Page 4 -The Michigan Daily -Thursday, February 8, 1990 Wbz £airbigan aiIy EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109 NEwS 313 764 0552 ARTS 763 0376 OPINION 747 2814 SPORTS WEEKEND 747 3336 747 4630 iw ____. 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. i Farrakhan Public universities must take a moral stand .J:~0 ~ . &\~ F- t "\W - t au .A 4P41 1. M i ~Q (R~OT~'1)YfffCLdVoiJYAT THE URpLW3 ITTTO UcAk l EEL . -a aE LAST MONTH, THE MICHIGAN State University provost made $5,000 in University funds available to a stu- dent group for the express purpose of bringing Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, to speak at the East } Lansing campus. The MSU Board of Trustees, after a protest by outraged students last Friday, decided to restrict funding for all speeches to $1,000 until the university implements guidelines for deciding which speakers to fund. The MSU student group As One in- vited Farrakhan, an outspoken critic of the Jewish religion, to speak on cam- pus, and secured funds from MSU Provost David Scott. The funding by the university angered Jews at MSU and around the state, who complained that state money should not go to anti- Semitic speakers. Farrakhan's record of anti-Semitism is clear. During the 1988 Presidential campaign, Jesse Jackson used the word "Hymietown" to describe New York City; under protest, he apolo- gized. Farrakhan criticized Jackson's apology, and said Jackson only re- lented to placate the "rich Hymies" who supported his campaign. This is but one of many examples of Farrakhan's offensive treatment of Jews and Ju- daism, which Farrakhan has termed a "gutter religion." Though his views are offensive, Farrakhan's right to free expression should not be curtailed. At the same time, taxpayers' money should not be used to bring him to speak at Michigan State. As many of the protesters said Friday, it's fine to let Farrakhan espouse his views, but the citizens of Michigan don't have to bankroll his en- deavors. Though the MSU trustees reversed the provost's decision and withdrew funding for Farrakhan's speech, they have not come up with an adequate mfethod to decide which speakers or groups to fund. Limiting funding for all speakers to $1,000 only restricts the quality of people the university can at- tract, and doesn't solve the problem of deciding who should not receive state funding. The $1,000 moratorium is not a so- lution, but a cowardly method to avoid addressing a potentially embarrassing problem. Public universities, as exten- sions of the state, cannot shirk the re- sponsibility of determining who should and who should not be invited and paid with taxpayer dollars to speak on col- lege campuses. If student advocacy groups choose to bring controversial figures to uni- versities, that is their business, and they are more than entitled to do so. But the money used to pay racist, sex- ist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, or other antagonistic visitors should not be provided by the state, or even by state institutions. Universities must take moral stands; when Michigan State or other public colleges dole out money for offensive speakers, it is a slap in the face of those who pay taxes in the state of Michigan. Daily is narrow-minded and abusive f f f 8 } i i i A f 4 i k i i i 1 P 4 M M 7 1 a r w a Apology Daily responds to vandalism of advertisement At some point lastT a vandal -- most likely the Daily's staff - pl and lesbian sym- bols on a display - advertisement1 paid for by the Army Reserve Of- ficer Training Corps (ROTC) that appeared in the Friday, Feb. 2j edition of the Daily. The Daily! apologizes to our readers, our adver- tisers, and espe- cially the Army ROTC for the de- facement of the advertisement. The action is un- precedented at the Dail We are extremely e the credibility of the en we have taken steps t hursday night, y a member of aced gay men such an occurrence never happens again. In the future, Business Man- ager David Eding er and I will accept full responsibil- RESERVE OFFICERS 'TRAINING CORPS $275000r. MILLS r N4 ROAD -thsUttt WOCIEIC EXCaaCE YOUR UNCLE WANTS TO PAY FOR CLLEGE. BUT ONLY IF YOU'RE GOOD ENOUGH. 