Peter N. Kirstein

I have been touring the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian province of British Columbia. I happened to be in Seattle on Sunday, June 28th, the day of Gay Pride parades commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall gay-bar resistance in Manhattan. It launched, so they say, the gay liberation movement. While some historians actually believe the resistance began at a gay sit-in at Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia and NOT Stonewall, history has a way of creating “facts” which may be more or less true. I think the heroes of Dewey, whose names are buried in history, should be lauded for the non-violent actions of that event. Stonewall was violent but certainly liberationist in effect.

I was walking with my backpack on the way to Cafe Presse on Capitol Hill in Seattle when I saw the preparatory staging of the Pride parade. It had not started but I could see a marching band rehearsing, corporate sponsored logos such as Orbitz Gay travel floats and Microsoft-sponsored platforms. Anyway, I walked up a steep hill to the Cafe, then north on 14th Avenue to Volunteer Park to see the Conservatory and the Water Tower view of the sparkling city. As I headed back to my hotel down Pine Street, I could see the Space Needle again. I had seen it from a ship traversing Puget Sound on the west and through the “Black Sun” sculpture of Isamu Noguchi which is right in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. It looks more like a doughnut but according to the New York Times inspired Soundgarden’s grunge anthem “Black Hole Sun.”

http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:pbZ791SOdAf_yM:http://farm4.static.flickr.com

Anyway on my downhill return to the waterfront, I got to Union and the Pride Parade was still in full swing some two hours after my initial pre-parade encounter. I had never witnessed a gay-pride parade before or any parade since my parents would take me to a July 4th event every year on Lindell Blvd. in St Louis. I was able to catch a space between floats and dash across 4th Avenue but decided to stop and watch the extravaganza.

The parade was mobbed. I noticed a float with: “Atheists believe in you” and smiled, applauded and admired the touch. Then I saw some HIV/AIDS sponsors as they passed out written information. Signs declaring “Use a condom” were passing me as I stood on the corner as a policeperson tried to get the crowd back onto the sidewalk. Then the United Church of Christ displayed its solidarity. Folks were screaming with joy and clapping as display after display rolled by. Yes there were the narcissistic bare-chested-only-underpants wearing men on a float and one or two drag queens but most of the parade thematics were quite educational and progressive in substance. “Remember Stonewall.” “Marriage should be Equal.” “Our time has come.”  “Don’t Discriminate by Gender” etc.

I did not ask spectators what their orientation was but I was struck at the large numbers and wondered, “Were they all gay?” Probably not since I am straight and folks like a good parade. A great parade actually in a very progressive city. The Seattle Times on its front-page covered the event and also listed Pride events for the weekend.  I did not see President Barack Obama in the parade or Hillary Clinton but I suppose Barack was getting ready for his chat in the White House on Monday with gay and lesbian organisational leaders and Hillary was probably just being Hillary. Wondering if those “Hard working Americans. White Americans” which was her racist mantra during the primaries in 2008 would ever be able to vote for her again for president. I hope not as the wife of Mr Racist (remember the South Carolina primary remarks?)  D.O.M.A. revels in her splendour.

That evening I went out for dinner to Wild Ginger to get some clams and scallops and the parade was over and the area was pretty empty.  Later as I was getting read for bed, I thought well the police this time were protecting spectators and Pride participants, watching to preserve order and basically just doing their job. Not hassling, or breaking up folks enjoying what was then one of the few public spaces where homosexuals could socialise: gay bars. So some manifestations of overt persecution have ended as evidenced with the reversal of the sodomy is a crime Bowers v Hardwick (1986) case with the Lawrence v Texas case in 2003. A little stare decisis can be dangerous and oppressive. I am glad it was eviscerated in this instance.

One of the reasons I used “Coming Out Straight” as part of the subject title was up until a few years ago I was afraid to discuss the Gay Liberation struggle in my history classes. It was like well they may think I am gay or something as if that would be so bad. In my syllabus I first stated I was straight. Then I removed that but when distributing a handout outline, I indicated  I did not participate in the gay lifestyle. This year I hope to treat it more as a normal topic for a history survey course like women’s or African-American history. Historians have generally avoided the gay and lesbian topic for reasons which may be either fear of misidentification or underestimating its importance in the tapestry of American history.

Coming out straight may be necessary in achieving a comfort level in discussing the topic of homosexuality for some–especially those teaching at a conservative (at least by my standards to be sure), Catholic university. Yet avoiding the topic ignores a significant contemporary and historic phenomenon of  the struggle for human rights and equal justice. One’s orientation is irrelevant in terms of character and ability and citizenship. The more open gays and straights are about the persecution of gays and lesbians and transgender and bisexuals then the veil of silence will be lifted further and a just society more comprehensively advanced.

These are my remaks for Chicago Gaza Panel, February 26, 2009.

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno, during the Spanish Civil War, declared in 1936, “Sometimes to be Silent is to Lie.” He directed this remark on his campus of the University of Salamanca, where he had served twice as rector, to the pro-Franco fascist General Milan-Astray, who forced him off campus at gunpoint and placed Unamuno under house arrest. This was a shocking violation of academic freedom which I am sure Stanley Fish, now op-ed columnist of the New York Times, would with charactristic nuance defend.

Unamuno died within two months after suffering a heart attack. In this country professors have been denied tenure, denied promotion, subjected to public vilification, experienced censorship of their books, been prohibited from speaking at previously scheduled events, been suspended, denied the right to teach classes in their specialty, pressured to turn down appointments at universities, and have been fired from both tenure and non-tenure track positions for speaking truth to power about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Naming names was used during the McCarthy Era to blacklist and smear supposed communists and internationalists including many academicians. Well I am naming names of the courageous victims of the New McCarthyism who refused to be silent: Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, Terri Ginsberg, Mehrene Larudee, Douglas Giles, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Joseph Massad, Ward Churchill and Juan Cole.

