On the surface at least--and perhaps all the way down--it seems as if the powers-that-be at the University of St. Thomas have made a monumentally stupid decision. Read on ...
Chronicle of Higher Education
Thursday, October 4, 2007
A Minnesota University's Decision Not to Invite Archbishop Tutu as a Speaker
Brings Disappointment
The University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, has declined an opportunity to
invite Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at a conference next spring, spurring
disappointment and outrage among faculty members and affiliated university
groups. The university says it was concerned about past comments from the South
African civil-rights leader that some people considered anti-Semitic. [Archbishop Tutu has been critical of some policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians. --mp]
Each year the university co-sponsors a spring conference with PeaceJam, an
international organization for young people that promotes justice and peace. The
group invites Nobel Peace Prize laureates to speak to young people, and
Archbishop Tutu, winner of the 1984 prize, had been approached about appearing
next spring.
But when university administrators learned of that proposal, they declined to
invite him, withdrawing a major source of support for the appearance. And a St.
Thomas professor who sent a letter to Archbishop Tutu explaining the
university's stance and expressing her disapproval of the decision was stripped
of her title as chair of the institution's Justice and Peace Studies Program
this summer. University administrators confirmed the demotion of Cris Toffolo,
an associate professor of political science, but gave no details other than to
say it had to do with the situation concerning Archbishop Tutu.
In explaining the decision not to invite Archbishop Tutu to speak, Doug E.
Hennes, St. Thomas's vice president for university and government relations,
said the South African clergyman had never been officially booked. He said that
interest in inviting the archbishop to speak had been brought to the
administration, which then conducted its customary screening and background
checks for speakers at conferences of that size. University officials talked to
Jewish contacts inside and outside the university, he said, and determined they
did not want to promote someone whose presence could offend people of Jewish
faith.
"We didn't want to use our financial resources and space and facilities and
personnel to bring someone here who has said things that were hurtful to the
Jewish community," said Jim Winterer, director of the university's news service.
"We didn't want to contribute to that hurt."
The university's failure to support Archbishop Tutu's speech is disappointing
for some. Ms. Toffolo, the professor who lost her position leading as the
peace-studies program, saw the issue as reflecting a larger problem in society.
"We've seen people being denied tenure elsewhere, hires tested, and
conferences canceled when people raise criticism of Israeli state policy. We
have to have this debate," Ms. Toffolo said. "Until we stop silencing speech
about this subject, the academy is going to be in trouble. This is one issue
where academic freedom is compromised."
PeaceJam, which is planning to go forward with Archbishop Tutu's speech with
alternative financial support, hopes officials at St. Thomas might change their
minds. The university "should invite the archbishop to their campus and engage
in a dialogue and debate," said Ivan Suvanjieff, president of PeaceJam. "The man
is not anti-Semitic. I encourage the university to invite him and do the
debate."
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Michael Novak’s writings on economics, Catholic social thought, and theology were a major influence in my journey to Catholicism. So his seriously misguided critique of the MOJ statement on the situation at Ave Maria law school saddens me greatly. Yet, it must not go unnoticed. I offer a detailed critique on my personal blog.
As Rob has already told us, Michael Novak (for whom I have great admiration) has an essay up at National Review online, in which he is critical of the Mirror of Justice joint statement on the situation at Ave Maria School of Law. In that essay, though, Mr. Novak does not link to the Mirror of Justice statement he is criticizing. Instead, he links to a statement -- which was re-published at MOJ -- by members of the Ave Maria faculty. I have asked the good folks at the National Review website to add a link to the MOJ statement.
Here's a paper -- "Faith in the Rule of Law", by Marc Degirolami, that should be of interest to many MOJ readers (especially to those of us in the law's Quandary fan club):
This is an essay on Professor Brian Tamanaha's book, Law as a Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2006), and what Tamanaha describes as the danger that legal instrumentalism poses for the rule of law. It claims that though Tamanaha successfully traces the rise of legal instrumentalism over the last two centuries, the reader comes away wondering why Tamanaha seems so fretful about the strength of belief in the rule of law or what accounts for the desire to affirm a non-instrumentalist view of law in the face of the contrary march of history.
The essay offers an answer to these questions. It claims that one source of resistance to the seemingly inexorable progress of legal instrumentalism lies in the non-rational, temporally unbounded human yearning that the rules that guide our lives should deserve our allegiance because they represent a transcendent structure of meaning. Our opposition to legal instrumentalism reflects “faith in the rule of law,” a belief that the law is something other than merely a means to resolve our ordinary conflicts, and that it bestows worth and possibility to its adherents beyond their historical context.
Drawing from Tamanaha's excellent history of the rise of legal instrumentalism, the essay reinterprets what Tamanaha repeatedly emphasizes as the crucial contemporary instrumentalist danger – our growing inability or unwillingness to believe that the law is anything but a tool to advance interest – as loss of faith in the rule of law. The essay thus offers a counterpoint to Professor Adrian Vermeule's reading of the book, arguing that Vermeule may be mistaken in analogizing Tamanaha's thesis to a kind of secularized Pascal's wager. The essay concludes by considering whether there is any value in faith in the rule of law and what that value might be.
