Thursday, March 28, 2024

Writer questions presidents actions


This year, for the first time in quite awhile, I attended graduation. Lacking the stature of the speakers, I merely listened to their words of wisdom, and recalled the time of my own graduation 31 years ago at Madison Square Garden. My university, NYU, had selected George Wall, an eloquent anti-war leader and Harvard professor of biology. His speech had us on our feet, fists and voices raised in a chorus of protest against the violence our state was perpetrating against a people who were seeking their freedom.
Shortly thereafter we had our own scenarios of protest at MSU, of occupations of Linton Hall, while then-President John Hannah stayed out of town; and later protests while Clifton Wharton remained aloof, incommunicado. In contrast, Walter Adams would descend to the protesters to reason with them, even to empathize with their cause. And in later years, when there were activists protesting our investments in South Africa, John DiBiaggio allowed himself to be coaxed into descending from the fourth floor of the new Administration Building to join the protest against Coca-Cola and other corporate investors. Lastly, I recalled summer 1994 when floods of refugees fled Rwanda for Zaire, more than a million facing horrific conditions in camps without water or sanitation. A few members of the local Amnesty International group mounted an effort to assist them, and, thanks to the help of President M. Peter McPherson, were able to cut the red tape and hold a concert to raise funds. McPherson spoke eloquently about the need to take action once we learned about the dire conditions of others.
I remember those times because the issues haven’t entirely left us, and because I did not expect the honored speakers at last Friday’s commencement to remember past moments of activism on this campus, much less to recall them with a sense that those were some of the better moments inscribed in the historical record of this institution. They would most certainly not lift their eyes to gaze at the hardworking laborers in more distant lands where their labors might earn them a dollar a day after sweating for 12 or more hours, as is the case in Bangladesh.
I didn’t suppose they would mention the police on this campus either, whose notions of protection and foresight entailed infiltrating a student group - a group that represents virtually the only remnant of student activism at MSU, one that is seriously engaged in exploring the conditions in sweatshops, the relationship of those sweatshops to MSU and the ways we can engage our campus in meaningful monitoring of those conditions.
If I were to have given the commencement address this year, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. I could have referred to the state of fear and repression engendered during McCarthyism, but who remembers that, and who believes this is McCarthyism? Our current president has stated this is a classical case of democratic freedom vs. security needs. It is not really either. It is activism vs. repression, the real issues at stake.
We are now faced with an issue of fundamental importance for every university in the country. Will we engage ourselves in the struggle for decent working conditions, or will we accept a prosperity that depends on sweatshop exploitation and environmental degradation? Worse, will we be silent because now the practices of a police state will no longer be viewed as threatening, thus indicating we will have internalized the belief that the police, and the forces of authority that lie behind them, should be free to spy on students when they espouse views that are contrary to those of the administration?

Kenneth W. Harrow
English professor

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