MARILYN PENN: PASSING THE BUCK…..RE: JIMMY CARTER AND CARDOZO LAW SCHOOL ****
http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2013/04/10/passing-the-buck/
There was a time, before the sixties, when the function of a university was to act in loco parentis, offering guidance, direction and discipline to students seeking to benefit from older, wiser minds. After that decade’s watershed capitulation of authority by administrators and faculty empowered to know better, nothing has been quite the same. The latest kerfuffle to illustrate this abandonment of reason is the one currently unfolding at Cardozo Law School. The editors of the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution have chosen Jimmy Carter as the recipient of their International Advocate of Peace Award. This has angered many people, especially alumni, since Cardozo is a part of Yeshiva University, a school singularly dedicated to the support and well-being of Israel. Jimmy Carter, a long-time beneficiary of Saudi Arabia’s payroll, has been unsurprisingly and selectively critical of Israel, characterizing its policies towards Palestinians as apartheid.
The president of Yeshiva U, Richard M. Joel, has explained that it is the students’ job to run the Journal and make all decisions regarding the award. The dean of Cardozo, Matthew Diller, has fudged the issue further by stating that one of the necessary attributes of a law school is to be an “open and diverse community with a cacophony of ideas which people are free to express.” Neither of these men in supposed command is willing to distinguish between the concept of freedom of speech and the bestowal of an honor upon an individual who stands antithetically opposed to the essence of a university’s commitments. Imagine students at West Point deciding to honor a pacifist or students at Barnard selecting a known misogynist – would the top administrators simply forfeit the responsibilities of their office and refuse to intervene? Every student organization on a campus is subsidized by the university and must be subject to its inherent mandate, just as individuals have to abide by school guidelines. When a line gets crossed, administrators are the ones paid to restore the proper decorum – the buck must ultimately stop there. At Rutgers now, we see the clamor for removing the president of the university for not doing enough to stop a coach from expressing abusive behavior and homophobic comments to the members of the basketball team.
Had Jimmy Carter been invited to speak on campus with an opportunity for others to express their contrary points of view, there might have been reasons for raised eyebrows but probably no demands for rescinding the invitation. But since when should a STUDENT group that has made an unsupportable choice for its honoree be considered immune from the guidance of those in charge of leading the university? Why bother to differentiate between student and faculty/administrators if they are all equal in their power? What meaning is left in these descriptive categories if faculty/administrators refuse to perform their implicit tasks? Dean Diller admitted that he sympathized with the alumni’s outrage but would still not intervene: “I view this as a test of our institution’s commitment to openness.” I would suggest to the Board of Trustees that they view this more properly as a test of the dean’s and president’s pusillanimous refusal to exercise the power vested in them – in other words, an abdication of their designated jobs. The Board should properly wonder, if you pass the buck, should you still be receiving it?
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