulter, however, was not invited to speak by the University of St. Thomas. She was invited to speak by one of its student groups, The College Republicans, and her fee was paid by Young America's Foundation, not the University of St. Thomas or its student groups.
In the wake of her speech, Fr. Dease issued a statement that commented: "But the reports I have heard from people whose views I respect suggest that her performance went far beyond the bounds of what is commonly accepted as civil discourse. Although her presentation may have been meant as an “act” or “shtick” to entertain by provoking those who disagree, such behavior unfortunately contributes to the growing dark side of our culture — a disrespect for persons and their sincerely held beliefs. Such hateful speech vulgarizes our culture and goes against everything the University of St. Thomas stands for."
Fr. Dease went on to state: "What I have learned from this most recent experience is that in the future we as a community will need to work harder to nurture here a spirit of civil discourse. We need to continue to carefully examine requests to bring speakers and performers to campus in order to assure that their presentations will comply with our controversial issues statement."
I think that Fr. Dease was trying to avoid a situation like the one caused by Ann Coulter when he decided to not invite Archbishop Tutu. I don't think he intended to favor "conservative" views over "liberal" views when he made his decision.
Again, I think that he made a mistake in the case of Archbishop Tutu and I hope that he will change his position soon.
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