Index

Thursday, October 11, 2007

[wvns] University Reverses Ban on Tutu

UST president says he made wrong decision, invites Tutu to campus
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota
http://www.stthomas.edu/bulletin/news/200741/Wednesday/Dease10_10_07.cfm


Father Dennis Dease, president of the University of St. Thomas, has
asked that the letter below be sent to St. Thomas students, faculty
and staff:

Dear members of the St. Thomas community,

One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it
provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a
wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds.

Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to
Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas.

I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation,
and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year
not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not
have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.

PeaceJam International may well choose to keep the alternative
arrangements that it has made for its April 2008 conference, but I
want the organization and Archbishop Tutu to know that we would be
honored to hold the conference at St. Thomas.

In any event, St. Thomas will extend an invitation to Archbishop Tutu
to participate in a forum to foster constructive dialogue on the
issues that have been raised. I hope he accepts my invitation. The
Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas has
agreed to serve as a co-sponsor of the forum, and I expect other
organizations also to join as co-sponsors.

Details about issues to be addressed will be determined later, but I
would look forward to a candid discussion about how a civil and
democratic society can pursue reasoned debate on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other emotionally charged issues.

I also want to encourage a thoughtful examination of St. Thomas'
policies regarding controversial speech and controversial speakers. In
the past, we have been criticized externally and internally when we
have invited controversial speakers to campus – as well as when we
have not. Rather than just move from controversy to controversy, might
there be a positive role that this university could play in fostering
thoughtful conversation around difficult and highly charged issues? We
also might explore how to more clearly express in our policies and
practices our commitment to civility when discussing such issues.

I have asked Dr. Nancy Zingale, professor of political science and my
former executive adviser, to oversee the planning for the forum. If
you have suggestions regarding either the topic or other participants,
please contact her at nhzingale@stthomas.edu.

I sincerely hope Archbishop Tutu will accept our invitation. I
continue to have nothing but the utmost respect for his witness of
faith, for his humanitarian accomplishments and especially for his
leadership in helping to end apartheid in South Africa.

Sincerely,

Father Dennis Dease

President

===

School drops Tutu speech, but ADL says let him speak
By Ben Harris
10/09/2007
Jewish Telegraph Agency
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/20071009adltutu.html


The Anti-Defamation League is urging the president of a Minnesota
university to invite Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak just days after
it was revealed that he had been disinvited because of fears he might
offend Jews.

===

My Favorite `Anti-Semite'
Tony Karon
http://tonykaron.com/2007/10/03/my-favorite-anti-semite/


The utterly charming thing about the Zionist Thought Police is their
apparent inability to restrain themselves, even from the very excesses
that will prove to be their own undoing. Having asked sane and
rational people to believe that Jimmy Carter is a Holocaust denier
simply for pointing out the obvious about the apartheid regime Israel
maintains in the occupied territories, the same crew now want us to
believe that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an anti-Semite. No jokes! That
was the reason cited for Tutu being banned from speaking at St. Thomas
University in Minneapolis. "We had heard some things he said that some
people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,"
explained university official Doug Hennes.

The "anti-Semitic" views Tutu had expressed were in his April 2002
speech "Occupation is Oppression" in which he likened the occupation
regime in the West Bank, based on his personal experience of it, to
what he had experienced as a black person in South Africa. He recalled
the role of Jews in South Africa in the struggle to end apartheid, and
expressed his solidarity with us through our centuries of suffering.
But then turning to the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians, he
issued an important challenge, one that might just as well have been
uttered by a Jewish biblical prophet:

"My heart aches. I say, why are our memories so short? Have our
Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they
forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their
own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound
and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares
deeply about the downtrodden?

"Israel will never get true security and safety through oppressing
another people. A true peace can ultimately be built only on justice.
We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the
corruption of young minds taught hatred; but we also condemn the
violence of military incursions in the occupied lands, and the
inhumanity that won't let ambulances reach the injured.

"The military action of recent days, I predict with certainty,
will not provide the security and peace Israelis want; it will only
intensify the hatred.

