4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 5, 2002 OP/ED Uwer £icb*n * ilg 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 letters@nichigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JON SCHWARTZ Editor in Chief JOHANNA HANINK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE (I) is very much against the tradition of the church; many saints had a gay orientation, and many popes had gay orientations. - A. W Richard Sipe, a psychotherapist and former priest, as quoted in yesterday's Boston Globe, on the Vatican's response to the Catholic Church sex scandal, which said that gay men should not be ordained priests. '44 ..__ _ _ _ _ _pN t~~Of o~PE'Ac Ill a> K° u4T rr _ '° . .. SAM BUTLER Ti S OAPBOX Rewriting history, the populist way GEOFFREY GAGNON G-OLOGY t's been an embarrass- ing couple of months for Doris Kearns 1 Goodwin, the seemingly incomparable voice of American history now up to her elbows in contro- versy stemming from the revelation that she's pla- giarized material for her books. The news of Goodwin's struggles with originality came on the heels of an admission from famed war historian Stephen Ambrose that he too lifted phrases. In fact, if your only access to "historians" is through the newsprint of recent newspaper reports, you might be convinced that the history business is awash in scandal and deceit. But the propensity to plagiarize, at least recently, calls into question not the type of purposeful work of serious academics, but rather it damns the popular historical books that Ambrose and the like churn out as fast as Bor- ders can stock them. If we're going to be asked by publishers, TV hosts, and even the authors them- selves to treat these writers as historians then we should demand that they act like scholars. The embarrassment began for Goodwin when she admitted to using several lines from another book on the Kennedy family - an incident that Goodwin reportedly apologized for in the form of a financial settlement. Yet just last week The New York Times reported that Goodwin's researchers had uncovered more than 50 places where she copied phrases - a far cry from the several acci- dental lines the author had originally owned up to. The fact is, people like Goodwin have become celebrities first and historians second. The folks at PBS who frequently tout Goodwin as a regular commentator on "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" have asked the author to take a break from her appearances "until all outstanding questions are resolved." This news probably didn't go over well at Jeri Charles Associates, the Washington-based firm that arranges appointments for some of the nation's most engaging public speakers, and the firm that has Goodwin listed in "$20,000 and above" range for an appearance - right there with cultural luminaries like NBC's Greg Gumble. Goodwin has become a lecture-circuit and television celebrity who is an author with an interest in history - this alone hardly makes her a historian. The lifted phrases, Goodwin maintained in last week's Times story, were unintentional results of poor note taking. The author said that she and her researchers had become confused as to what they had copied for notes and what they had written themselves. The mix up, Goodwin alleges, led to the accidental inclusion of dozens of stolen phrases. This should be more of an indictment against the environment that creates socialites and celebrities out of academics than it is a charge against historians in general. To consider that the allegations against Goodwin and others have surfaced despite the enormous benefits they seem to enjoy - like vast research staffs to name just one - makes clear the fact that these popular historians are a far cry from those gen- uine scholars toiling in Tisch Hall with chalk on their hands. To think that people like Goodwin could so blatantly disregard the ethical standards that would seem obvious to even students doesn't mean she's not a decent writer - it just means she's a poor historian. In an age where historians even have research teams, much less television gigs to go along with big dollar book contracts, you have to wonder if the scholastic standards prized in aca- demic settings are applied. The type of Holly- wood historians that Ambrose or Goodwin have apparently become on their speaking tours prob- ably bares little resemblance to those who work the Angell Hall lecture circuit on a daily basis - but that doesn't mean that the ethical expecta- tions should be any different. It doesn't even take imagination to wonder what would occur if this sort of "confusion" took place in the classroom. Any student who's read the plagiarism paragraph in any syllabus handed out on this campus could explain tlt theft, intentional or not, is theft. The fact is however, that this little spat with controversy will not destroy Goodwin's career the way it would threaten my enrollment or my professor's job. Goodwin will return to writing and to television and will likely reclaim her crown as America's historian - and probably quicker than it'll take for her staff to "research" her next bestseller. The failure comes in treating celebrities like historians without demanding they act like acade- mics - a failure not lost on those taking note at the University of Delaware where Goodwin's offenses are being taken seriously. The school politely withdrew an offer it had made asking Goodwin to speak at its commencement. Citing fears that a campus setting could become an embarrassing place for a "historian" embattled in a plagiarism debate, the university's president said he decided to rescind the school's offer - no doubt to the chagrin of her speech agents at Jeri Charles Associates. . 