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OPINION
Wednesdays October 5, 1988
Page 4
The Michigan Doily
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
4
'U' Record falsifies history
Vol. IC, No.20
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other
cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the Daily.
Duderstadt will be inaugurated on Thursday:
Taking the throne...
"CEREMONY and celebration will be
the order of day," heralds the Univer-
sity Record in their glowing description
of Thursday's presidential inaugura-
tion.
And indeed the schedule of the day's
events promises plenty of visual pomp
and circumstance: the solemn proces-
sion of 300 black robed dignitaries
winding through the University cam-
pus in the morning; a splendid banquet
in Palmer field to feed the student
masses in the afternoon; a "gala opera"
to provide evening entertainment for
the visiting V.I.P.s.
..o.......th
And if all this sounds more like the
feudal*trappings of a royal coronation
than the swearing in of a democratically
elected public servant, who should be
surprised? James Duderstadt - once
referred to as an "autocrat" by some of
his colleagues in Engineering - came
to be selected as the 11th president of
the University through a process that
has more to do with the divine right of
kings than it does with democratic
principles.
In fact, the whole selection process
was completely illicit.
The University regents chose Duder-
stadt from a list of 300 candidates
through a confidential, clandestine
search that flies in the face of open
democratic prgcess. Last May, the Ann
Arbor News and the Detroit Free Press
sued the regents for violation of the
Freedom of Iniformation Act (FOIA)
and the Open Meetings Act which dic-
tates that public bodies must make all
p job offer decisions in public.
>In order to escape public
accountability, the regents interviewed
candidates in closed committee-groups
-,of four - one less than the legal quo-
;rum. Students and faculty had no way
of knowing who was under considera-
tion and how many other candidates
were passed up in favor of Duderstadt.
The 10-member student advisory
board, which interviewed all the final-
ists, consistently disendorsed Duder-
stadt. In fact, Duderstadt finished dead
last on their list of recommended
candidates. Like a king and his
peasants, President Duderstadt was
chosen to govern the students without
their consent.
Fortunately, the civil courts are not
yet within the control of the Duderstadt
fiefdom. Denied an emergency
injunction by the Michigan Court of
Appeals, the lawsuit against the regents
will return to the Washtenaw County
Circuit Court after the Ann Arbor
News' lawyers complete their
deposition of the regents. Ed Hood,
one of the prosecuting attorneys, told
the Daily he expects the suit to come
before Judge Ross Campbell within the
next two months.
If the court rules that the regents' se-
lection process violated the Open
Meetings Act and the FOIA, Duderstadt
could be stripped of his crown.
Deputization and the protest policy,
endorsed and enforced by Duderstadt,
is more evidence for the new presi-
dent's flagrant disregard for democratic
principles and the separation of pow-
ers. Codified and adopted without stu-
dent input, the new regulations allow
the president-emperor to both legislate
the rules for acceptable political
expression and punish violators.
In his vision of the future, as re-
vealed in his State-of-the-Kingdom ad-
dress on Sunday night, Duderstadt
boasted of the University's autonomy
from state laws and courts: "... our
Board of Regents [has] authority over
the University exceeding that of the
legislature, governor and judiciary....
We are almost unique in having the
ability to control our own destiny.."
Amidst Thursday's pageantry,nthese
words are something for students to
keep in mind: controlling our destiny is
what the reign of this new president is
all about.
By Alan Wald
University of Michigan students, fac-
ulty and staff who imagine that the weekly
University Record merely provides
"objective reportage" on current events,
ought to take a close look at the Record's
coverage of the 90th birthday celebration
of President Emeritus Harlan A. Hatcher
in the September 26th issue.
The article discusses Hatcher's
computer skills and postwar expansion of
the University under his direction, quoting
President Emeritus Robben W. Fleming
about the "wisdom and grace" that marked
Hatcher's presidency.
But not a single reference is made to
the activities of Hatcher during the 1950s
for which he is notorious among - indeed,
reviled by - defenders of civil liberties and
academic freedom throughout the United
States. I am referring to Hatcher's personal
intervention during the McCarthyite witch
hunt years to overrule University
committees comprised of faculty members
so that he might purge scholars who re-
fused to soil themselves by becoming in-
formers for the secret police (FBI).
Historians. have now established that
those faculty purged from universities
such as Michigan were no threat to na-
tional security or to their students. Indeed,
many were not even members of the
Communist Party (although, if they had
been, they should have been judged by
their pedagogy and research, not radical
political convictions).
