THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2008
NEWS
5A
PROFESSOR (CONTINUED FROM 4A)
of obligation to help." David Pierrotti said.
Joe
David's wife, Josephine, said she recalls his mother telling stories about her background — both Polish and Comanche — on "many many occasions."
Nick said that their mother was aware that Ray identified himself as Comanche and that she thought it was wrong.
"There were never any stories told around the kitchen table that we were Native American," Nick said.
Their grandmother died before Nick was born, when David was just four years old and Ray was eight-years-old. Her son Joe Orie
— uncle to the Pierotti brothers and brother of their mother — said in a phone interview with The Kansan that his mother was not Comanche. He said she was born in Natrona Heights, Penn., and lived her entire life in that area. He said his mother's parents were of Polish descent and came to the United States from Europe.
Jack Orie — cousin of Ray, Nick and David — corroborated that statement. He said he and his family were "shocked" when they heard about the claims of Comanche heritage. Ori's father, John, could not be reached for comment.
Orie said that he had not seen his nephews, the Pierotti brothers, for many years but that he talked to their mother (his sister) on the phone every few months until her death in 2003.
THE IDENTITY ISSUE:
Linda Fund, assistant director of the KU Office of Human Resources and Equal Opportunity, said that for University purposes, it was up to each individual to identify his or her ethnicity and the University did not require faculty to provide evidence.
According to the most recent survey of faculty done in Fall 2007, 11 faculty members, including three associate professors, identify as American Indian. American Indians had the smallest representation of any ethnicity out of 1,534 total faculty. The University declined to say whether Pierotti was one of the 11.
Fund said that the University did not give special consideration to applicants of a minority ethnic group, but that the University did strive to ensure that the KU campus was reflective of the population's diversity and demographic make-up.
In his statement about diversity, Provost Larivière has stated: "The community of KU reveres individual worth and dignity and believes that advocacy for diversity and inclusion is a major responsibility entrusted to all campus community members."
Marilyn Harp, executive director of Kansas Legal Services, said there was no law that made it illegal to falsely identify oneself as being
of a certain ethnicity but that people had been terminated from jobs for breaching the trust of their employers.
"Because race isn't supposed to be a factor, to say that has something to do
with his hiring and success suggests that the laws aren't working well." Harp said. "Except people are paying attention to race, which isn't supposed to be a factor."
In his article, "The Morale of Faculty, Students, and Staff under a Corporate Model: The Case of the University of Kansas," Pierotti wrote that he was only "the second Native American tenure-track faculty member at KU."
room and on grant applications and to gain support and academic acceptance for his scholarship.
He is also identified as Comanche on an annual report for a research
"Any claim that he would be getting rich off of some claim to Native American identity is ludicrous."
The Comanche Nation expressed concern to the University that Pierotti was using his claims of Comanche heritage to acquire employment-related benefits, to enhance his credibility in the class-
HEIDI MEHL Graduate student
program he led, Recruiting NATIVE American Students into Environmental Sciences, for which he and others received more than $400,000 in grant money from the
National Science Foundation. The report states: "Being of a Native American (Comanche) heritage and familiar with many of the problems faced by Native students planning careers in environmentally oriented research, Dr. Pierotti acts as a mentor ..." As of 2002, the reports for that program stated that it had helped more than 25 Native students to graduate with science
degrees from the University, some of whom went on to attend graduate school.
Mehl said she had benefited from Pierotti's grants as one of his students.
"Any claim that he would be getting rich off of some claim to Native American identity is ludicrous. I've never met two people who are more honest or more transparent," Mehl said of Pierotti and his wife, Annett. "They go out of their way to provide opportunities to students through those grants."
Mehl said Pierotti should be commended for his actions.
Abrahamson said Pierotti brought an indigenous perspective to science. Instead of looking at land as something to exploit as many do, Abrahamson said Pierotti taught his students that they were equal with nature.
Mehl said she appreciates Ray Pierotti's indigenous world view and holistic approach to sciences. Mehl said Pierotti teaches that everything is connected.
Mehl said people who are trying to reconnect with their heritage should be embraced.
But if Pierotti is not Native, he is teaching under false pretense and could be denying a job to someone who is a Native.
"They're being taught Native values by someone who isn't," Nick Pierotti said, "There are plenty of Natives that could be holding the position that my brother is in."
The question that has been raised by Nick Pierotti and others is not whether Ray Pierotti is an enrolled member of the Comanche Nation, which he is not, but rather whether he is Comanche at all.
Cornel Peeweyardy, who is a member of the Comanche Nation and taught at the University from 1996 to 2005, said that falsification of tribal identity was like identity theft.
Pewewardy said that he didn't know Ray Pierotti well but that he saw him at pow-wows for the First Nations Students Association and that they were on a committee together.
"There was all kinds of conversation," Pewewardy said about Pierotti's claims about his ethnicity. "I'm pretty sure he's not. He contends that he is."
Pewewardy said a basic element of identity is knowing who you're related to. "If nobody knows you from back home and they've never heard of you, it becomes suspect," Pewewardy said.
— Edited by Jared Duncan
WHITE HOUSE
Bush urges approval of $770 million in food-aid
BY JENNIFER LOVEN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — President Bush urged Congress Thursday to approve $770 million to help alleviate escalating food prices that threaten widespread hunger and social unrest around the world.
In a surprise midafternoon appearance at the White House, Bush announced he is asking lawmakers to approve the additional funds for global food aid and development programs. The money — to be directed primarily at needy African nations — is being included in a broader $70 billion Iraq war funding measure for 2009 that the White House sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday.
