Suzanne Fields really earned her money today in the Bucks County Courier Times with this one (I mean, I’m sure she makes way too much for the drivel she writes, but everyone has to pay the bills I guess; this completes my "dumb pundit" trifecta).Her topic today was Dubya’s likely choice of (pause for dramatic effect...) Southern Methodist University for his presidential library (and I’ll get to the requisite snark later).
Thus was Fields given an excuse to tar SMU over not adhering to a liberal orthodoxy in education (I kid you not)…
In an astonishing admission of ignorance of how the world works, even the world on a cloistered campus, 150 of the university's 600 professors say they're afraid academic freedom and political independence would be compromised by the arrival of new information. One professor frets that the public might confuse the Bush Museum with the university. (Only if they can't read.)Somewhere, David Horowitz is twitching uncontrollably, vexed by the impulse to file another lawsuit against a school district or legislature to preserve “academic freedom” in response to Fields’ heresy.
Professors, at least in theory, are dedicated to opening the minds of students, to teach the intellectual discipline and rigor that enables the young scholar to make discriminating judgments. Access to information, even information about how a president made the momentous decisions over his eight years in office, is crucial to education. This, alas, is a naive view on many campuses, where learning is dumbed down to make it fit the professor's own cramped understanding of politics.
…
A liberal education is concerned with the process of learning, the ability to analyze ideas critically.
Fields would have you believe that some sort of political correctness is the reason why there is opposition to SMU’s selection as the repository for Dubya’s books and archives (though I’m sure there would be just as much room for all of those Archie Comics and Bazooka Joe bubble gum cartoons somewhere else - I told you I'd get around to it).
This links to a Raw Story article featuring a blog post by Paul Burka the senior executive editor of the magazine Texas Monthly; included are excerpts of a letter written to SMU's president by faculty, administrators, and staff of the university's Perkins School of Theology, worrying about siting the library at the university. In it, they say they would:
...regret to see SMU enshrine attitudes and actions widely deemed as ethically egregious: degradation of habeas corpus, outright denial of global warming, flagrant disregard for international treaties, alienation of long-term U.S. allies, environmental predation, shameful disrespect for gay persons and their rights, a pre-emptive war based on false and misleading premises, and a host of other erosions of respect for the global human community and for this good Earth on which our flourishing depends.Well said.
And this takes you to an article in The Dallas Observer which describes how SMU acquired the land for Dubya’s library, including this excerpt from writer Jim Schultze…
For those who revere the president, the SMU site would link his name with an inappropriately dirty story. For the rest of us, that dirty story would provide a darkly appropriate final chapter to the entire Bush saga…The story has to do with SMU’s seizure of the nearby University Gardens condominium units and forced expulsion of elderly fixed-income individuals living there so the units can be bulldozed in order to build the library. And as you might expect, the owner of the units is rightly fighting this move; the residents, including 74-year-old Pat Davenport (mentioned in the story), agreed to SMU’s deal in fear that they would be left empty handed.
So what really matters here isn’t Fields’ inane accusations of some kind of bias that is preventing the SMU move. It’s the laudable stirring of conscience on the part of some faculty over the unconscionable behavior of our president and their own university.
Though, given all of the crookedness behind the siting of Dubya’s library (to say nothing of Bushco itself), I’m beginning to think that SMU is an appropriate place after all.
Update: When was the last (or even the first) time that the residents of a president's home state protested his library?
2 comments:
I can't wait until Hillary get's elected. The President was a total dissappointment to his true conservative base. Not that it matter's much since no one since Ronald Reagan as gone out to define what conservatism is all about: Individuality and personal freedom. The true Barry Goldwater conservatives believe that some issues(especially individually personal issues) like abortion, homosexuality have no place in political discourse. To a true conservative it simply goes without saying that Everyone should be treated equally and have a government which can provide the environment for that to happen. To the conservative it goes without saying that we have No Right to legislate moral issues since most of us believe that's Someone Else's job. We are all not war crazed wacko's. George Bush is not now, and never has been a conservative. The goverment has grown like 100 fold and conservatives are about a making a smaller, smarter governement that stays out of people's lives but at the same time helps those who need help. The President made a good point last night about pork barrell bullshit that gets slipped into bills at the last moment when the committee chairpeople haven't even seen them and the President doesn't see them when the bill is signed(and I can't think of very many Bill's he's vetoed). Another thing that blows me away is how congress get's a free pass. They're the one's who control how the MONEY is spent after all, and the president isn't a king who can issue some sort of edict about moral and other issues and have them come into immediate law. There's also that 3rd branch of government filled with activist judges who ignore quite a few laws passed by congress. I don't understand why the liberals hate the President so much when he's been extremely liberal in terms of making a larger government, a fake tax plan that isn't even going to take effect until NEXT year and that bill was passed in what 01' 02'?
So he campainged on the fact that big government doesn't work and he got into office and proved it.
I don't expect anything different from a so called democratically controlled congress as they've had no plan whatsoever about anything in the last 6 years other than "We hate George Bush just as much as you do if not more, so vote for us" That's still the platform as far as I can tell. I haven't heard any new brilliant, world changing policy ideas from a single democrat. Lot's of them sure did want his autograph last night for a photo op though, meanwhile publicly they don't miss a chance at name calling and all the other usual liberal hypocrisy. One could hear Jessie Jackson's son have the gaul to ask for the President's autgograph "While he was still president".
It's hard for liberals and conservatives to have real honest discourse /exchange of ideas since if you don't agree with a liberal then there is suddenly no more discourse but name calling. Liberals don't want to debate anything. They want to talk in absolute agreement and be right and simply talking about an issue is good enough, actions don't seem to matter. But like I've said I'm a bummed out dis-enchanted conservative who feels just alienated from my party(not that there's much of a difference between the two anymore) but also alienated from politcal discourse altogether. The Democrat goal since time immemorial has been a one party system and they've achieved that. They've also won the culture war, altho that's mainly due to the ignorance of an increasing number of people acrosee recent generations. The war that we started isn't the war wer're in now and he should have made that speech 4 fucking years ago. He's never defended himself nor even tried to define what conservatism actually is- therefore I'm going with Hillary all the way in 08' because at least I know what we'll be getting and I do think she'll surround herself with the best and the brightest. It's also a shame that the Christian Church (SMU School of Theology specifically)has decided to forget about the bible and take up the causes.They only do so to keep the poltically correct sunday christians coming to church and fill those "offering baskets". They've made themselves absolutely irrelevant. Sorry for
I definitely disagree with some of what you have to say, but I applaud some of your other points (for example, thank you for making the point that Dubya isn’t a real Goldwater conservative – I and others of my political inclination have been screaming about that for years; I even had an ad on this site for a little while about the Goldwater program on HBO, which was probably heretical on my part, but there you are).
It’s obvious that we have philosophical differences, but I believe you want to reach a common ground, as I do. Though I support John Edwards, I understand what you’re saying about Hillary Clinton; I respect her, but I just support someone else primarily because of who John Edwards is and what he represents, and also because he got out “in front” on the issues that matter while HRC was still triangulating and formulating her positions (though I admit that her official entry into the race was excellently staged right after her appearance in Iraq). Also, you’re right about her surrounding herself with good people, and having a blogger in her corner like Peter Daou will ensure that she understands what’s happening online with higher-profile malcontents than yours truly.
I’m less concerned with the “f” bomb than I am with the “Democrat” party reference, but all the same, thank you for your comment.
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