FBI secret agents had already accumu-
lated many more details about the past
political activities of these teachers and
Alan Wald, Professor of English Litera-
ture and American Culture at the
University of Michigan, is a member of
"Concerned Faculty."
their associates than the victimized teach-
ers could remember. The object of the
witch hunt was not to preserve freedom or
prevent harm, but to intimidate faculty
into "naming names" of other suspected
-dissidents in order to produce a climate of
fear in academia.
Hatcher's role is particularly revolting,
since there is evidence that he knew what
he was doing by aggressively cooperating
in the purge: causing immense pain and
possibly ruining the lives of devoted
scholars, and lowering the cultural life of
the University considerably by enforcing,
rather than challenging (as did some other
universities) the witch hunt climate.
The fact that the current University
administration could honor Hatcher and
parade him as role model is particularly
disconcerting at a time when the same ad-
ministration is seeking to install ambigu-
ous "codes" of conduct supposedly to
"protect free speech." Can we now have
confidence that this administration is in
birthdays of George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson without mentioning that
they were slaveholders; or that of Christo-
pher Columbus, without mentioning that
he initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade
(by kidnapping native peoples and taking
them to Spain). Faculty and students must
fight for a more complex understanding of
our history, culture and institutions, even
when it is painful.
Finally, it is worth noting the
disgraceful fact that our superb graduate
library is named after Hatcher, a symbol of
craven capitulation to repression by the
state and of complicity with the most vile
forms of restrictions on academic freedom.
In my opinion, the present University ad,
ministration, if it is sincere about creating
a University culture committed to free
speech, openness, and diversity, should re-
name the graduate library after someone
who truly represents that tradition. (for
example, Frederick Douglas, the distin-
guished author, abolitionist and women's;
'...the Record's omission in this biographical news story of the
activities for which Hatcher will be most remembered by histori-
ans smacks of ... falsification of history.'
possession of the appropriate values so
that they will not abuse these new powers
in the manner of their predecessors?
Moreover, the Record's omission in
this biographical news story of the activi-
ties for which Hatcher will be most re-
membered by historians smacks of the
falsification of history we have witnessed
in the USSR and other repressive societies
where certain crucial facts seem to
"disappear."
Dropping this sordid aspect of
Hatcher's career down Orwell's "memory
hole" is tantamount to celebrating the
rights activist).
Part of the re-naming ceremony should
include sending invitations to the Univer-
sity of Michigan's own witch hunt vic-
tims and their families, so that they might
be brought back to Ann Arbor where vic-
tims should receive, at the very least,
honorary reinstatement to the faculty.
Such honoring of the academic victims of
the witch hunt has already occurred in
other institutions that have had the
courage to face up to their own pasts and
to admit their mistakes.
Wasserman
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Letersto the editor,
EMU Regents engages in closed door presidential selection:
...an fini
,EASTERN MICHIGAN University's
search for a new president demon-
'strates problems with university
governance in Michigan. The ten-
member advisory committee at EMU
,that recommends candidates for
president includes only one student on
a campus that has 25,000 students.
Not surprisingly, 20 EMU students
protested this situation last week at the
first meeting of the committee. The
faculty is also discontented: If asked for
five representatives and got three.
The same disempowerment of stu-
dents occurred in the University of
Michigan's presidential searcli this year
that resulted in the selection of James
Duderstadt. As at EMU, a body of
eight regents picked the president.
At both universities, the regents se-
lect the president behind closed doors.
Rather than inform the public of their
criteria for selection, the University of
Michigan regents chose to meet in
small closed meetings.
The closed nature of the presidential
selection at both the University of
Michigan and EMU underscores the
fact that regents do anything but repre-
dingaking
In contrast with the regents, the state
legislature and governor have demon-
strated some willingness to answer to
larger public interests. For example,
the governor recently. intervened to
keep tuition down for in-state students.
On the other hand, year after year, the
University administration, usually
b~acked by the regents, has
demonstrated no concern for less than
affluent students.
In other cases, it was the state legis-
lature that held hearings on campus
when the University administration
took inadequate action on the issue of
racism on campus. The state legislature
also acted on the problem of teaching
assistants who teach students without
knowing English.
Perhaps the best example is divest-
ment. Public opinion has opposed
U.S. investment in South Africa for
some time now. The Michigan state
legislature passed a law requiring the
state government to divest itself of
stocks in companies that operate in
South Africa.
What followed showed how far re-
moved regents and administrators are
from public opinion. Although it
receives half its budget from the state
legislature, the University proclaimed it
would not abide by the law regarding
South Africa. The University regents
went so far as to spend the public's
money to oppose the divestment law in
court.
