University Daily Kansan, March 28, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas, USPS 604/400 is published at the University of Kansas, Kansas Staffer Flint Hall Law, Kan. 604/511 daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and final periods. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kan. 604/414 Subscriptions by mail are for $15 or six months on a $2年 in Douglas County and $15 for six months or $2 each in Wichita Falls County. Mail orders to PUNSTER. Send address changes to the University Daily Kansas, 181 Staffer Flint Hall Law, Kan. 604/511
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On divestment
When an issue of moral imperative is clouded by incomplete and conflicting evidence, decision makers have only one place to turn — their own judgment.
only one place where the University of Kansas Endowment Association should divest from companies that do business with South Africa is such an issue.
Despite divestment by many U.S. organizations, the situation in South Africa has, if anything, become worse. And even if the entire American business community renounced South Africa and pulled out, it is doubtful the nation's policy would change significantly. The relatively small amount an investor like the Endowment Association has in South Africa would hardly be missed. The value of divestment as a political tool is dubious.
prioritize. From an economic standpoint, some attempts at divestment have been costly; others have been profitable.
When the University of Wisconsin divested nearly $10 million in stocks and bonds in 1978 it lost $420,000. But one year later Michigan State University divested $7.2 million and made a $2 million profit.
To put it bluntly, scant evidence exists that divesting would help foster change in South Africa, and the process of divesting is a gamble that could cost the Endowment Association thousands of dollars.
Association includes And yet the South African government and its system of apartheid cries out to be rebuked and rejected, no matter how small the jesture or costly the outcome. It is here where judgment must come into play and where the muddled examples of past attempts at divestment be set aside. Despite the obstacles, the Endowment Association must be compelled to divest from companies that do business in South Africa.
No where in the world does a government more brutally and systematically suppress its people. South Africa's policy of apartheid segregates blacks and whites and creates a rigid class system. Civil and human rights simply don't exist for blacks, who make up 75 percent of the population but have no voice in government.
Last weekend's riots were another example of South Africa's tragedy. Police opened fire on crowds of rioting blacks. Nineteen blacks were killed and hundreds were arrested.
Today there will be a forum on the Endowment Association's ties to South Africa at 3:30 p.m. in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union.
Among other items, the forum will discuss a report compiled by the Human Rights Committee of the University Senate that points out many complexities of the divestment issue.
Because the Endowment Association is a corporation separate from the University, it would not be required to divest if a University governing body passed a resolution calling for divestment.
A university is a place of learning and a place where ideas are generated. Divesting, though perhaps futile and potentially a risk, carries a clear message that needs to be heard. South Africa must change.
Press on, YAF
Although the Student Senate Finance Committee did not recommend allotting $9,500 to the Young Americans for Freedom to bring a conservative speaker to campus, YAF should press on with its request.
should press on with its request. Not that the finance committee was wrong to deny YAF the funds. The cost of bringing a speaker of the caliber and reputation of Jeane Kirkpatrick, William F. Buckley Jr. or George Will is too high to be part of an organization's annual budget request.
Requests for large sums of money for speakers should go through the channels already set up — first the Student Senate University Affairs Committee, then the finance committee and finally the full Senate.
YAF's request came in response to Alpha Phi Alpha's approved request for funds to bring Louis Farrakhan, who is speaking tonight in Hoch Auditorium.
In his presentation to the finance committee, Victor Goodpasture, YAF's president, said, "Farrakhan is coming. We think people from the opposite political spectrum would give more balance."
give more balance.
Whether Kirkpatrick, Buckley or Will would balance Farrakhan is open to debate, but Goodpasture is right about the importance of balance.
the importance of balance. The Student Senate — in its committees and as a whole bears a great responsibility in determining that balance. The present first-come, first-served process of considering speakers makes balancing difficult.
speakers make a special fund for speakers should be set up, and all campus groups and individuals interested in bringing speakers should apply at one time during a semester or year.
The need for balance is great, but Student Senate should not avoid controversy in its attempt to secure it. Instead, it should take heed of John Milton, who in 1644 wrote:
"Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making."