The suffering of Arab peoples must end and perpetrators such as the State of Israel brought to justice before the International Criminal Court. Israel unfortunately is merely the most recent non-Arab nation to dispossess the Arab peoples with approximately 400-500,000 forced out of the Palestine Mandate with the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

Twenty years later in the 1967 six day War which Israel initiated, despite the gleeful global propaganda of its heroic victory, Israel expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. (Mearsheimer, Walt Israel Lobby).

I say the latest non-Arab nation to engage in Muslim ethnic cleansing because The Lausanne Treaty of 1923, yes an actual treaty, required the deportation of 350,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey. While Christians were also subjected to “population exchange,” no other international treaty has targeted specific peoples for mandatory population uprooting.

The Gaza slaughter is another recent act of state terrorism against a defenceless and abused people. Gaza is a strip of land on the Mediterranean that is one of the most undeveloped and densely populated in the world. It was part of the British Mandate in Palestine after World War I and was occupied by Egypt after the 1948 war and is about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. Its population consists of 1.3 million Palestinians living in absolute poverty. Israel took control of the region during the Six-Day War in 1967, along with the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula which was later returned to Egypt.

When 9,000 Israeli settlers colonised Gaza, they stole one-third of Gaza and the other two-thirds of the enclave was where the huddled masses of Palestinians lived.

Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council on Justice and Peace, recently referred to Gaza as “a big concentration camp.” Imagine a Jewish state, born out of the Holocaust, establishing a concentration camp along its border in this manner.

Norman Finkelstein has referred to Gaza as “Israel’s favourite shooting gallery,” and described the attack as: “Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population.”

Here are some facts on the ground:

First) There had been a ceasefire negotiated by Israel and Hamas, which has been the democratically elected government of Gaza since February 2006, that was reasonably intact from June 2008 until November 4, 2008. On that date, conveniently timed to coincide with the distraction of America’s presidential election, Israel violated the ceasefire by invading Gaza with tanks and airstrikes, and killing about 5 Palestinians. This led to Hamas’s Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot and other Israeli communities as the ceasefire unraveled leading to the full-scale Dec. 27 Israel invasion.

Second) Fatah, the descendant of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, is the Arab faction that runs the West Bank, under Israeli supervision, the other component of occupied, colonised Palestine. Yet there are strong supporters in both Gaza and the West Bank of the other non-ruling group. The Palestinians are a united people in spirit.

Third) Israel waged a twenty-three day assault from December 27 until January 18, 2009 on a civilian population in a manner reminiscent of the wehrmacht during World War II. The timing was deliberate in that it began under the waning days of the Bush administration which Israel knew would not challenge the invasion and it ended just prior to the Obama inauguration so as not to offend the sensibilities of a possibly somewhat less militant U.S. administration.

Fourth) 1,300 Palestinians were killed including 400 children. Thirteen Israelis died and three were civilian. This is a 100 to one ratio and a shocking lack of both proportionality in which a nation uses excessive force beyond military necessity, and discrimination when a military force deliberately ignores non-combatant immunity. The National Lawyers Guild reported the following incidents from their eight-member legal team that investigated the possibility of war crimes in Gaza:

“We spoke to Khaled Abed Rabbo, who witnessed an Israeli soldier execute his 2-year-old and 7-year-old daughters, and critically injure a third daughter, Samar, 4-years old, on a sunny afternoon outside his home. Two other Israeli soldiers were standing nearby eating chips and chocolates at the time on January 7, 2009. Abed Rabbo recounts standing in front of the Israeli soldiers with his mother, wife and daughters for 5 to 7 minutes before one of the soldiers opened fire on his family.

“We spoke to Ibtisam al-Sammouni, 31, and a resident of Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City. On January 4th, the Israeli army forced approximately 110 of Zaytoun’s residents into Ibtisam’s home. At approximately 7 am on January 5th, the Israeli military launched two tank shells at the house without warning killing two of Ibtisam’s children: Rizka, 14 and Faris, 12. When the survivors attempted to flee, Israeli forces shot at them. Her son Abdullah, 7, was injured in the shelling and remained in the home among his deceased siblings for four days before Israeli forces permitted medical personnel into Zaytoun to rescue them. After medical personnel removed the injured persons, an Israeli war plane destroyed the house… The dead remained beneath the rubble for 17 days before the Israeli Army permitted …their…burial.”

The New York Times reported on February 11, 2009 that the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, announced that Israel is blocking needed humanitarian aid from reaching the devastated area. Israel permits only one border crossing into Gaza which can deliver enough daily life-sustaining supplies for only 30,000 people. Ban wants other points of entry to be opened as well. Israel has blockaded the Gazan coast on the Mediterranean and Egypt, which has one border crossing into Gaza, has been reluctant to open that as well.

Israel maintains that Hamas must be disarmed and not allowed to acquire weaponry through tunnels in the south or other means. No other nation in the world is required to have an absence of military self-defence. The Palestinians are basically disarmed anyway. They lack a navy, an army and air force to defend against Israel’s strategic power.

It is interesting there is an absence of international pressure for Israel to reduce its level of military forces. Israel receives about $3 billion dollars in direct assistance each year from the American taxpayer even though Israel is one of the wealthiest nations on Earth with per capita income equivalent to Spain or the Republic of Korea. It receives the most modern US weaponry such as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets which it uses to terrorise defenceless populations.