President Bush delivers a statement about food distribution Thursday in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington.
"In some of the world's poorest nations, rising prices can mean the difference between getting a daily meal and going without food," Bush said. "The American people are generous people and they're a compassionate people. We believe in the timeless truth 'to whom much is given, much is expected.'"
"America's in the lead, we'll stay in the lead and we expect others to participate along with us," he said.
The new funds are aimed at meeting immediate needs with direct shipments of food aid, and the White House said they would allow for millions more people to get help. Emergency aid accounts for $620 million of the request, said Steve McMillin, deputy director of the president's Office of Management and Budget.
The new money comes on top of $200 million Bush ordered released two weeks ago for emergency food aid. It also is in addition to a pending $350 million request for emergency food aid funds. Because the new funds are part of a 2009 budget, they wouldn't be available for distribution until the start of the fiscal year on Oct.1, even if they are approved sooner.
Even so, Bush called it "just the beginning" of the U.S. effort to help. He said the United States would spend a total of $5 billion this year and next on food aid and related programs.
The funds also have long-term aims, with $150 million aimed at boosting U.S. programs to help farmers in developing countries increase productivity and make cash purchases of local crops, so communities are less in need of emergency help in the first place.
The issue has become more urgent recently because of food shortages and rising prices that, combined with high gas costs and rising home foreclosures, are putting a huge squeeze on families at home and abroad. What has been termed the first global food crisis since World War II has resulted in cries for help from United Nations officials and raised questions about how Bush will respond.
Some have blamed the food crisis in part on Bush-backed policies that push food-based biofuels such as ethanol as alternative energy sources. Bush says diverting corn and soybeans into fuel is still a smart approach, though he favors increasing funding for research into using wood chips or switchgrass rather than food crops.
Bush's top economic adviser, Edward Lazear, said ethanol made from corn is responsible for just 2-3 percent of the overall increase
in global food prices, which are 43 percent up this year over last year.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, an active farmer and a longtime defender of ethanol, acknowledged that the corn-based fuel is "being clobbered right now" but argued
that it was a "myth" to blame farmers — or ethanol for the soaring food prices. The main factors include energy costs and trade policies to hoarding and a drought in Australia, he said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bush's announcement drew
praise from several quarters.
"Millions of people around the world may be saved from starvation if we can quickly move forward with the president's request," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. "Global aid is not only the right thing to do;
it's the smart and safe thing to do. I commend the president for his leadership."
The United States is the world's largest provider of food aid, delivering more than $2.1 billion to 78 developing countries last year.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., left, shakes hands with people as he exits the Bank Street Memorial Baptist Church in Norfolk, Va., after speaking with the congregation on Sunday.
POLITICS
Obama's rift with Wright challenges pastors
BY ERIC GORSKI ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sen. Barack Obama's break with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is putting black pastors and their congregations in a difficult position, their loyalties divided between a politician who could be the first black president and a celebrated preacher who many believe has been vilified.
The situation is complicated, ministers say, because there's a sense that both men have been treated unfairly — and that both have made mistakes.
Many black ministers defended Wright when his more incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in March, saying context was needed to understand the black church's tradition of challenging injustice.
But Wright lost some of that support after his Monday appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, during which he claimed the U.S. government was capable of planting AIDS in the
The performance was enough for Obama to denounce Wright's comments as "divisive and destructive." That was just six weeks after he portrayed Wright, in a well-received speech on race, as a family member he couldn't disown.
black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested that Obama was acting like a politician by putting his pastor at arm's length while privately agreeing with him.
"What I am disappointed in is Rev. Wright's continuing to be in the public eye," said Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, senior pastor of 6,500-member Greater Grace Temple in Detroit. "If he has a point to get across, make your point. We as ministers have to be very careful about our timing."
Another pastor in Detroit — where Wright received a standing ovation Sunday at a dinner for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — directed his anger at the Democratic senator.
The Rev. William Revely, pastor of 300-member Holy Hope Heritage Church, questioned Obama's truthfulness in claiming he had not heard some of Wright's contentious remarks from the pulpit.
"Anybody who has heard Jeremiah preach has heard that," said Revely, who has known Wright since the 1970s. "Jeremiah,
he's a pastor, and as a pastor you have to see things as they are. Politicians see things as they want them to be."
The punches and counter-punches thrown by Obama and Wright are leaving black churchgoers angry at both, said the Rev. Bennie Whiten, a retired United Church of Christ minister.
INTERNATIONAL
Al-Jazeera cameraman returns from Guantanamo
BY OMAR SINAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAIRO, Egypt — An Al-Jazeera cameraman was released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and sent home to Sudan on Thursday after six years of imprisonment that became the subject of worldwide protests.
Many of Sami al-Haj's supporters saw his imprisonment as punishment for a network whose broadcasts angered U.S. officials. The military alleged he was a courier for a militant Muslim organization, an allegation his lawyers denied.
Al-Haj was believed to be the only journalist from a major international news organization held at Guantanamo. Al-Jazeera reported he was en route to the Sudanese capital Khartoum on a U.S. military plane.
Al-Haj was seized by Pakistani
forces on December 15, 2001, apparently at the behest of the U.S. authorities who suspected he had interviewed Osama bin Laden, said Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents 35 Guantanamo prisoners including al-Haj.
But that "supposed intelligence" turned out to be false, Reprieve said in a news release.
"This is wonderful news, and long overdue," said Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's director, who has represented al-Haj since 2005. "The U.S. administration has never had any reason for holding Mr. Al Haj, and has, instead, spent six years shamelessly attempting to turn him against his employers at Al-Jazeera."
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, declined comment on the report.