What would mv black brother think?
Ironically, the University of Kansas' invitation to Louis Farrakhan coincided with the 20th anniversary celebration of the historic Selma to Montgomery voting rights march in Alabama.
Twenty years ago I was invited to Selma as part of an "advanced guard" of white civil rights activists. A massive assault by Selma police had just aborted the first march. Our role was to be a model to other whites, particularly white clergy, with the hope of inducing them to come to Selma in support of another march. Martin Luther King Jr. had frequently referred to Sunday church services as "America's most segregated hour." Perhaps the violence at Selma would unleash the conscience of the white ministry.
Coalitions are formed by necessity, not charity. Jews understood that pre-World War II American Jews fanned the teachings of Jewish deicide, conditioned official U.S. policy of non-intervention. After the war, a renewal of anti-Semitism coupled with a startling upsure of racist killings of blacks, led Jews to conclude that black freedom also meant Jewish freedom and newfound the freedom of all U.S. citizens.
Not surprisingly, most of the "white models" already in Selma were Jews. Starting in 1946, Jewish veterans of World War II, myself included, worked the white neighborhoods of northern cities and the deep South in coalition with blacks on behalf of a subversive concept, civil rights. Usually we were run up with occasional fights and battles. Those were the years of the interacial "Gideon's army, small in number, mighty in spirit."
Two black high school students met me when my evening flight
Norman Forer
Guest Columnist
During the next few days, more whites and more clerical collars tricked into Selma. There were now enough of us to mount a white demonstration outside the home of Selma's mayor. A few black insisted on joining us, knowing the risk to them would far exceed the risk to us. The vigilantes came in with clubs. Police and aid took up its place and locked an empty warehouse while mobs boiled in the street, threatening to "burn out niggers and communist Jews."
arrived at Montgomery airport. During the drive to Selma they spoke of recent police vigilante attacks against the movement. There had been two killings of civil rights activists, one black and one white.
Later that afternoon, a large group of blacks joined us in the warehouse. They had been attacked as they demonstrated in another part of Selma. Some were incarcerated. The overflow was "escorted" to the warehouse.
At nightfall the vigilantes and police withdrew. The dark streets appeared empty "it's a trap." we looked out, "we've posted lookouts at the windows."
books.
Inside, cigarette lighters and matches burned in the darkness. There was a sense of a rare moment unfolding. Blacks and whites, Jews and Christians, Southerners and Northerners, the poor and the middle class were now forced to confront each other, not as social abstractions but as human beings merged by a common danger. We talked increasingly confident of a victory to come.
I think now of Louis Farrakhan.
I think also of a somber, battered middle-aged black man in overalls who sat beside me on the warehouse floor and said comfortably, as if it were I and not he, who were bleeding. "All right now, brother."
What would my black brother now think of a black leader whose ideology is little different from those raceist police and vigilantes who had clubbed him? What would he think of an ideology which supports segregation, a virulent and chronic anti-Semitism and elimination of opponents? Who could forget Farrakhan's denunciation of Malcolm X as a "traitor" when Malcolm began teaching the brotherhood of all races, and Farrakhan's subsequent organizational implication in Malcolm's assassination?
What would he think of an ideology which is hostile to a free press, to black participation in the political process and to trade unions and public education?
wound my black brother despair of Farrakhan as a sick recreation of Uncle Tom as I despair of his Jewish equivalent, Uncle Jake, a Jew who still mourns that I think he would be dismayed, as I am, by the tragic failure of people to learn from their past struggles.
what would my black brother think if Farrakhan told him that all the whites in the warehouse were "mutants, created by the mad scientist Yacob on the island
of Patmos," and that we Jews in the warehouse had "pushed him out front to fight" so we could "use black people as cannon fodder"
What would my black brother think of his movement's struggle to open the University to black students and faculty only to see both, in time, grow indifferent to the needs of the black community. Where were you, black students and faculty, in the many stuggles for racial justice in Lawrence? I was there. Jewes were there. And of course, the black poor are always there. Where were you?