Israel is the only Middle East state with nuclear weapons and only one of three countries in the world not to ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. This mythical notion of a Jewish David surrounded by an Arab Goliath in a hostile region is imaginary at best. While it is more of a democracy than some Arab authoritarian states, its aggression and undermining international peace and security through repeated violations of international humanitarian law are more significant in a global context.

Israel is an officially Jewish state with the Star of David hexagram emblazoned on its flag. America has long been critical of nations that are wedded to an official religion. Our own constitution requires that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The United States is not officially Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Baha’i or Druse or Jewish.

There is an inherent undemocratic character about nations that establish an official religion. While the U.S. has been openly critical of Muslim and Communist states that deny religious pluralism, such criticism is never directed at Israel.

Israel’s population is 7.1 million and 76% Jewish and 24% non Jewish with mostly Muslim Arabs with about 2% Arab Christian.) (CIA Factbook). Their 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens: They can’t join the army which means they are denied the generous benefits given to veterans.  (Haaretz 12/20/07)

They can’t marry Palestinian partners and remain in Israel. Marriage could lead to deportation. Israeli law gives official recognition to Jewish cultural institutions but not Arab. Israeli-Arabs have been expelled from their homes in the Negev-a desert area in the south-because they were told they were illegal.

The argument is frequently advanced that Israel and the United States are allies in the war against terrorism. In fact the opposite is the case. A more nuanced and normal relationship with Israel, that is evident in most bilateral relations, would possibly reduce the threat of so-called terrorism. Al Qaeda in particular has declared Palestinian suffering as one of its chief grievances against the U.S. Iran, a supporter of Hamas, also frequently refers to the American lack of balance in its approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a source of tension and enmity.

Israel needs less financial support from the economically ravaged United States and the United States needs less of an Israel-centric Middle East foreign policy. Israel’s existence is not reasonably threatened by the facts on the ground and as the most powerful nation in the region, it can afford to demonstrate more tolerance and less racism in its approach to the Palestinian conflict. United States national security and international peace and justice are ultimately served by a resolution of this conflict that brings justice to the Palestinians, secure borders for Israel, a Palestinian state that is contiguous, viable and truly independent and an end to this carnage.

Governor Rod Blagojevich has apppointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat on December 30, 2008. A couple of weeks ago I took my car in for service at a dealership on 159th Street in Orland Park, Illinois. Former Attorney General Burris, who I believe would make an excellent United States Senator, was just a few feet from me as we were checking in our cars. My “advisor” as he was test driving my car after repairs told me, “Roland Burris is seeking the Senate seat.” I said I heard that but I wonder if that is possible given the “politiking” going on.

Governor Blagojevich, who has not been indicted or convicted of any criminal misconduct, has a history of making astute political decisions. Giving seniors free riding passes on the Chicago Transit Authority, attempting heroically to cover Illinois children with health insurance and his rather significant effort to purchase Canadian pharmaceuticals at discounted prices.

I think his appointment of Attorney General Burris is quite remarkable. It is his right under the state of Illinois constitution and his way of asserting that political witchunts by the headline-hunting US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the unseemly campaign to unseat him by Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Lt Governor Pat Quinn will not deter him from his responsibilities. Most thought the governor would eschew making an appointment and that the impeachment proceedings in the Illinois House would cow him into submission. Illinois needs a senator and Roland Burris would be a mainstream Democrat not given to histrionics or sensational pr campaigns such as Represenative Jesse Jackson Jr of the second congressional district or Jan Schakowsky of the ninth congressional district. He is also a historic figure being the first African-American to win statewide office in 1979 when elected comptroller in Illinois.

Also there is no evidence that Chief of Staff-Designate Rahm Emmanuel lobbied for Mr Burris as he did for the other two representatives. In addition there is no evidence that any quid pro quo ever arose between the governor and Mr Burris. Mr Burris is a modest individual, of little pretense and would serve Illinois well in the senate. As an African-American this would insure that a capable minority would represent Illinois and that at least one United States Senator would be representative of that ethnic group.

I think Governor Blagojevich is acting with principle, honour and integrity with this particular action in filling a vacant senate seat in the “Adopted Land of Lincoln.”

Jim Wilson/The New York Times Del Martin, seated, and Phyllis Lyon were the first same-sex couple in San Francisco to exchange wedding vows on Monday, June 17, 2008. Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, presided.

I am pretty sure these elderly women are the ones I mention in a topic on the gay liberation movement in my United States History Since 1877 class (Hist 104). I introduced this component a couple of years ago after years of timidity. I decided it was necessary to give a more comprehensive rendering of American history and include gay history of the 1950s and 1960s. While it is not my lifestyle, one has to make choices even if teaching at a Catholic university what is in the best interests of the students–for me that is to have a full complement of disparate groups included in the panorama of American history.

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon founded the first lesbian organisation in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis, in San Francisco in 1955. The group also published the first lesbian-oriented publication, a newsletter called the Ladder. I have not been able to learn the origins of that name or what it represented. I do know where the name, “Daughters of Bilitis” emanated from. A French writer, Pierre Louys wrote in 1894, The Song of Bilitis which purportedly contained erotic love poems between women during classical times. However, further research revealed they were not original poems discovered by the author but WRITTEN by the author himself.

