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OPINION
Page 4
Sunday, February 6, 1983
The Michigan Daily
4
Divestment, registration:
HE DEBATE over whether the University
fshould sell off its investments in South
Africa heated up this past week. Longtime foe
of divestment, Thomas Roach declared he and
his fellow Regents are not "subservient" to the
state legislature, which is trying to force the
university to divest.
Meanwhile, in a relatively obscure faculty
comrmittee charged with recommending
Resisting law
and industry and the future of the Pentagon's
presence on campus.
Looking the other way
University policy on the subject, at least two
Mnembers were worried about another kind of
Wdbservience - that of blacks to the South
kArican government that practices apartheid.
-.These critics ask where the University's
s&6ial conscience is when it invests companies
sikh as Ford Motor Company and Inter-
hational Telephone and Telegraph. These com-
panies provide implicit support for South
Africa's racist policies by operating there, they
charge. The legislature has agreed and enacted
a law under its civil rights and police powers
equiring state supported colleges to divest.
:ut Roach claimed American companies can
lea positive force in the racist nation by prac-
t4ing progressive employment practices.
0 "mmittee chairman Thomas Gies went even
ther,arguing the Regents' responsibility is
ther to the legislature nor even its social
science, but to- uphold the value of the
Americans, not to comply with the gover-
nment's draft registration efforts. Friday, he
became one of only 14 violators to face federal
prosecution since the registration guidelines
were enacted.
Rutt's attorneys entered a "not guilty" plea
in the Detroit court case, arguing that their
client had been unlawfully singled out. "It is
clear that the decision to prosecute was made
at the highest level," said Rutt's attorney,
Dennis James of the American Civil Liberties
Union. "It was a political decision."
James and his fellow attorney Jim Lafferty
plan to follow the line of defense used by David
Wayte, a California non-registrant. Wayte's
case was thrown out when federal officials
refused to hand over documents Wayte's attor-
neys said would prove the justice department
was pursuing selective prosecution.
There were no card-burning demonstrations
this time around, and only 50 supporters rallied
outside the courtroom in Rutt's defense.
Said the Hope College senior, "I'm guilty in
the sense I disobeyed a law written on a little
piece of paper, but in the eyes of God I'm in-
nocent."
Another piece of paper set bail at $1000;
resistance isn't cheap these days.
Veep calls it quits
THE ANNOUNCEMENT had been antici-
pated for more than a year by many ad-
ministration insiders, but it wasn't until last
Tuesday that Charles Overberger, 62, resigned
as the University's vice president for research.
The 11-year veteran of the administration
called it quits so he could spend more time on
F,.:;'
4
Roach: No yielding to the state.
University's almighty investment dollar.
So far, the University divestment debate has
remained in forums and committees, but it will
probably end up in court if the University
decides to forget its conscience and flout state
law.
Singling out a resister
O N THE HOME front, the resistance con-
tinues. Dearborn resident Dan Rutt, 21,
decided, along with 500,000 other young
Overberger: Back to chemistry
his work as a macromolecular chemist, he
said.
The vacancy left by Overberger will be the
third vice presidental position to be filled
during Harold Shapiro's three-year tenure as
University president. Michael Radock, the
former vice president for University relations
and development, resigned in January, 1981
and Shapiro's own former position of vice
president for academic affairs was filled by
Billy Frye in 1980.
A search committee will soon be formed to
find Overberger's successor, who is sure to
play a key role in defining the future of resear-
ch at the University. Among the issues that lie
ahead for the new veep are the mysterious and
growing relationships between the University
TRYING TO AVOID picking on specific
research projects, the Research Policies
Committee ignored pleas to investigate several
projects allegedly violating the University
military research guidelines.
The committee, which is approaching a
March deadline for submitting a proposal to
the faculty Senate Assembly for solving the
dispute over research guidelines, voted not to
look into the projects listed in a military
research report compiled for the Michigan 4
Student Assembly. Committee members said
they objected to student committee member
Tom Marx's proposal because they didn't want
to single out specific projects and because
there isn't enough time to properly investigate
the suspect projects.
