Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La lobby pro-Apartheid censura Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu, vescovo Sud-Africano, vincitore del premio Nobel per la
pace epr la sua attivita' anti-Apartheid, si e' visto negato il
permesso di parlare in un'universita' Americana a causa delle sue
critiche alla politica di Israele.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/04/tutu
Last week's visit by Iran's president to Columbia University
symbolized to many the openness of American higher education to
hearing controversial ideas and individuals. An incident coming to
light at the University of St. Thomas, in Minnesota, illustrates that
some speakers are denied campus platforms. In this case, the would-be
speaker isn't a Holocaust denier. Nor does he run a government that
routinely denies basic civil rights to scholars, journalists or gay
people.
The speaker barred at St. Thomas won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the prize for his nonviolent
opposition to South Africa's apartheid regime, was deemed unworthy of
appearing at St. Thomas because of comments he made criticizing Israel
- comments the university says were "hurtful" to some Jewish people.
Further, the university demoted the director of the program that
invited Tutu after she wrote a letter to him and others complaining
about the revocation of the invitation. (She retains a tenured faculty
job.)
While the incident happened several months ago, it has only just
become public, when it was reported by City Pages, the alt-weekly in
Minneapolis-St. Paul. The revoked invitation has some faculty members
at the university seething.
"There isn't any academic freedom here when this happens," said Marv
Davidov, an adjunct faculty member who has taught courses about
nonviolence for 15 years at the university. "This is cowardice."
Tutu was invited to the university through a program called PeaceJam
International, which organizes conferences for high school students on
issues related to peace. While the program is not officially a part of
St. Thomas, many faculty members -- especially in the Justice and
Peace Studies Program - are involved in it, and major speakers
sometimes appear on the campus, reaching those at the university in
addition to the high schoolers in the program. Tutu, invited through
the Justice and Peace Studies Program, was to talk at St. Thomas about
issues of peace and nonviolence and there was no expectation that his
talk would focus on the Middle East.
Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations at
St. Thomas, said that when administrators were informed of the
invitation, they did some research about Tutu, and found that some of
his comments had been controversial. Then, the university consulted
with some Jewish leaders, and concluded that Tutu had made remarks
that had been "hurtful" to Jewish leaders.
"We had heard some criticism of him in the past that he had said
things some people judged to be anti-Semitic. We talked to the Jewish
Community Relations Council. We know a number of other people in the
Jewish community, and they said that some of the things he said had
been hurtful and there was a feeling - and this isn't among all Jews -
that he had said things that were hurtful to them," Hennes said.
"We never made a judgment that he is anti-Semitic. We have not made
that judgment. We have only been told by members of the Jewish
community that his words have been hurtful," Hennes said. He stressed
that the university sought out the views of Jewish leaders, and that
the revocation of the invitation was a university decision, and not
one that was sought by anyone outside St. Thomas.
"We make decisions every day on a regular basis on whether to invite
people to campus," Hennes said. Asked if disqualifying people from
speaking for being "hurtful" might block many speakers, he said,
"That's not the case at all. We have speakers on a wide variety of
issues and interests, including sensitive issues within the Catholic
church." (St. Thomas is a Roman Catholic university.)
"I don't think this squelches academic freedom," he said. "We made one
decision about an individual."
The individual in question won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his
work promoting equality in South Africa through nonviolent means.
While St. Thomas doesn't want him to speak, he has been honored by
numerous American colleges with honorary degrees.
The comments by Tutu that appear to have set off scrutiny of the
invitation came in a 2002 speech in Boston about Israel's occupation
of the West Bank. The Zionist Organization of America has criticized
the speech and said that in it, Tutu campared Israel to Hitler. But a
transcript of the speech raises questions about that interpretation.
In the transcript, published by one of the groups that sponsored the
lecture, Tutu is harshly critical of Israel's government and of the
pro-Israel lobby in the United States and expresses regret that some
Jews in Israel and elsewhere do not identify with the oppression of
Palestinians. But Tutu also explicitly talks about Israel's right to
exist within secure borders.
The transcript released by Sabeel, a Palestinian ecumenical group,
does not show a direct comparison between Israel and Hitler. The
mention of Hitler in the speech comes during a section in which Tutu
urged the audience not to assume that the status quo lasts forever,
and in which he urged those listening to challenge to "Jewish lobby"
in the United States. "People are scared in this country [U.S.], to
say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful, very
powerful. Well, so what? This is God's world. For goodness sake, this
is God's world. We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government
was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini,
Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in
the end, they bit the dust."
Davidov, the adjunct at St. Thomas, said he knew that some people were
offended by such comments, but he rejected the idea that all Jews were
offended. He noted that he is Jewish, and agrees with Tutu's remarks
and frequently criticizes Israel himself.
Cris Toffolo, an associate professor of political science and until
recently director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program, questioned
the idea that anyone who makes hurtful comments should be barred from
speaking. "There are some things in the world that are just hard to
talk about, but when you get past the hurt, you can get to the real
issues, and explore those in a way that could move the world to a more
just place," she said.
Toffolo said she believed in the guidelines on controversial speakers
distributed by the American Association of University Professors, an
approach that says that controversy should never justify keeping away
a speaker.
She said that even if some find Tutu's ideas offensive, that's no
reason to keep him from being heard. Exposing students to controversy,
she said, doesn't endorse any particular point of view. For example,
her introductory political theory course, she assigns students to read
an excerpt from Mein Kampf. Well aware that Hilter's manifesto may be
hurtful to Jews and others in the course, Toffolo said she has asked
students how they feel about the assignment, and she's been pleased
that students find it valuable - and understand why the reading is
included.
"They understand that this was part of the debate at that time and we
need to know about it," Toffolo said. "It's only by confronting all of
the realities that we can come to a deeper understanding of any
period," she said.
Toffolo said that she was informed that she was losing the
directorship of the program she led, and received a negative
evaluation, right after she spoke out against rescinding the Tutu
invitation. She said that administrators were very clear with her
about the relationship between their decision on her leadership of the
program, and the invitation. (Hennes, the St. Thomas vice president,
confirmed that Toffolo was removed as chair shortly after she defended
the Tutu invitation, but he declined to say why she was removed,
citing the confidentiality of personnel decisions.)
"It's outrageous and it infringes on my academic freedom," said
Toffolo of the university's decision to strip her of the program
director's position.
While Toffolo's work does not focus on the Middle East, she said that
she saw what happened to her as part of a pattern in which professors
who are critics of Israel face difficulty with their careers. "This
case is interesting because there are so many faculty members running
afoul because of their views on Israeli policy in the occupied
territories or U.S. foreign policy in terms of Israel," she said. "We
need to be able to have serious discussions of these issues."

 director's position.
*ROTFL*
Insulta l'universita' per una loro decisione e poi trova "oltraggioso"
che la rimuovano dal suo posto? :)
-Stefano

 
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/04/tutu
Oh, pure li c'è una paranza squadrista sionista come qui?
Ma quante ce ne sono?

 Ma quante ce ne sono?
La tua paranoia antisemita sta peggiorando.
Fatti curare :)
-Stefano