I might add that my students have been very receptive to the material and it was quite useful in discussing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the United States military. While a couple of students, as is their right, used biblical references to condemn homosexuality, the vast majority of my students were quite tolerant of different sexual preferences. During one class, a student declared he was gay and came up to me after class, shook my hand and said, “thanks.” I said something to the effect that I was merely doing my job as a professor but that I respected students’ habits and urgings. After a class this Spring, a student came up to me as I was in the hall and said their orientation was bisexual. I indicated I had read that most bisexuals are actually homosexuals but the student affirmed sexual attraction to both genders.

I wish the presidential candidates would quit pandering to majority opinion and simply state they support marriage regardless of gender and leave it at that. They don’t have to push for a constitutional amendment legalising it but just offer some support to states that permit same-sex marriages such as California and Massachusetts or others such as Vermont, Hawai’i, Connecticut and New Jersey that permit civil unions–kind of a secular junior partner of same-sex marriages. Senator Barack Obama does support the latter but not the Arizona senator war criminal of the Vietnam disgrace and genocide.

Senator Obama’s full remarks follow as prepared for delivery.

Remarks for Senator Barack Obama

Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Fort Wayne, Indiana

April 4, 2008

Assassinated April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee

As Mike Mike [Riley, Indiana Campaign Chairperson for Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968] said, today represents a tragic anniversary for our country.  Through his faith, courage, and wisdom, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. moved an entire nation.  He preached the gospel of brotherhood; of equality and justice. That’s the cause for which he lived – and for which he died forty years ago today.  And so before we begin, I ask you to join me in a moment of silence in memory of this extraordinary American.

There’s been a lot of discussion this week about how Dr. King’s life and legacy speak to us today. It’s taking place in our schools and churches, on television and around the dinner table. And I suspect that much of what folks are talking about centers on issues of racial justice – on the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington, on the freedom rides and the stand at Selma.

And that’s as it should be – because those were times when ordinary men and women, straight-backed and clear-eyed, challenged what they knew was wrong and helped perfect our union. And they did so in large part because Dr. King pointed the way.

But I also think it’s worth reflecting on what Dr. King was doing in Memphis, when he stepped onto that motel balcony on his way out for dinner.

And what he was doing was standing up for struggling sanitation workers. For years, these workers had served their city without complaint, picking up other people’s trash for little pay and even less respect. Passers-by would call them “walking buzzards,” and in the segregated South, most were forced to use separate drinking fountains and bathrooms.

But in 1968, these workers decided they’d had enough, and over 1,000 went on strike. Their demands were modest – better wages, better benefits, and recognition of their union. But the opposition was fierce. Their vigils were met with handcuffs. Their protests turned back with mace. And at the end of one march, a 16-year old boy lay dead.

This is the struggle that brought Dr. King to Memphis. It was a struggle for economic justice, for the opportunity that should be available to people of all races and all walks of life. Because Dr. King understood that the struggle for economic justice and the struggle for racial justice were really one – that each was part of a larger struggle “for freedom, for dignity, and for humanity.” So long as Americans were trapped in poverty, so long as they were being denied the wages, benefits, and fair treatment they deserved – so long as opportunity was being opened to some but not all – the dream that he spoke of would remain out of reach.

And on the eve of his death, Dr. King gave a sermon in Memphis about what the movement there meant to him and to America. And in tones that would prove eerily prophetic, Dr. King said that despite the threats he’d received, he didn’t fear any man, because he had been there when Birmingham aroused the conscience of this nation. And he’d been there to see the students stand up for freedom by sitting in at lunch counters. And he’d been there in Memphis when it was dark enough to see the stars, to see the community coming together around a common purpose. So Dr. King had been to the mountaintop. He had seen the Promised Land. And while he knew somewhere deep in his bones that he would not get there with us, he knew that we would get there.

He knew it because he had seen that Americans have “the capacity,” as he said that night, “to project the ‘I’ into the ‘thou.’” To recognize that no matter what the color of our skin, no matter what faith we practice, no matter how much money we have – no matter whether we are sanitation workers or United States Senators – we all have a stake in one another, we are our brother’s keeper, we are our sister’s keeper, and “either we go up together, or we go down together.”

And when he was killed the following day, it left a wound on the soul of our nation that has yet to fully heal. And in few places was the pain more pronounced than in Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy happened to be campaigning. And it fell to him to inform a crowded park that Dr. King had been killed. And as the shock turned toward anger, Kennedy reminded them of Dr. King’s compassion, and his love. And on a night when cities across the nation were alight with violence, all was quiet in Indianapolis.

In the dark days after Dr. King’s death, Coretta Scott King pointed out the stars. She took up her husband’s cause and led a march in Memphis. But while those sanitation workers eventually got their union contract, the struggle for economic justice remains an unfinished part of the King legacy. Because the dream is still out of reach for too many Americans. Just this morning, it was announced that more Americans are unemployed now than at any time in years. And all across this country, families are facing rising costs, stagnant wages, and the terrible burden of losing a home.

Part of the problem is that for a long time, we’ve had a politics that’s been too small for the scale of the challenges we face. This is something I spoke about a few weeks ago in a speech I gave in Philadelphia. And what I said was that instead of having a politics that lives up to Dr. King’s call for unity, we’ve had a politics that’s used race to drive us apart, when all this does is feed the forces of division and distraction, and stop us from solving our problems.

That is why the great need of this hour is much the same as it was when Dr. King delivered his sermon in Memphis. We have to recognize that while we each have a different past, we all share the same hopes for the future – that we’ll be able to find a job that pays a decent wage, that there will be affordable health care when we get sick, that we’ll be able to send our kids to college, and that after a lifetime of hard work, we’ll be able to retire with security. They’re common hopes, modest dreams.  And they’re at the heart of the struggle for freedom, dignity, and humanity that Dr. King began, and that it is our task to complete.

