Since the issue has come up on the blog, and since it touches on aspects of a Catholic university's identity, readers might be interested in a letter from 18 members of the St. Thomas (Minnesota) law faculty to university president Fr. Dennis Dease and vice-president for academic affairs Thomas Rochon, criticizing the university's recent decision to veto an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at St. Thomas as part of a youth conference on peacemaking. The signers include the St. Thomas contingent on MOJ.
October 8, 2007
Dear Father Dease and Dr. Rochon,
We are members of the School of Law faculty with a variety of political and religious perspectives. We write in our capacity as faculty of the University of St. Thomas and with respect for the leadership you provide the University. We are concerned by the recent decision to veto an invitation to Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at St. Thomas. We urge you to reconsider this decision and to join in inviting Abp. Tutu to speak in the Twin Cities.
In general, the appearance at UST of a Nobel-Peace-Prize winner, a major figure in the nonviolent movement against apartheid, would be a magnificent opportunity for the University community. Although the conference at which Abp. Tutu would speak is sponsored by an outside group, without a doubt his appearance here would benefit UST students, faculty, and staff, and enhance the University’s reputation as a place engaged in dialogue with figures of international distinction. We are distressed at the rejection of this opportunity, and especially at the rationale that the administration has publicly asserted: that the University should not host a speaker who, in comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has said things that are offensive or “hurtful to members of the Jewish community.”
At the outset, we note that the asserted rationale here is not that Abp. Tutu has been invited to speak directly to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his appearance at UST. Rather, the administration’s rationale, that he has made statements that are hurtful to some on other occasions, reflects a far more restrictive attitude toward hosting speakers who are distinguished but in some way controversial.
To reject a distinguished speaker based on worries that his words may cause hurt or offense to some is entirely at odds with the search for truth that should characterize a Catholic university. Speech taking positions on controversial subjects will often be offensive or hurtful to some people. Nevertheless, a Catholic university should be willing to open itself to such speech – and criticisms of that speech – in order to learn the truth. Only with such an approach can a university carry out its mission of “consecrat[ing] itself without reserve to the cause of truth” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae ¶4 (our emphasis)). To give controlling weight to worries about hurt or offense cannot be reconciled with the University’s charge to pursue “all aspects of truth . . . without fear but rather with enthusiasm, dedicating itself to every path of knowledge” (id.). We could easily cite secular academic norms as well, for in this case they harmonize with Catholic norms.
That an otherwise distinguished speaker should be rejected because he has made statements on disputed political issues that hurt or offend some people is a principle of breathtaking scope. Under this rationale, it appears, the University would refuse to invite former President Jimmy Carter or Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to speak on any matter of human rights or public affairs. Proposals for speakers who have worthwhile ideas but are less well known might fare even worse under this calculus.
We recognize that Abp. Tutu has spoken on a broad range of issues, and that his opinions do not always comport with the views of the Catholic Church. However, Abp. Tutu was to receive no award, honor, or generalized endorsement from the University; and his views on issues other than those he has been invited to address simply are not relevant in this particular case.
We urge that the administration issue Abp. Tutu an invitation in connection with the Peacejam conference, and in the absence of an invitation, that the University issue a statement acknowledging that it was a mistake to reject the invitation on the ground that has been offered.
Respectfully,
Ann Bateson, Thomas Berg, Elizabeth Brown, Teresa Collett, Robert Delahunty, Neil Hamilton, Robert Kahn, Joel Nichols. Julie Oseid, Charles Reid, Elizabeth Schiltz, Gregory Sisk, Susan Stabile, Scott Taylor, Robert Vischer, Fr. Reginald Whitt, Virgil Wiebe, Jennifer Wright
At Balkinization, Dan Kahan describes the findings of a study, by he and others at Yale Law School's Cultural Cognition Project, trying to pinpoint ways in which people's cultural predispositions affect their perceptions of facts. The project of untangling these two where possible is relevant to all of us who in some way address "culture wars" disputes, since those are often are complicated by disputes over the facts. This study focuses on people's perceptions of expert opinions on facts:
Of course, it shouldn’t come as news to anyone that people tend to listen to policy experts they find knowledgeable and trustworthy, particularly on relatively novel issues that turn on uncertain empirical claims. But our study helps to reveal what makes ordinary people find experts credible: an affinity between the experts’ perceived cultural values and their own. This finding too shouldn't come as a shock, yet it's a truth that is consistently missed by many public policy advocates, who tend to assume that all they need to do to persuade the public on some risk issue (global warming, gun control, etc.) is amass reams of evidence from people whose authority derives solely from their technical training and expertise.
According to Kahan, the study suggests that cultural polarization over the facts can be reduced
if those interested in a constructive and educational discussion of [an] issue take care to assure that members of the public perceive that there are policy experts of diverse values on both sides of the debate.