"Israel has three options: revert to the previous stalemated
situation; exterminate all Palestinians; or – and I hope this will be
the road taken – to strive for peace based on justice, based on
withdrawal from all the occupied territories, and the establishment of
a viable Palestinian state on those territories side by side with
Israel, both with secure borders.

"We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our
madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same
everywhere else in the world. South Africa is a beacon of hope for the
rest of the world. If peace could come to South Africa, surely it can
come to the Holy Land."

Tutu is absolutely right, of course, nor would those Israelis who
embody the same tradition of indivisible human rights that Tutu
personifies disagree with him.

Frankly, this case I think this case underlines precisely how absurd
the policing of discussion about Israel in the U.S. has become. As a
South African veteran of the liberation struggle, I can testify that
there are few, if any, more decent, humane, courageous and morally
unimpeachable individuals in the world than Bishop Tutu. Speaking
truth to power is what he's always done, both to the old regime in
South Africa as much as to the new, when the latter has failed to live
up to the standards it professes on AIDS, crime and other issues.
He has spoken forcefully on human rights struggles around the world,
and his statements about the West Bank are based on what he has seen
there. The diminutive Bish is a moral giant of our times, and the fact
that he is condemning Israel for maintaining an apartheid system on
the West Bank should serve as a wake-up call to liberal Americans who
prefer not to think about these things. Yes, of course Bishop Tutu
makes people uncomfortable; that's what he's always done, like a good
cleric, challenging his flock to consider their own actions and
omissions against the morality they profess to embrace. Instead,
thanks to the atmosphere created by the right-wing nationalists of
AIPAC and the ADL etc., many mainstream institutions would now prefer
to shoot the messenger, if only to avoid incurring the wrath of those
who have stripped the very term "anti-Semitic" of its meaning (by
using it as a bludgeon in defense of behavior utterly abhorrent in the
Jewish tradition as much as anything else), and as such, commit a
great crime against Jews and Judaism.

Not that Tutu would have been surprised by this clumsy attack on him.
As he said in that Boston speech,

"But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli
government is placed on a pedestal [in the U.S.], and to criticize it
is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were
not Semitic. I am not even anti-white, despite the madness of that
group. And how did it come about that Israel was collaborating with
the apartheid government on security measures?

"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.

"Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are
powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the
powerful: What is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the
voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.

"We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people
of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace
based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to
achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to
live amicably together as sisters and brothers."

Tutu is challenging American institutions to put morality above the
power of a lobby. (Yes, I know he called it "the Jewish lobby" and I
don't think of it as that; I think of it as a rightwing Likudnik lobby
open to right-wing jingoists of every religious and ethnic stripe who
share the Likudnik vision, but then again, I can understand Tutu's
confusion here, because it's not as if any mainstream Jewish
institutions have stepped forward and said no, these people who would
suppress honest discussion of Israel speak only for themselves, not
for the Jews…)

More power to him.

Postscript: Seems that even the likes of the ADL realize that when
they're seen to be trying to gag someone like Bishop Tutu, they're
destroying their own credibility in the eyes of many Jews. Not least
in response to the efforts of the good people of Muzzlewatch, it seems
that the university has reversed itself and restored Tutu's
invitation, with the support of even the ADL.

===

Archbishop Tutu's Inquisition
By Tristen Taylor
Umzabalazo we Jubilee
South Africa


On the 3rd of October 2007, the administration of St. Thomas
University in Minnesota, USA refused to allow Archbishop Desmond Tutu
to speak to students at a Peace Jam International conference. The
President of St. Thomas University, Father Dease, indicated that it
was because of the Arch's allegedly anti-Semitic remarks on Israel.
Allowing the Arch to speak would cause harm, according to Father
Dease, to the Jewish Community.

St. Thomas University's decision is not only hurtful, it is baseless
and an act of repression against all Africans. For decades and despite
serious illness, the Arch has been a tireless campaigner for Africa's
poor and dispossessed and has consistently stood up for moral truths.
His efforts to eradicate the scourge of Southern Debt have been an
inspiration for Africans across the continent. He is a Nobel Peace
Prize laureate, and a patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa.