00 1 AryRYOTC un ,W,,rdnso -,d4p1 k, .r01 .J lo x rIC extomko ARMY ROTC THEl SMARTEST COLLEGE COURSE TOT) CAl TARE. 1,t01out1mu111 (01,1001Captain kl0' ,0 ,/ M N1 ,1 1f 6a -[10 400 ity for any simi- lar problems. Defacement of an advertise- ment is not toler- ated at the Daily. If an advertise- ment is ever de- faced in the fu- ture by an em- ployee, that em- ployee will be fired or legal action will be taken. Again, we apologize and we promise nothing of this sort will Noah Finkel To the Daily: Being an American Jew who believes in the Palestinian right to self-determina- tion, I've not responded to any of the edi- torials this last year because I realize that the entire Palestinian people are not as narrow-minded and abusive as the Daily. To interview Marc Ellis (2/1/90) and compare the treatment of the Palestinian people to that of the Jews during the Holocaust is insensitive, confrontational and a slap in the face to anyone who lived through the systematic slaughter of more Wrong on Poland To the Daily: What a disingenuous Daily editorial about the crisis in Poland ("Buying out Poland, 1/26/90)! After a decade of agita- tion by Solidarity for capitalist restora- tion, backed by substantial U.S. govern- ment and Vatican funding and whole- hearted support of American newspapers from The New York Times to The Michi- gan Daily, you now discover that the Pol- ish movement was all along really a "workers and stockholders" uprising, one that is only lately being waylaid by the designs of some Harvard consultant work- ing on behalf of German and U.S. bankers. Yes, like their East German counter- parts, the Polish workers are starting to rise again. And this time apparently as a class, instead of as part of a clerical-na- tionalist alliance with the peasantry and intelligentsia, that which Solidarity has been since 1981. Hopefully that rebellion will generalize and lead to a government based on workers and soldiers councils that can rebuild Poland's decimated economy. Such a mass-based communist gov- ernment could rid Poland of Stalinism, as well as undercut the Catholic Church's hold over the peasantry by collectivizing agriculture. Toward that end, Polish workers need to revive their revolutionary international- ist tradition in the spirit of Rosa Luxem- burg and Lenin, and in so doing link arms with their East German comrades and So- viet soldiers, many of whom are also start- ing to oppose Gorbachev's "market-ori- ented" capitulation to imperialist bankers and European social democrats. After a decade of infection by Polish nationalism, that would be a welcome step. Gene Goldenfeld Ph.D. candidate in Sociology and Psychology To the Daily: In the Feb. 2 edition of the Daily ("Last words from the Opinion Editors"), outgoing Opinion Page editors Betsy Esch and Amy Harmon asserted that in September, 1988, "we met to discuss the possibility of closing down the Daily for a few days." We write to correct the record, out of concern that an incorrect assertion left uncorrected can grow, into an article of faith. We participated in no such meeting. We never discussed such an idea. Indeed, we three have never met together nor held conversations together, whether about the Daily or about other topics, until it be- came necessary to discuss rebutting the inaccurate charge by Esch and Harmon. James D. Duderstadt University president Philip H. Power University regent Amnon Rosenthal chair of the Board for Student Publications than 11 million people. It's rather amusing that the bitch ses- sion compiled by Betsy Esch and Amy Harmon (2/2/90) angrily argued that their attitudes and actions of the last year are justified given the behavior of their peers. Even if their self-justification is accurate and legitimate, it doesn't solve problems or help people understand the Middle East conflict. Yes, sometimes extreme situations de- serve extreme measures. But to carry the sensationalistic and confrontational edito- rials to the extremes they have gone this last year only adds to the hatred and confu- sion. To anyone who has experienced the confrontation first hand, it is the extrem- ism on both sides that is causing the prob- lem to escalate out of control. Esch and Harmon, if you really cared about the* Palestinians, wouldn't it behoove you to make friends, and not enemies, of people like me? Jonathan E. Greenberg Officials respond to Daily attack p y. mbarrassed for tire paper and o ensure that Poniewozik off track on Marxism critique To the Daily: Jim Poniewozik, in his piece "Marx is dead, Marxism isn't" (1/30/90), displays a similar simplicity to which he claims to be aloof when he claims "we have been trained to view (Marxism) as Uncle Sam's greatest antagonist of the twentieth cen- tury" and that "most of us are damned if we know what communism is." Who is this "we" Poniewozik refers to? I certainly cannot find myself in this "we." My