You know, Dr. King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but that it bends toward justice. But what he also knew was that it doesn’t bend on its own. It bends because each of us puts our hands on that arc and bends it in the direction of justice.

So on this day – of all days – let’s each do our part to bend that arc.  

Let’s bend that arc toward justice.

Let’s bend that arc toward opportunity.

Let’s bend that arc toward prosperity for all.

And if we can do that and march together – as one nation, and one people – then we won’t just be keeping faith with what Dr. King lived and died for, we’ll be making real the words of Amos that he invoked so often, and “let justice roll down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”          

Panel Presentation: Women and Gender Symposium, St Xavier University, January 26, 2008, Chicago, Illinois

Spanish philosopher Miguel Unamuno said, “At times, to be Silent is to Lie.” In higher education self-censorship may sometimes be construed in that manner. For example, not since 1991, have we had an open forum on this campus on reproductive rights, an event that I organised.

We need to engage the following issues by breaking the silence and ending self-censorship.

We need to have a renewed discussion of abortion and its impact on both our students and contemporary society. This is the thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe v. Wade that represents a propitious moment for such a dialogue. This should include the legal, ethical, theological, feminist and medical implications of reproductive freedoms. I recall shortly after President Judith Dwyer began her tenure, there was a very public protest led by a prominent and financially generous member of the board of trustees concerning the appearance of pro-choice former Republican Governor Jim Edgar.

I support the right of protest but was pleased academic freedom prevailed with a strong affirmation from the president that St Xavier would not restrict access to speakers on the basis of partisan ideological beliefs. The time has come to reengage this topic as educators and as a university in the modern world.

Unlike DePaul University and Loyola University of Chicago, we do not have partner benefits for either homosexual or unmarried, heterosexual partners. We have made decisions that some faculty families merit health-care and others do not. We are a rich nation but with growing economic insecurity with 47,000,000 Americans without health insurance. S.X.U. can, within its own community, correct this grave imbalance.

We must not discriminate against any couples who have a meaningful, committed relationship. Five of our University Core Values: “Respect,” “Compassion,” “Hospitality,” “Diversity” and especially “Integrity” would logically embrace the notion of providing access to healthcare for all faculty families at this institution. I am hopeful that the Collective Bargaining Agreement, that is under negotiation, will end the discriminatory practice of selective family health-insurance coverage.

I have faith in my faculty union colleagues and in the administration that partner benefits will be provided in a  non-discriminatory manner. Yet I would urge the faculty to consider carefully rejecting any collective bargaining agreement that excludes some of our colleagues’ families from this basic necessity of LIFE. Those of us with health insurance must not allow those without to be discriminated against as second-class faculty families at this university.

I think it would benefit the institution, if we were to see a greater exploration of the relevance of church teaching to issues that are germane to the purview of the Women and Gender Studies Programme.

A) Is the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality consistent with a progressive vision of inclusion?

B) Is the church’s teaching on the role of women in the church consistent with feminism and gender equality?

C) Is the church’s teaching on embryonic stem cell research appropriate when balanced against the medical benefits such research might provide?

D) Is the church’s teachings on birth control and pre-marital sex-with its disapproval of intimacy between unmarried, adult, consensual couples consistent with modernity and the acknowledgement that humans are sexual beings for whom sex may not be intended for procreation, and virginity may not be the only moral option outside conjugal relations.

Faith-based institutions are strengthened when there is a vigorous and dynamic discussion of issues including the religious views of its charism and founding orders.

This is from St Xavier’s: “The Vision of Our Catholic Identity,” one of three virtual mission statements I might add.

“The central activities of the University are teaching and learning. Excellence in teaching is paramount, allowing for the advancement of the fields of study through careful research, critical analysis, and thoughtful discussion. An essential condition of this activity is the academic freedom of faculty and students. The Catholic Church recognizes the fundamental dignity of all persons on whom the responsibility to seek the truth rests, and supports each person in the pursuit of truth, especially religious truth.”

I interpret that as a progressive support for critical thinking. So let us not be silent but pursue the truth with a robust, directness sustained by academic freedom.

Roe v. Wade 1973

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr at March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Here he delivered his “I Have A Dream” oration.

At the march, Bob Dylan sung “Only A Pawn In Their Game” (link to verse and audio clip) which was a paean to the recently assassinated N.A.A.C.P. Mississippi leader Medgar Evers. Mr Evers was involved in desegregation and voter registration in the state and was shot to death in his own driveway.

Mr Dylan had traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi earlier that summer in July and had sung the song in a cotton patch as he demonstrated solidarity with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [S.N.C.C.] and other voter-registration civil rights groups in the area.

The song’s last verse would again be tragically applicable when Dr King, perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest figure, is murdered five years later in 1968 while in Memphis, TN supporting a strike by refuge collectors:

Today, Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught.
They lowered him down as a king.
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

Many of us never expected a minority presidential candidate to have a viable opportunity to be president of the United States. While many forget that the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson won THIRTEEN primaries and caucuses in 1988, Governor Michael Dukakis was the presumptive nominee early on in the campaign. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, has won one caucus in Iowa but is poised to win his first primary in  South Carolina this Saturday.

Senator Obama at the King family’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on January 20, 2008.

Dr King’s  maternal grandfather, Reverend Adam Daniel Williams, and father, Martin Luther King Sr, were pastors of the church. Martin Luther King Jr actually began his full-time ministry at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama while he was still completing his doctoral dissertation, not without considerable carelessness, from Boston University. This was fortuitous because the Rosa Parks civil-disobedience incident on the bus commenced there on December 1, 1955. Dr King eventually assumed the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church when he returned east in 1960 to his birthplace in Atlanta.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in addition to her misreading of the role of Dr King’s prominence in the civil rights movement, demonstrated additional partisan and revisionist history that is inaccurate. Revisionist history is the motive force behind historiography but it can be wrong.