I think Farrakhan has a certain utility for those who seek to evade the dilemmas of being black in a white-dominated society. Through his espousal of black separatism, he soothes the opportunist, the fearful and those of confused identity that they can be liberated without confronting institutional racism.
Perhaps my black brother in Selma would have the nobility to forgive the silence and hence the tacit consent of the black community at the University of Kansas. I am not capable of such grace, at least for now. The murder of my people by the white Farrakhans of Europe is too overwhelming to make a virtue of forgiveness. Redemption for us all will only come from our willingness to rebuild the promise of that night in the Selma warehouse.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Norman Forer is an associate professor of social welfare and has been at the University for 15 years.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Liberal financing?
In reference to David Klassen's letter to the Kansan on March 21, I would like to clarify a few points. The KU Democrats have never received money from the Student Senate, nor do we ever plan to ask for financing.
To the editor:
Hence my confusion as to Klassen's remark that Chancellor Gene A. Budig was spending money on our group, as well as others, all of which strangely enough are perceived as liberal by Klassen.
Also, Budig has no influence on the Senate budget, and I do not consider Louis Farrakhan to be a liberal by any means. I do wonder why Klassen forget to mention that Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing, conservative, extremist group, receives $144 of student money, though they are every bit as political as the KU Democrats.
I can only conclude that Klassen defines responsible spending of student money as giving only to those with whom he agrees.
Kirstin Mvers
president, KU Democrats Shawnee sophomore
Who's confused?
In his March 18 letter to the University Daily Kansan, Douglas Stallings is severely critical of a tract on homosexuality put by the New Life Christian Fellowship.
In an apparent fit of righteous indignation, Stallings accuses New Life of being deceitful, confused and narrow-minded in its assessment of homosexual behavior. However, an analysis of Stallings' letter reveals that it is indeed he who is deceived, confused and narrow-minded when it comes to discussing his own aberrant sexuality.
To the editor:
For instance, Stallings takes new Life to task for claiming that homosexuals contemplate and attempt suicide far more frequently than heterosexuals. He calls this claim "an out-and-out lie." He goes on: "There is no scientific evidence even to suggest that homosexuals can suffer from this, and I challenge anyone to provide hard, scientific proof that this statement is true."
I'm sorry to disappoint Stallings, but here's the proof. In a 1983-84 survey of more than 5,000 adults from
Or the judgment of the APA Stallings? Such pious malarkey does not hide the fact that God has already declared his thoughts on homosexuals
Another example of Stallings' folly: He ridicules New Life for calling homosexuality a "learned disorder." His reason? Because "the American Psychiatric Association no longer considers homosexuality a disorder." Stallings concludes for us that homosexuality is normal because a bunch of psychiatrists say it is so.
Twenty-seven percent of male heterosexuals vs. 46 percent of gay men, and 34 percent of female heterosexuals vs. 56 percent of lesbians reported contemplating suicide at least once. Five percent of straight males vs. 19 percent of gay men and 10 percent of heterosexual females vs. 21 percent of lesbians reported at least one suicide attempt.
Yet later in his letter, we are assaulted with this pontification: "I say let God judge. I'm willing to trust his judgment a lot sooner than I trust the judgment of those in New Life Christian Fellowship."
six major metropolitan areas, the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality found that homosexuals much more frequently contemplated and attempted suicide.
In Leviticus 18:22, he calls homosexual acts degrading and unnatural. In 1 Corinthians 8:9-10, we are told that homosexuals shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Finally, we should remember what God did to Sodom and Gomorrah, even though Stallings has apparently forgotten.
Stallings' complaint that New Life "leaves no room for those who do not mimic the majority" is, of course, bogus and hypocritical. The whole point of his letter is to challenge people in a way that the prevailing modern opinion calls to homosexuality an acceptable "alternative lifestyle."
It is Stallings who has no room in his world for the minority of people who are still willing to believe that the Bible is true and that homosexuality is wrong. But heaven forbid that we ever differ with the American Psychiatric Association, eh, Stallings?
Joe Vusich Lawrence resident