A number of committee members would
have favored a random selection of projects
had there been enough time to do a thorough
investigation.
Marx said he proposed setting up a subcom-
mittee to study the projects because "we need
to look at questionable research before we
decide whether or not we need a mechanism for
enforcing the guidelines."
Meanwhile the committee, which has been
working on research guidelines for a year, is
still deeply divided over what to recommend
for non-classified military research.
The Week in Review was compiled by
Daily editors George Adams, Kent Red-
ding, Ben Ticho, and Barry Witt.
4w 461A 1 __
Wasserman
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Vol. XCIII, No. 105
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
'Good' nev
D ON'T BE FOOLED by January's
drop in the unemnlovment rate:
The picture isn't as bright as President
Reagan would like everyone to believe.
There is a danger that Reagan might
use the latest unemployment
statistics to stifle the costly, but
necessary jobs program being
developed by Democrats in Congress.
When the .4 percent drop in unem-
ployment was announced Friday, even
labor department officials
acknowledged that the figures were
misleading. These officials noted that
while the number of people unem-
ployed did drop by nearly 600,000, the
number of employed people actually
stayed the same. Much of the drop in
the jobless rate resulted from a
seasonal decline in the work force.
The figures also leave out the
estimated 1,850,000 "discouraged"
workers who have given up trying to
find work-an increase of 300,000 from
December estimates.
Although this was the first drop in
the unemployment rate in 17 months,
the president is already hailing a new
x
1-1
s gone oaci
trend. "America is on the mend," he
said with a big grin.
But a one month dip in the jobless
rate does not make a trend and
solutions still are needed to solve the
chronic unemployment problem. Such
a solution is the $5 to $7 billion jobs
program Democrats are preparing to
introduce in Congress. It would create
approximately 3 million jobs, which in
turn could have a significant impact on
the effort to turn the nation's economy
around.
This proposal is in danger because
the president can now seize on the
good" news and call the plan un-
necessary. But the jobs program is
just as necessary today as it was
before the January unemployment
figures were announced.
The president has read too much
good news into what really amounts to
a tragic story. The labor department
said just two weeks ago that double
digit unemployment rates would
plague the nation through 1983, which
makes any sunny optimism a cruel
joke on the unemployed.
T}}U FMIC T1NKS TiAT
OIL, SXE4uTIVes 1uy
C-t,1TIN& COMFAN\5
INSTEAD OF eXPLORIN&
FOZNEW
CAIRO, EGYPT - As the night
train to Aswan rumbles past
darkened fields and villages
along the Nile, conductor Ahmed
Mansour dreams of attending the
University of California at Davis.
Mansour holds an Egyptian
bachelor's degree in agricultural
science, though railroad work
now supports him. He has heard
that the Davis campus teaches
the latest in farming
techniques-lessons of critical
value to this hungry nation of 45
million.
But if a twist of fate did take
Ahmed Mansour to California,
chances are he would not return
to the Nile Valley. "I'd probably
go to Yemen," he says, "because -
the Saudis are funding many
agricultural experiments there. -
In Egypt I'm not sure I would
have an opportunity to use what I
have learned."
SOME 2,000 miles north, Atef
Tarafa has schosen emigration
over frustrating underem-
ployment at home. After years of
study toward a prestigious doc-
torate in city planning from the
University of Paris, he found that
his hard-won skills would earn no
more than a clerical post in
Cairo. "It was better to stay in
France, where I can at least
make a decent living," says
Tarafa, who now arranges Mid-
dle East tours for a travel agen-
cy.
The problems of these Egyp-
tians illustrate one consequence
of the emigration wave which has
swept through this part of the
world in the past 15 years: a '
disastrous loss of educated and
skilled people. Egypt in some
ways is an exception among Nor-
th African countries because it
has not also experienced a vast
movement of unskilled workers
to European factories, as have
Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.