experience since I was young has been precisely the opposite as that which he de- scribes. My high school had no "civics" class. Instead, it had classes whose sole purpose seemed to be to reduce any pres- tige America and capitalism might have in the students' young minds. The faculty at my school, like the fac- ulty here, had many teachers highly sym- pathetic with Marxism and some who were avowed Marxists. My hometown is one of the wealthiest communities in the country, home to many snivelling, greedy capitalist oppressors, yet right under their noses the teachings of revolution and lib- eration were, and still are, being inculcated to the their very own daughters and sons. I know I am not the only one with this background, so Poniewozik is clearly simplifying the conditions of brainwash- ing in this country in order to both strengthen his argument and make himself look smarter than the rest of "us." Another of Poniewozik's errors con- cerns his statements about the death of communism in Eastern Europe. He is. wrong when he says that "there is nothing inherent in communism's nature that says a communist government cannot have free elections or free expression." He be- trays here his own ignorance of commu- nism, because in fact every theory aIvocat- ing communism, beginning with Marx all the way to the present, has regarded free elections and free expression as bourgeois institutions, to be associated strictly with liberal democracy, which is an antecedeno to communism, doomed to extinction once the revolution takes place. True communists today will still abhor these institutions. Those who embrace free elections and free speech and still claim to be communists are not really communists; they are socialists. Few maintain that cap- italism has won the day in Eastern Eu- rope. But communism, which is totalitar- ian both in theory and practice, is dead,' and socialism has won the day. Ian Beilin LSA senior be repeated. I'- t Daily Editor in Chief Agree? Disagree? What's your opinion? The Daily wants to hear from you. Send or bring letters to the Student Publications Building at 420 Maynard Street. Or, you can bring in letters on Macintosh disk or send them via MTS to "Michigan Daily." Ann Arbor's homeless need help from residents, students By Peter Nicolas When I climbed the steps and walked through the door of the homeless shelter where I had recently volunteered to work, I felt myself entering a different world: a dark world, hidden from the. eyes of most people in Ann Arbor, and certainly from most students at the University of Michi- gan. As the night proceeded, I observed the different types of people who lived in the shelter. I found Vietnam veterans, battered situation rather than a cause. Nearly half of the people in the shelter have some sort of mental, physical, or de- velopmental disability. Furthermore, sev- eral of the men are veterans of either World War II or the Vietnam War, and many of them have suffered as a result of their service. Figures compiled by the Ann Arbor Shelter Association cite that 25 per- cent of the people served by the shelter are veterans, and 47 percent have disabilities. Reading throunh the volunteer manual. aid works for the young and healthy, but its effects are limited for the elderly and the disabled, who tend to suffer the most. We live in an age in which Social Darwin- ism prevails. This is no way to thank our preceding generations; nor is it a way to repay those who defended our nation. These people are not inanimate objects which one uses once and throws away. They are living, healthy human beings who deserve a place to live as much as, if not more than. anyone else. the homeless. Private donations - such as those which come from the residents of my dormitory - can help, but public support is necessary. Cities such as Ann Arbor are notorious for their "profit maximization" agenda: choosing to invest only in those projects which yield the highest returns. While such a form of investment is the "sensible" option for private investors, it is not so for a community. Profit maxi- mization goes hand-in-hand with the no- catch up with the faster developing sec- tors, and then all should be treated equally. One cannot ignore the homeless. Cities like Ann Arbor do not allow people who are on their own to live on overtime wages from a service-oriented job. Many argue that if people can't afford housing, they should go somewhere else. This just shifts the problem to another city. Even- tually, someone has to deal with the prob* lem.