0 Geoffrey Gagnon can be reached at ggagnon@umich.edu. Catholic notions of purgatory, tree houses AUBREY HENRETTY NEUROTICA t's weird to be back in the Our Lady of La Salette parish center after all this time. It reminds me of pan- cake breakfasts and Sunday school and construction paper ." and dumb icebreakers at con- firmation retreats. It smells like my elementary school cafeteria. It feels like Lent. My mom volunteered to help set up this art show/bake sale (what is a church event sans the Ladies' Guild bustling about with sweets?) and asked me to come with her. I think she hoped the church would suck me back in if I got close enough, would make me wish I had not stopped going to Mass the instant I started going to college. See? Remember Father George and his friend- ly beard and his nifty paintings? How could you not love this man and everything he stands for? Remember the Lloyds? Kelly's a Eucharistic Minister now. She's devout and happy. See? I smile at Father George, feeling suddenly, inexplicably guilty. I do like his beard and his paintings. I hope he will not ask about my spiritu- al life. I should not feel guilty; I made a decision and by God (get it? God?) I will stand by it. But I do feel guilty. Maybe I have made a horrible mistake. Maybe I should come groveling back to the church. Maybe I should become a priest. Have I lost my mind? A young lady cannot just barge into the tree house of the priesthood uninvited. No, outside there is a sign, clearly marked "No Girls Allowed," and an invisible tita- nium force field. The boys inside have squirt guns and water balloons. And rocks. These vehement exclusionary tactics have always puzzled me. Catholicism is puzzling. Take purgatory. I was in seventh grade the first time I saw the word. It kepftappearing in this tattered blue prayer book I had, so I, bold and curious youngster that I was, asked my catechism teacher about it one Wednes- day evening. What was all this purgatory busi- ness? And why had there not been poster board presentations with relevant magazine clippings on the subject? I wanted diagrams, visual aids. I wanted parables with memorable titles. My teacher was a frank and cheerful woman. She answered frankly and cheerfully: "I'm not sure we're teaching that anymore." Excuse me? She explained purgatory in terms of sins and souls and clothing and being properly dressed for formal dinners. Your soul was the formal attire. If it had too many stains (sins) on it by the time St. Peter was checking the guest list for your name, you went to Hell. If it had fewer, but you still looked a bit riff-raffy, you went to purgatory. You stayed there and kept quiet and thought about what you had done. It was like sitting in the cor- ner for time out. "But I don't think we're teaching it anymore." What? You're not teaching it anymore? Can you do that? Just change your mind like that? Say, oh, hell (or purgatory, as it were), we don't believe that anymore and then watch as the con- cept vanishes in a poof of dogmatic modification? Is that allowed? Who decided about purgatory? The Pope? Was he unwinding at the Vatican one sunny after- noon, reading a little Revelations and sipping a lit- tle lemonade, when he thought to himself, "You know, this purgatory thing's kinda silly. I think I'll sack it. Tomorrow. There will be a memo. I can finally use that cool Jesus-on-a-pogo-stick sta- tionary Ron gave me for my birthday. Goody, goody." And if you can discard one moral absolute, who's to say that in 20 or 50 or 100 years, they won't decide it's okay, say, for women to be priests? "Oh, no. That'll never happen. You'll see married priests before you see female priests." Why? "Women can't be priests. It's in the Bible." It is? Where? "Well, it's not in the Bible per se. But you see Jesus didn't have any female apostles -" What about Mary Magda - . "And there were no women at the last supper -" What are you talking about? It was Passover. There would have been women and children everywhere. Besides - "Shhhttt! And anyway, it's tradition. No Girls Allowed. Invisible force field, remember? God's divine force field. And lasers. Also invisible. Sorry. Does anyone else have questions?" The best friend of the boy I had a crush on raised his hand and asked if this would be on the test. I banged my head against the wall. No, frank- and-cheerful said. This would not be on the test. It wasn't important. Just forget it. Aubrey Henretty can be reached at ahenrett@umich.edu. S 0 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Horrific violence in India must spur academic debate To THE DAILY: As members of the Indian community on campus, we express our collective shock, sorrow and outrage at the spate of violence that has wreaked havoc in the state of. Gujarat in western India over the past sever- al days, leaving more than 500 people dead in its wake. We condemn in the strongest of terms the burning of passengers traveling on a train, as well as the gruesome cycle of retaliatory killings that has followed. We community, especially those with ties to South Asia, to engage themselves - to debate the cir- cumstances that can lead to a tragedy of this magnitude in the world's most populous democracy - a country that enshrines in its constitution the protection of all its residents, regardless of religious faith. ASHUTOSH VARSHNEY Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for South Asian Studies. SUGATO BHATTACHARYYA Associate Professor of Finance at the School of Business Administration. ELLORA PURI AwT AHUJA CAAAT Rungrf*nruenwfl "out" LGBT ally. I'm also an Eagle Scout. And I'm worried that the rhetoric of the wild-eyed ide- alogoues will get the better (or bring out the worst) of everyone. If the Boy Scouts lose donation money, it's not going to affect the old men in the national office who make the rules. It's not going to hurt the kids, or the Scoutmasters, in the affluent and middle-class neighborhoods. It's going to hurt the kids who belong to troops in underprivileged areas, whose schools already provide few or no extra- or co-curricular programs to teach skills, spend time constructively with friends and have role models. These are the troops that need subsi- dies because they can't rely on member dues and I.ATV lii t ind intd itr: min.'1hs (*r abi n~tvenvirot~nmitaiIn~lev.