But it is by far the region's major
victim of the brain drain at a
time when the need for
imaginative solutions to Egyp-
~ThM 'we 5pNv' OUR TIME
COMB 1& nF S TOX
REF'ORT5 LOOKIN& FGFJ
15AR&Aa N5
TNEY THNK
RAL EASY
Egypt loses
in the
Thivrd World
brain drain
By Frank Viviano
WELL, HAVE YOu eVEK
-RIE TO PEAD
PAI.TtiISTINY PRINT2
-a
more than a decade, outgrowing
a sluggish bureaucracy and its
dated visions in the process. To
enter that bureaucracy, accor-
ding to Tarafa, is to encounter "a
thousand obstacles based on
resentment and jealousy. It isn't
possible to get things done, even
relatively simple things like
planning a second railway
station."
FOR AHMED Mansour, whose
ambitions have not so fully
soured, the administration of
Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak still holds promise:
"He is a man with experience is
economics and administration,
and not just a politician. Under
him, who knows? Maybe
something will be done about the
Delta after all."
What Ahmed Mansour and Stef
Tarafa want for their country
sounds muck like a government
of technocrats, a kind of gover-
nment the Western world has
come to disparage. But Cairo and
the Nile are not the Western
world, and their citizens live
perilously close to chaos.
Therein lies the real tragedy of
Tarafa's bitterness and Man-
sour's'talk of Yemen, imprinted
in the loss of the Third World's
most valuable human assets. It is
a tragedy that especially afflicts
countries like Egypt, India and
Pakistan, where a traditional
high regard for education
produces bumper crops of talen-
ted young people for export.
Most of these young people are
merely competent. But some are
potentially visionaries, with the
capacity to halt what seems a
hopeless downward spiral for the
world's poorer half.
Viviano wrote this article
for Pacific News Service.
"PAMNMEPIA! YOU SHOULP KNOW ETTE T
TO REPORT ALL THE DOPEY ThINGS HE SAYS"
b I
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V441\
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e 4oU5Ed 1 4
by with a stoicism and good
nature that contrast sharply with
the scenes around them.
COPTIC CAIRO, the ancient
heart of the city, has crumbled
into a mountain of smoking
refuse inhabited by resourceful
garbage-pickers. To its im-
mediate north in El Fustat, the
intellectual capital of the Islamic
world, the same fate seems
dangerously imminent. Entire
buildings regularly collapse
because of faulty maintenance or
badly designed drainage
systems. One catastrophe in
early December leveled a six-
story apartment structure,
killing 47 of its inhabitants.
The situation is only slightly
better around Tahrir Square, the
administrative nerve center of
the Egyptian government. For
three hours or more daily,
thousands of civil servants are
frozen in a paralyzing traffic
snarl inching in and out of the
area,, reducing bureaucratic
productivity nearly to zero.
Similar monumental
challenges face the Egyptian
countryside. While the High Dam
at Aswan has made the Nile's
flow more predictable, it also has
YET THE terrible irony is that
Egypt has become one of the
world's great exporters of
educated professionals, sending
scores of its brightest doctors,
engineers, agronomists and
teachers to the Persian Gulf
nations, Europe and North
America.
This irony is far from lost on
young people like Atef Tarafa
who entered universities here
and abroad full of ambition to
bring their country into the 20th
century, or at least to confront its.
most pressing crisis. "From the
standpoint of planning, Cairo
doesn't have to be a disaster,"
maintains Tarafa. "Right now,
for example, a single train
station handles all traffic into the
city. If a second one was built on
the opposite end of Cairo, a lot of
the congestion would evaporate."
Cairo has not spread with the
benefit of planners' charts and
dreams, however. Like so many
other Third World cities, it has
doubled and redoubled in little
F T...,-.,,,.,,A nrnly m o r ,-r i n tho loft cido ocf
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