Anti -gay
groups not
legitimate
To the Daily:
Many students have been
following with a sense of de-
tached amusement the recent
clash between LaGROC and
Cornerstone Church. This is
unfortunate because it over-
looks the serious issues that
the incident on the Diag ("God
hates queer and so do I...")
brings up on our campus.
Preacher Mike and his church
are very willing to admit that
they discriminate on the basis
of sexual orientation. In their
strange doublespeak they claim
that God loves homosexuals
but hates homosexuality. They
also assert that gay men and
lesbians choose their fate, and
therefore do not deserve protec-
tion against harassment and
discrimination. This belief has
been rejected by virtually ev-
eryone outside the world of re-
ligious fundamentalism, but
obviously this does not stop
Preacher Mike from continuing
his crusade against gay men
and lesbians in the name of
biblical morality.
Fundamentalists like
Preacher Mike have the right to
express their opinions, repug-
nant as they may be to think-
ing people. .They do not, how-
ever, have the right to be rec-
ognized as legitimate student
organizations on this campus.
Michigan Student Assembly
.. .. .. . -1 .. . , _ _ A _
a student organization that
openly expressed racist views;
I hope that it will be consistent
and offer this same support to
the gay male and lesbian stu-
dents at this university. Cor-
nerstone Church must be re-
moved from the list of recog-
nized student organizations.
-Michael Peterson
October 2
Just say no
To the Daily:
Concerning the editorial,
"Save abortion rights," (Daily
9/28/88) you make several er-
rors in reasoning.
The basic premise of your
editorial was that Proposition
A, banning Medicaid-funded
abortions, is a threat to
women's reproductive rights.
You presume that abortion is a
fundamental reproductive right,
and that such rights should not
only be protected, but also
funded by the state.
Yet, outside of the special
cases of rape or incest, realize
that "reproductive rights"
(whatever part of the Constitu-
tion guarantees those) also in-
volve reproductive responsib-
ilities.
Beyond those special cases
mentioned above, a woman has
the right to choose whether or
not she becomes pregnant right
up to the moment of
insemination. Agreed, in a
moment of passion it is diffi-
cult for any of us to reject this
situation, so the decision of
with whom we are to sleep
tees in our world of casual sex,
.and a woman controls both ac-
cess and the pervasiveness of
that access to her body.
Women's right (and duty) to
choose about pregnancy comes
before sex, not after. Any
woman who denies this duty is
relinquishing responsibility for
reproduction, and with it any
claim to her "right" to have
sex.
You also claim that aboli-
tion of Medicaid abortions,
"discriminates against women
in lower income brackets," by
putting abortions out of their
"financial grasp". It is true that
abortions are beyond many
poor peoples' means. However,
it is not the government's re-
sponsibility to provide all
forms of birth control regard-
less of cost.
Condoms are distributed by
many local and state govern-
ments (albeit in response to
AIDS) and are an effective
method of birthacontrol for
those who wish to avoid, as
you put it, "the horrors of par-
enthood." And if needy people
have no access to free birth
control, a pack of 12 condoms
costs around $6.00 at Kmart.
This price is probably not out
of the "grasp" of the disadvan-
taged, who are responsible for
their actions regardless of their
station in life. Poverty does
not license indiscriminate
spawning.
-Dave Allen
September 29
9/26/88) pointed out that the
University is ripping students
off by refusing to open certain
courses for enrollment. With
the highest tuition of any pub-
lic school in the country, one
would expect that our presti-
gious center of learning could
see to it that nothing impedes
its very purpose, to provide the
best education possible. As
well as insufficiently funding
the very popular, often closed
courses, the University is cur-
rently overlooking the neces-
sity to ensure an excellent class
room environment.
In a course where every lec-
ture is a valuable learning ex-
perience, one of my professors
has to shout over the clamor of
heavy machinery operated out-
side the classroom window, an
insult to his intelligence. On
two occasions, in which the
machine operator refused to
stop the racket for just 30
minutes, class had to be ended
early. Disgusted with this
waste of our tuition money,
half the class marched to the
President's office and com-
plained. It is a paradox that the
University is spending tuition
money in this manner. Sure
the construction is necessary,
but is it necessary that it de-
stroy the classroom environ-
ment? Surely there our other
classes with such disturbances,
and those students must think,
"Are we getting what we pay
for?" With enough com-
plaints, hopefully, something
will soon be done, for my pro-
fessor should not go on shout-
ing.
'U' wastes
tition
t