In her assertion that it was war criminal Lyndon B. Johnson who “passed” the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she states President Kennedy had been “hopeful” in doing so. What does that mean? Mr Kennedy (1961-1963) for several years resisted sending a civil rights bill to the Congress because he was afraid it would alienate southern voters. His own Nixonian southern strategy was evident in his appointment of racist, apartheid judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Senator Clinton is attempting to state that idealism means nothing; implementation means everything and that the former is irrelevant or certainly secondary in the success of the latter. Well, being “hopeful” is hardly decisive presidential action but pusillanimity. While J.F.K. did assist James Meredith in integrating the University of Mississippi and ultimately supported the epochal August 1963 March on Washington, his presidency was not particularly decisive or proactive in the area of civil rights.

President Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961)

Hillary Clinton also dismissed entirely President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in the civil rights struggle even though he sent troops in 1957 to Little Rock, Arkansas to desegregate Central High School and was president when the significant 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed, the first civil rights law since the 1866 Reconstruction act. Yes it is true Mr Eisenhower was not generally sympathetic to Brown v. Topeka desegregation guidelines and was not a strong supporter of civil rights, but his record is not devoid of any accomplishment and she should have mentioned the civil rights act passed during his presidency.

As a senator who voted for war in October 2002 and subsequently lies on Meet the Press, that her vote was NOT a vote for the possibility of preemptive war, I can understand her dismissive statement of President Eisenhower. The latter warned against the military-industrial-complex to which the New York senator is so completely intertwined as she assumes the basic virtues of American imperialism, expansionism and its virtually unlimited right to use force.

Much has been made of recent comments directed at the Obama campaign by President Bill  and Senator Hillary Clinton. The House majority whip and highest ranking African-American in Congress, Democratic Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, is contemplating an Obama endorsement prior to the Democratic South Carolina primary on January  26, 2008. Bizarrely, the state holds its Republican primary on January 19.

1) Senator Hillary Clinton stated that it was President Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that implemented Dr King’s dream.  Of course presidents don’t pass legislation; the Congress does but perhaps the senator missed that class in Government 101. This was her exact statement: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The clear implication was that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign of hope is pyrrhic without a strong change agent as president. That to merely talk about change is not enough; one has to have the skills and determination to make change. That may be true but her example is egregious and factually in error. Her statements were needlessly self-serving and revealed great ignorance about the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Without marches, civil-disobedience, sit-ins, freedom rides, and the genius of Dr King, there would not have been a Civil Rights Act of 1964.  President Kennedy had dallied some two and half years before he sent a civil rights bill to the Hill in 1963. L.B.J., a nazi-style war criminal for his genocide in Vietnam, was certainly an advocate of domestic racial equality and integration. Yet the 1964 law would not have been possible had it not been for the massive demonstrations and creative non-violent civil disobedience of Dr King, the S.C.L.C., S.N.C.C., C.O.R.E., N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights groups. Therefore, Senator Clinton underestimated the power of vision and speech and direct action prior to her rather narrow-minded, simplistic view of presidential power. Her comment was not explicitly racist but vastly underestimated the role and sacrifice of many African Americans in the struggle to end Jim Crow apartheid in the United States.

2) William Jefferson Clinton compared Senator Obama’s position on the Iraq War to a “fairy tale.” He alleged the press had ignored various statements by the Illinois Senator in 2004 which he claimed repersented a cautious reluctance to distance himself from Mr Bush and the prior Senate authorisation to use force in October 2002. I don’t believe the president was stating that the campaign of Obama in general was a “fairy tale” but the tenor of his remarks were certainly bound to offend those who take quite seriously the burgeoning candidacy of a minority.  President Clinton took pains to explain himself subsequently that he was referring to the press’s treatment of Sen. Obama’s positions on the war, and not the legitimacy or growing strength of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yet Mr Clinton is shamefully engaging in propaganda which is contemptuous and unseemly. Barack Obama opposed the war BEFORE the Senate and a majority of its Senate Democrats voted to authorise war in October 2002 and the commencement of hostilities in March 2003. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton supported the war before it began “with conviction” and unlike the intrepid Senator John Edwards, has never diavowed her vote. So it is accurate to say that Senator Obama would have opposed the war-authorisation resolution, given his prewar public comments, and Senator Clinton cynically for political purposes supported it. That is a difference in judgment, honour and ethics that hopefully will render the Clinton candidacy as failure and unsustainable as the surge and American and Iraqi deaths slogs on in the killing fields of that widowed land.

The University of Illinois since 1926 has had a mascot named "Chief Illiniwek." This racist, mocking symbol of "redmen" was paraded at half-time during football and basketball games. A white-male student would run around barefoot–let's go native and mock those we exterminated–adorn a buckskin costume like Halloween, wear facial warpaint and cavort around in a headdress with feathers that one would see on Main Street in a shop with a Totem Pole out in front.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association has reiterated its August 2005 ruling and rejected a University of Illinois appeal that the chief is not "hostile and abusive." Those University of Illinois presidents and board chairpersons such as Lawrence Eppley should be condemned in associating a major state university with such hatred and cultural arrogance.