Given the Arch's non-violent commitment to human rights, peace and
economic justice, why on earth would St. Thomas declare him persona
non grata? On the basis, apparently, of a speech given by the Arch in
Boston, USA in 2002. The Arch rightly pointed out that the occupation
of Palestine was brutal, against God's teachings, and reminded him of
life under Apartheid. He said, "People are scared in this country [the
US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very
powerful. Well, so what? 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,
Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the
dust."

From this quote, the ultra-right Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA)
deducted that the Arch was anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, and considered
Israel to be the same as Nazi Germany. The ZOA, in 2002, then called
for all academic institutions in America to boycott the Arch. It seems
that the private and Catholic St. Thomas University was listening.

Declaring Archbishop Tutu to be anti-Semitic is like stating the world
is flat. Steve Miller, the chair of the UK Jewish Social Justice
Coalition, said in a recent letter to Father Dease of St. Thomas that,
"So, while I appreciate your sensitivity to the Jewish community, I
fear that your conclusion on this occasion is misguided. Archbishop
Tutu is a fearless campaigner on behalf of the poor and oppressed and
we should all be willing to hear his views and to facilitate
opportunities for students – tomorrow's leaders - also to hear his
views and be inspired by his work."

Father Dease and St. Thomas University are sticking with their
position despite screams of protest across the globe; speakers at St.
Thomas are not allowed to cause potential harm to religious
communities. Unless, of course, the speaker happens to be a blonde
American of a particularly right-wing persuasion.

Ann Coutler was welcomed to St. Thomas two years ago to speak to
students. Ms. Coulter, for those who don't know, is the poster girl
for conservative America. Two days after the 11th of September 2001,
Ms. Coulter wrote a column for the National Review Online. Her
subject? How Christian America should relate to Islamic countries. She
said, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and
convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating
and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed
German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

In the same article, Ms. Coulter compares Muslims living in the USA to
Nazi storm troopers; "People who want our country destroyed live here,
work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport
shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the
Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World
War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty."

So here's the moral compass of Father Dease and the rest of the
administrators at St. Thomas: It is NOT okay for an African Nobel
Peace Prize laureate and man of the cloth to speak about the plight of
the poor, dispossessed and victims of wars. It IS okay to have an
anti-Muslim, white American preach death and hatred.

By this rationale, Nelson Mandela would also not be allowed to speak
at St. Thomas. President Mandela, in his 1998 address to the
Non-Aligned Movement, said, "We remain gravely concerned about the
situation in the Middle East, especially the positions taken by the
Netenyahu administration in Israel, which has blocked progress towards
a just and peaceful solution, including the formation of a sovereign
state of Palestine. The international community, and the United States
in particular, has a responsibility to ensure that this matter is
addressed expeditiously."

Eugene Terreblanche would be welcome.

The banning of Archbishop Tutu is an example of the war against
progressive voices within the North. This is contrary to the South's
interests. While the global South has paid in current dollars a
cumulative total of $7.673 trillion in external debt service since
1979, its debt has increased from $618 billion in 1980 to $3.150
trillion in 2006. Africa's repayments to the North during this time
were $675 billion. Half of this amount would have eradicated hunger on
the continent.

Desmond Tutu has been an outspoken advocate for debt cancellation and
the redirection of debt repayments to social services. When
universities like St. Thomas reject individuals like the Arch, they
close down debate on issues like debt and the economic subjugation of
our continent. They are not silencing Desmond Tutu, they are silencing
the collective howl of all Africans.

To the South African Government, we urge that you make a formal
complaint on this matter. To the Vatican, we urge that it admonishes
clergy like Father Dease for their lack of social and moral
conscience. To the administration of St. Thomas, you owe all of Africa
an apology.

If you would like email Father Dease to protest against his banning of
the Archbishop Tutu, you can email him at DJDEASE@stthomas.edu

And, if you do email him, you might want to mention that the
Inquisition ended in 1834. The administration at St. Thomas doesn't
seem to have received that particular memo.

Umzabalazo we Jubilee is an activist, grassroots based, not for profit
organization struggling for the total cancellation of Third World
Debt, the payment of reparations, the abolishment of neoliberal
economic systems, and the social transformation of South African society.

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