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AROUND THE QUADS
What They Said
Senator Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) spoke at a conference
on the plight of the Roma, or Gypsies, in present-day Europe, in
Low Library on November 8. “The treatment of the Roma and
ethnic, racial and religious minorities in general is one that tests
democracy,” Clinton said. “The more we do to make democracy
real in the lives of as many people as possible around the world,
the closer we are to seeing democracy and freedom triumph for all.”
Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations,
spoke before nearly 1,000 people at the 16th annual World AIDS Day
Commemoration at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on December
1. “The AIDS pandemic stands alone in human experience. Never
before have we as a people encountered such a formidable enemy,
and only together, as a united people, can we fight it. The courage
women have shown in this fight is matched only by the toll the disease
has taken on them. Empowering women in the fight against HIV/AIDS
must be our strategy for the future.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59L, associate justice
of the Supreme Court, spoke on October 21 at an event commemorating
the 50th anniversary of the court’s landmark ruling in Brown
v. Board of Education, which declared that the doctrine of
“separate but equal” had no place in public education
in the United States. Ginsburg said the ruling “propelled
the human rights movement” in many countries and is part of
the “evolution toward respect, in law and practice, for human
dignity.” The decision “came as a timely reassurance
in may countries, where America’s prestige had been damaged
by segregation, of the principle that all men are created equal.”
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Alan Brinkley
PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO |
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Provost Alan Brinkley, the Allan Nevins Professor
of American History, spoke after the Presidential election to an
audience of undergraduate history majors and colleagues from the
department. “Republicans have a very clear image of where
they stand culturally in American life, and Democrats don’t.
There needs to be a sense that the Democratic Party stands for something
other than pragmatism and tolerance, and that will be the challenge
of the next wave of candidates. The Republicans have been brilliantly
successful in creating strategy, language, positions, rhetoric,
fund raising and so forth to do everything they need to be a disciplined,
election-winning organization. The Democrats will be at a tremendous
disadvantage until they can find a way to do the same.”
Geoffrey Stone, professor at Chicago Law School
and author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime, was
the featured speaker in the first of a series of presidential lectures
— “Civil Liberties in Wartime” — held in
Low Rotunda on November 30. “In times of war hysteria, it
becomes easy for government officials to manipulate public opinion
and to cause the government itself to implement programs to preserve
partisan ends. Free speech is not just a personal right. It is a
part of the entire national structure by which we exist.”
Professor Kenneth Hardy of the College of Human
Services and Health Professions at Syracuse University spoke as
part of the School of Social Work’s Distinguished Visiting
Scholars Series. “Race is a major organizing principle in
our lives, but we create a sort of bifurcation between the outside
world and the world here at school. To truly address race in a meaningful
way, we need to look at how it plays out in our own lives and how
that informs the school environment and the outside world, which
are all connected. We don’t know how to talk about race, because
we don’t. There has to be some effort to push honest dialogue.”
Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT,
spoke at Faculty House on November 16 as part of the “Critical
Lectures in American Foreign Policy” series. “The idea
that we should adhere [to international law] is now an extremist
position,” he said. “The conventional position is that
the U.S. has a unilateral right to resort to force when it chooses
to do so, which is formulated by the Bush administration in its
security strategy.”
John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, spoke
about labor’s involvement in the immigration rights movement
at the 10th annual David N. Dinkins Leadership & Policy Forum
at SIPA. “Historically, immigrant workers played a major role
in building the strongest economy and the most vibrant democracy
in the world,” he said. “Immigrant workers played an
important part in creating a strong union movement that lifted millions
of families into the biggest middle class in history.”
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