Tom
Thursday, October 4, 2007
My colleague Teresa Collett asked me to post her thoughts on this.
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The reason given by the University administration to not participate in the invitation to Desmond Tutu is both baffling and frustrating. As someone who has followed (and is active in) the international politics of abortion, I am well aware of Anglican Archbishop Tutu's public support of the availability of abortion and contraception. I am equally aware, however, of his public efforts to encourage the elevation of Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze to Pope, prior to the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Arinze's staunch support for the Church's teachings on sexual morality and the Culture of Life is well known.
I would have been surprised and pleased, but in disagreement, with the administration if it had announced that it would not participate in a joint invitation to Archbishop Tutu due to the possibility that he would use PeaceJam as a platform for advocating the availability of abortion and contraception.
Surprised and pleased because the University was taking seriously Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the 2004 statement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops "Catholics in Political Life." The bishops are quite clear that "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." This prohibition is most commonly understood in the context of giving honorary degrees to speakers supporting abortion and euthanasia, although some faculty at Boston College invoked its terms to argue against inviting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the graduation speaker.
Yet, ultimately, I would disagree with the administration's decision not to offer our students the opportunity to hear this spiritual warrior for peace. There is nothing publicly available that indicates that Archbishop Tutu has been invited to (or intends to) focus his remarks on advocating the international drive to recognize abortion as a human right. The public record is equally barren of any evidence that he is going to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the public reason given for our administration's position. Instead what is available suggests that Archbishop Tutu will share his experiences regarding the great personal costs of combating injustice with love. This is a lesson we all need to hear as often as possible.
Our university should be willing to risk incidental remarks that may scandalize the faithful, while prudently guiding the procedural aspects of the conference to minimize this possibility. Certainly we should know the focus of the Archbishop's remarks in advance, and refuse to offer a platform for the advocacy of intrinsic evils like abortion and genocide. We also should encourage the inclusion of prominent speakers who are sympathetic to the Church's teaching that abortion is a fundamental violation of human rights. What we should not do is refuse to offer a platform to a speaker who is seeking to advocate the intrinsic good of a just peace, and has an incidental controversial opinion on a matter properly characterized as a prudential judgment.
Teresa Stanton Collett
Professor of Law
In response to Michael's post about the decision at St. Thomas to nix an invitation to Archbishop Tutu: All of us MOJers here at St. Thomas have just learned of the decision (although it apparently happened in the spring), and I can say with confidence that we (and many others on our law faculty) think it was very mistaken. Nothing we've learned in investigation today has led us to think otherwise. We will certainly be making efforts to express those criticisms, in public where appropriate, or in private to a university administration that we respect and whose judgment on many other issues has been sound.
Tom B.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Following up on Rick's post about the new version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA): I joined with the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom this week to submit written testimony to the House Education and Labor Committee objecting to the narrow (and as Rick observes, substantially narrowed) religious exemption in the bill. The analysis parallels that in Rick's post. The concern is not with the general idea of prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (which, speaking for myself, I believe can be warranted in a range of circumstances as a matter of justice or prudence); it's with the lack of a meaningful exemption. A summary quote from our analysis: "Without substantial exemptions, the effect of this bill will be to pressure and marginalize those organizations and religious adherents who hold [the view that homosexual conduct is immoral], not to promote the diversity that ENDA's proponents claim to affirm."
Tom
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Continuing with book suggestions, I thought I'd recommend a couple that I've read this summer:
Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi. These finely wrought short stories all deal with the lives of Indian immigrant families and their American-born children, primarily in the Boston area. But as with much excellent literature, the author uses her immersion in this particular setting to bring to the surface universal themes: and not just the familiar immigrant tension between traditional and American cultures. In many of the stories, characters are trapped by some sort of pride (the fundamental sin, we Christians say) and can only become free by letting their pride go and, in several cases, forgiving. The story "Lord Krishna" is the only piece of serious [CORRECTION: serious modern] fiction I know dealing with a church-and-state dispute.
The Age of Abundance by Brink Lindsey. This history of postwar American culture and politics is full of arresting quotes and revealing statistics, and it's a very enjoyable read. Its theme is the rippling effect on America of our sudden, unprecedented material prosperity after World War II. (One powerful tidbit of evidence: in the mid-1950s "[t]he average teenager's income of $10.55 a week now matched the disposable income of the typical American family in the early 1940s" (emphasis in original).) He traces prosperity's ties to lots of things that created the context in which we explore legal theory today: the 60s social revolution, the counterreaction of conservative religion, the resulting culture wars, and the overall trend in America toward libertarianism both moral and economic. It's more a survey than a deep analysis, and Catholic thinkers will want to resist, in varying ways, the libertarian logic that the author finds inevitable (and, as an official at the Cato Institute, celebrates). But the book organizes an awful lot of American life -- politics, religion, business, sexual mores, popular music -- into a highly readable narrative.
Tom
