A letter has just been released to students, faculty, and staff in the past hour indicating that the president of the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul) is reversing his earlier decision to bar Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu from speaking at a spring, 2008 youth peace conference on campus. (The story is now up on the Star Tribune website.)
President Dennis Dease writes:
One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds.
Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas.
I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.
His administration had indicated last week that the Tutu dis-invitation had originally come about due to perceived concerns with criticisms Tutu had made about Israeli human rights abuses in a 2002 speech. (See my earlier diary, here.)
Tutu and the Justice and Peace Studies Program at UST have received a great deal of support over the past week, since the story broke. Fabricated and misleading charges against Tutu have been firmly refuted, and community members have been working on various fronts to try to figure out why this happened, and to repair the damage done to the various constituencies (including the Justice and Peace Studies Program, Associate Professor Cris Toffolo, PeaceJam International, and the local Jewish community) negatively effected by the original decision. One of the most clear-headed commentaries on the situation is an op-ed by Jewish Voice for Peace that appeared in today's Minneapolis Star Tribune:
If the cancellation of Tutu had been an anomaly, the story would likely have quietly faded away. Instead, it is earning widespread news coverage and international condemnation because it fits into a broader pattern in which people critical of Israeli human-rights violations are either censored or self-censor because they fear being attacked for their views.
Dease seems to have motivated by a genuine desire to avoid hurting Minnesota's Jewish community. However, he ended up not only making a wrong and unethical decision, but also hurting Jews everywhere and harming hopes for a more-enlightened American attitude toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
So in his letter today, Dease has reversed course. Not only has he called for a re-invitation for Tutu to speak, but he has made a public appeal to restore the university's four-year-old relationship with PeaceJam International, which has brought Peace Prize laureates to campus to speak to high school and college kids about peacemaking skills:
PeaceJam International may well choose to keep the alternative arrangements that it has made for its April 2008 conference, but I want the organization and Archbishop Tutu to know that we would be honored to hold the conference at St. Thomas.
It remains to be seen whether Dease will keep to his word and fully re-fund this program and the university staff support for it, which was cut back after the Tutu decision.
In addition, Dease has now called for a larger forum, perhaps in conjunction with a Tutu invitation, on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and how it has affected the issue of free speech at institutions of higher education:
St. Thomas will extend an invitation to Archbishop Tutu to participate in a forum to foster constructive dialogue on the issues that have been raised. I hope he accepts my invitation.... I would look forward to a candid discussion about how a civil and democratic society can pursue reasoned debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other emotionally charged issues.
I also want to encourage a thoughtful examination of St. Thomas’ policies regarding controversial speech and controversial speakers.
This is a significant development, and could serve as a model for other institutions which are currently struggling with these problems. Let us hope that St. Thomas will follow through with funding for this forum, and that it will actually address the larger issues involved here, including the ongoing disaster in the Occupied Territories, the role of the Israel lobby in U.S. political decision-making, and the defense of academic freedom on college campuses in relation to Middle East issues more generally.
One thing Dennis Dease has failed to do, in his letter, is to restore Dr. Cris Toffolo to her position as director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program, and to clear her professional record. She had suddenly been demoted (but is still tenured) in the wake of the Tutu decision, due to a letter she had co-authored to Tutu informing him of the university's decision and the negative charges against him. No professor should have to be punished on the basis of a mistake and an injustice like this. Further emails to the two administrators responsible for this, calling for a restoration of Toffolo's professional record, are still welcome:
Rev. Dennis Dease, President, University of St. Thomas
djdease@stthomas.edu
651-962-6500
Dr. Thomas Rochon, Executive Vice President and Chief Academic Officer
trrochon1@stthomas.edu
651-962-6720
Thank you to all Kossacks who sent in emails or called over the past week. You have made a difference! Although there is more work to do, this has been a great victory, today.