There is no doubt Illinois will comply. Symptomatic of the corporatised university, such retrogressive institutions care only about money and power. Since Illinois could not schedule any N.C.A.A. tournaments, they will cave in out of fear that non-revenue sports such as tennis, that host such events, might lose their recruits and tarnish the reputations of their big-ticket sports. If I were the Big Ten commissioner, I would have recommended the expulsion of this disgraceful university–a great university with renown programmes but in this case disgraceful– from the conference and if I were North Central, I would have stripped it of its accreditation pending the retirement of the chief. None would happen; none will happen; in any event the Chief is gone and may it be forever remembered as a manifestation of hatred, perpetuated by fear of reduced funding by the Illinois state legislature and a lack of scruples concerning justice and human rights.

Shame on the U of I administrations that perpetuated this racism and may the glory of the N.C.A.A. shine and be praised for its greatness and courage. I honour Walter Harrison, N.C.A.A. Executive Committee Chairperson. It is ironic that a sports organization, the N.C.A.A., is more progressive and dedicated to social justice and critical thinking than many of the universities that it serves. Elitists tend to see athletics as uniformly antiintellectual, non-secular in its motif of prayer and group solidarity and yet fail to realise the N.C.A.A.s historic role in eliminating blatant racism in so many athletic programmes. May it continue on this historic mission of greatness.

P.S. Bradley University, known for its great basketball programme as it joined the Sweet 16 in the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, has an inelegant nickname of "Braves." The N.C.A.A. ruled Bradley could retain that name since it had discarded its Native American mascot and Indian logos some ten years ago. While I would prefer Bradley would eliminate their monicker, they have shown a good faith effort to purge itself of such ostentatious bigotry. The North Dakota Fighting Sioux lost their appeal and that horrid name must be abandoned as well if they are to host any post-season tournament.  

 See link to St Louis Post-Dispatch

Saint Xavier University has canceled classes on Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr’s National Holiday. For years professors tried to get some type of formal acknowledgement of this holiday from the university. Finally the administration of President Judith Dwyer had the courage and the decency to allow the SXU community an opportunity to appropriately pay tribute to this greatest of American figures.

I teach African-American History and whenever that class would be scheduled on Dr King’s Holiday, I would cancel class out of respect to him and my students. Now the university officially embraces the significance of this day. This is essential as the university must continue to move toward greater diversity among the faculty, greater respect for non-conformity in terms of speech and behaviour and a commitment to progressive values that lead us to peace and freedom and justice. I praise the university and urge its growth and continued development.

I have a picture of Dr King on my website and in all my classes. There is a picture of him, holding a son in his lap, superimposed with his “I Have A Dream” speech of August 1963 at the March on Washington.

Dr King received his Ph.D. from Boston University. I received my A.B. from Boston University. His doctorate was in theology; mine was in government.

http://www.aaup.org/newsroom/Solomonpr.htm

The American Association of University Professors has endorsed Stanford Law Professor Kathleen Sullivan’s argument against the Solomon Amendment, that can sanction entire colleges and universities who refuse to acquiesce in the anti-American, homophobic practices of the U. S. military

Many universities do not allow discrimination of openly gay students or other personnel and believe they should not be required to allow military recruiters on campus. The military violates non-discriminatory policies on many campuses with its “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.” Gay military personnel who openly admit they are gay or who are outed as gay or lesbian are dismissed from the military.

I have long believed there is hypocrisy among those who claim the military protects our freedoms while they obviously deny equal protection for an entire class of citizens. Note the military is not punishing conduct or unwarranted fraternisation; they are sexually cleansing from their ranks (hey remember ethnic cleansing in the Balkans?) gays and lesbians for merely having that orientation even if virginal.

Persons who are doing nothing wrong should be assessed as Dr King stated on the content of their character, not on colour or derivatively on one’s orientation sexually. Obviously there have always been homosexuals in the military. No one disputes that and to suggest that gays are not capable of channeling their liaisons in a manner that is consistent with doctrine and requirements is prejudicial, offensive and un-American.

I was on active duty at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri when I was in basic training. I presume there were gays in our barracks or squads or what have you. Folks were just trying to get through basic and hoped they would not be sent into combat if in the regular army. Those of us in the Reserves and National Guard were less concerned. But folks did their job and I never saw anyone act inappropriately or fraternise. I suspect my experience is common to the vast majority of military personnel. I would bet that gays are much less prone to sexual display due to the macho culture in the military and should be treated fairly by all: especially the military that claims to be this noble institution that defends the rights of ALL Americans.

Chief Justice Rehnquist was a law clerk to Supreme Court justice, Robert H. Jackson. Justice Jackson also was the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials and according to historian David Irving, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, the justice was a fair and brilliant defender of due process and the protection of defendants’ rights.

Justice Jackson also opposed the relocation of Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War II, and cast a courageous dissent in the draconian and disgraceful Korematsu v. United States 1944.

Unfortunately, his future law clerk lacked such judicial temperament. The future Chief Justice was opposed to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1954, perhaps the greatest decision of the Supreme Court in the 20th Century, because he supported apartheid, Jim Crow and public school segregation. This racialist law clerk even defended in a memorandum the infamous and overtly racist Plessy v Ferguson decision of 1896 that affirmed American apartheid and segregation with its odious “separate but equal” doctrine. Here is a white privileged male who went to Stanford and Harvard with an obvious lack of advocacy for racial justice and equality. It must be presumed he disagreed with Justice Harlan, the sole dissenting justice in Plessy, who declared this decision “as pernicious as the decision made…in the Dred Scott case.” I am quite sure that had Chief Justice Rehnquist been on the court in 1857, he would have voted to deny African-Americans citizenship, the right to sue in court, the right to be free once moved onto free soil (much less oppose the principle of slavery) and that they should be considered less than equal to whites.

