Reading this announcement, I was reminded of the claim that, in order to be a "great" university -- or, perhaps, a university at all -- an institution of higher education ought to avoid constructing an identity built on stances toward the great issues of the day.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY CONFERENCE TO EXPLORE LANDMARK SCHIAVO CASE
One year later, experts discuss lessons learned, where to go from here
March 31, 2006
Boston University
A year ago in March, the Terri Schiavo case riveted the
nation. Who would decide the fate of the 41-year-old brain-
damaged Florida woman who had been languishing in a
permanent vegetative state for years: her husband, her
parents, a guardian or a judge? The debate and struggle for
control entangled state and federal courts, Florida's
legislature and governor, the U.S. Congress, the president
of the United States, and even the Vatican.
A year after Schiavo's death, Boston University's School of
Law and School of Public Health are co-sponsoring "The
Terri Schiavo Case: One Year Later," a one-day conference
that will consider the legal, medical, ethical and
political lessons learned from this epic case.
The conference will be held March 31, from 8:30 a.m. to 5
p.m., at the Boston University George Sherman Union
Auditorium, 775 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, Mass.
Conference organizer Wendy Mariner notes that the one-year
anniversary coincides with changes in both the Congress and
the U.S. Supreme Court that could dramatically affect laws
on living wills, surrogate decision-making, physician-
assisted suicide and tube feeding. "We hope this conference
will help focus and inform the critical public debate about
patient rights at the end of life," said Mariner, who is a
professor at BU's schools of law, medicine, and public
health.
U.S. Rep. Barney Frank will keynote the conference, which
will include experts who played a role in deciding,
debating, or covering the case and the issues it raised.
Frank, who represents the Massachusetts Fourth
Congressional District, led an unsuccessful but insightful
and informative floor fight in Congress against emergency
legislation that authorized federal court review of the
Schiavo case.
Frank will be joined by two others who played pivotal roles
in the case: trial court Judge George Greer, who will be
awarded the Pike Prize at the conference, and the nation's
leading expert on permanent vegetative states, Dr. Ronald
Cranford of the University of Minnesota, who examined Terri
Schiavo for the trial court and whose diagnosis of her is
considered definitive.
Also speaking at the conference will be medical ethicist
George Annas, the Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law,
Bioethics and Human Rights at BUSPH and Professor of Law at
the Boston University School of Law. Annas wrote an
influential article about the Schiavo case that appeared in
the New England Journal of Medicine two days after the
Congress passed the "Schiavo law."
CBS News Chief Legal Analyst Andrew D. Cohen, JD, who
covered the Schiavo case for CBS, will weigh in on lessons
for the media. Associate Professor of Law Allan H.
Macurdy, JD, BU School of Law, who also heads the
University's office of disability services, will discuss
competing conceptions of disability, discrimination, and
compassion as they play out in protecting the rights and
welfare of patients.
"Even the Vatican"!
I join Rick in recommending Paolo Carroza’s Op-Ed essay that appeared in the February 14th issue of the Notre Dame “Observer.” Paolo has identified some important issues that are worth exploring and discussing with students, colleagues, administrators, alumni, and friends of Catholic colleges and universities. A substantial element of his essay examines academic freedom, and he uses Mary, the Mother of God, as an illustration and appropriate model of authentic academic freedom. Of course, Notre Dame is most fortunate to bear her name. I would like to call this example of freedom that Paolo develops as freedom for. Mary was free for truth beyond herself and the confines of her mind and experience. Initially she was perplexed by the announcement Gabriel made to her, but he insisted, “do not be afraid.” That is a phrase John Paul II used throughout his over twenty-six year papacy. She responded with “here I am” (the same words used by young Samuel) to embrace the unknown from God. For the rest of her life, she was devoted to this freedom for God’s truth that was beyond her, but she pondered about these matters as she did some twelve years later when she and Joseph found the young Jesus in the temple teaching the teachers of the law. Mary continually grew in wisdom because of her freedom for it.
Paolo speaks of another kind of freedom, which I shall call the freedom from. As he says, it is the “subjection of our reason to the whims of intellectual fashion.” And how might this fashion be characterized: it is the liberty of insulation and exaggerated autonomy and loneliness described by Justice Kennedy in Casey: “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and the mystery of human life.” To borrow from Louis XIV, this deprivation of searching is based on a false claim: “le monde c’est moi.” In essence, there is adherence to a shield of which Paolo speaks whose effect is separation from rather than exposure to a truth beyond one’s self. And for the believer, this truth is God. This is the truth that Mary came to know and cherish.
A short word about the Enslerian Monologues to which Paolo and Father Jenkins have referred. Several years ago, I joined a faculty e-mail debate about the propriety of their being staged on campus. The university president stated that they would not be performed on campus. This generated an outcry amongst some vocal faculty members. I decided to wade into the debate to offer support to the president and his decision. When I identified certain problems with one particular monologue, i.e., the seduction and statutory rape by a lesbian of a thirteen year old girl in the first edition that was termed “a good rape,” I was told that I had fabricated this slanderous commentary. My defense: please read pages 72 to 75 of the Villard Books (Random House), New York 1998, ISBN 0-375-75052-5, first edition. That did not the stop harsh and uncharitable (and, dare I say, untrue) words against me for my “misogynist, fascist and callous” views that I had the temerity to announce. Apparently, I was not a member of a particular “intellectual fashion” that was characteristic of the academic freedom to which many subscribed.
I have said enough for the time being. I’ll conclude with this endorsement of academic freedom for truth, justice, and the beauty about which Paolo speaks. With this approach, we, too, can follow Mary, the seat of wisdom, and encounter God who is the ultimate truth. And then, when we reach this truth one day, surely we will be happy. This is the freedom that is the raison d’être of the Catholic college and university. Thank you, Paolo, and thank you, Rick. RJA sj
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Amy Welborn has this post about a (to me, anyway) strange debate going on in the suburbs of Glasgow, Scotland. The question, apparently, is whether the government should require a (state-supported) Catholic school to become a (state-supported) Muslim school, because most of the school's students are Muslims. Here's a blurb from the news story in The Guardian:
As the debate rages, the school's headteacher, Winifred Diver, refuses to talk to Education Guardian. But the local priest, who is also the school chaplain, Fr John Gannon, represents the school's position. "There is probably no organisation in Scotland more supportive of the notion that there should be Muslim faith schools than the Catholic church," he says. "But it may be that to poach schools is not the best way to go about it."
When Gannon was saying mass at the school recently, a number of parents interrupted the service at staggered intervals, removing 12 children. The interruption was "deliberately designed to disrupt the mass", Gannon says, and showed "gross discourtesy and contempt". He does not believe these parents were representative of most parents in the school.
Strong relationship
Gannon adds that the staff at St Albert's has built up a strong relationship with Pollokshields's Muslim community. "When parents say they want the school to become Muslim, they seem to think that the teachers would stay on, but of course that wouldn't happen," he says. "There is some serious confusion about what such a change would mean." . . .
While the proposal has caused resentment among Catholics and Sikhs, it has fed a growing sense of injustice among some Muslims. Many people, though, think faith schools are simply divisive.
Alec Macadie, an ebullient lollipop man, sees children in Pollokshields across the road on their way home from school every day. He chats to everyone - parents, children, shopkeepers - and he approves of the way the area has changed over the years. "People don't mix, though," he says. "They tolerate each other." It is for this reason that he believes children of all cultures should be educated together and that religious differences should not be allowed to divide them.
What's next? The suppression of the monasteries?