The most gifted Supreme Court reporter in the country, the New York Times’s Linda Greenhouse, reported then clerk Rehnquist wrote: “I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by my ‘liberal’ colleagues.” Really? It’s those awful liberals who oppose apartheid and Jim Crow? Justice Harlan was from Kentucky, from a slave holding family and denounced Plessy! Chief Justice Rehnquist never entirely abandoned, despite some laconic disclaimers, his odious rejection of the law as an engine of social equality. He opposed affirmative action in higher education. If he opposed public school desegregation one should not be surprised that he would not support African-Americans sitting in college classrooms with those of the alleged superior, white race. Justice Rehnquist was the only member of the court, not even Justice Antonin Scalia or Justice Clarence Thomas agreed, that wanted to maintain Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status despite its racist discriminatory policies. It would not allow students to date or marry other humans unless they were of the same race. This was in 1983, the eleventh year of Justice Rehnquist’s lengthy tenure on the Supreme Court. I wonder if he disapproved of the fact that one of his future “brethren”, Justice Clarence Thomas, would marry “outside” of his race.

I am sure this bias will manifest in new ways with his slick, glib successor, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. We shall see and I will gladly correct myself if Chief Justice Roberts proves me wrong. I am not alleging Judge Roberts is racist or harbours a pre-Warren court commitment to racial separation and Jim Crow. However, I am not optimistic that this individual can effectuate a compassionate conservatism given his unabashed admiration and association with the late Chief Justice. Conservatives, as liberals may use their own politics to shape and interpret the law. Activism is ideologically neutral. Basically the constitution means what five members of the Supreme Court says it means.

PS. Yes Chief Justice Rehnquist did support state medical-marijuana laws and the retention of the Miranda rulings. I recognise today, September 7, is his funeral and that his family should be respected and consoled at this time. He should be praised for those positions but in the area of race, this man left a legacy that was revelatory of deep seated misgivings in advancing justice and racial equality. He contemptuously dismissed the notion of “equal justice under the law.” I must view his service on the court as a failure and his legacy a negative one of tragic refusal to empathise and apply the law in a non-discriminatory manner. {Updated Jan. 4, 2007}

Kanye West, a rapper from Chicago, brought honour and distinction to the city and the nation when he said at a concert to assist the needy in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina devastation:

“George Bush does not care about black people.”
and
“I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they are looting. See a white family, it says they’re looking for food…They’ve given permission to go down and shoot us.”

That reminded me of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s shoot to kill order during the resistance on Chicago’s West Side after the assassination of Dr. King in 1968. It is rare that a constabulary is given shoot to kill orders against white folks during periods of civil unrest. I recognise that the victims are frequently minorities, and I am not insensitive to the need to protect the vulnerable from random violence. Yet I think Mr West, whose mother was chair of the English department at Chicago State University, is correct in suggesting strongly that African-Americans are treated differently than whites. The cumulative effect of the Reagan Revolution and beyond, is the sense that government should serve the white middle class and even in an event of unprecedented magnitude and destruction as the hurricane that struck the Gulf Coast, the social contract should not apply equally.

The issue is poverty and race. The Other America is ignored and rarely seen because the Democrats and the Republicans have removed poverty, adequate housing, public education reform, job training, equal justice under law as major policy agendas. The Other America is considered politically insignificant in advancing the power play objectives of the Democratic-Republican party. The Democrats are afraid of being accused of pursuing McGovernite class-divisions if they address the issue of race and poverty. This monstrous hydra-headed party is terrified that white voters will abandon them if they appear to be generous and tolerant of minorities and believe any significant policy proposal targeted to assist Americans of colour will lose them votes. That is the state of the country. Not one president in over twenty years has given a major address on the issue of poverty and race in this country. It has lost its political appeal. Well Hurricane Katrina exposed the issues of racism and poverty which had been covered up so deftly by the Democratic-Republican party.

One can hardly be surprised that a nation that is reviled appropriately throughout the world as an expansionist, ethnocentric imperium could summon up the compassion and integrity to assist even its own citizens when starving and dying in large numbers. A country that is so tied to the military and the ethos of a martial culture with its Air Force One, military monuments covering its capital city, marine helicopters ferrying the Commander-in-Chief, flags being worn on clothing to promote only American nationalism, has reached such a level of ethnocentric nationalism, that the principles of tolerance, compassion and advancing the public good are seriously compromised.

Since I know many students consult my online work:

1) Arabs speak Arabic. An Arab may be Christian but an Arab speaks Arabic. Iranians are Muslims but are not Arab because most speak Farsi or Persian and not Arabic.
2) A Muslim is one who believes in Islam. A Christian practices Christianity and a Muslim practices Islam.
3) Most Muslims are not Arabs. The nation with the largest population of Muslims is Indonesia.
4) Islam is a religion based on the teachings of the Qur’an and its adherents believe Allah is God as revealed to the final prophet Mahomet through the Angel Gabriel in the 7th century.

Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza is hardly worth praising. This was occupied land for almost forty years and Israel never liked Gaza. It is a strip of land on the Mediterranean that is one of the most undeveloped in the world. It was part of the British Mandate in Palestine and is about 25 miles long and 6 miles wide. Nine thousand colonisers from Israel, the U.S. and other lands moved into this territory with the sense they were a “chosen people” carrying out a biblical mandate for a greater Israel. The other 1.3 million plus Palestinians lived in absolute squalor. Also and where was the U.S. press on this one? The 9,000 invaders occupied one-third 33% of Gaza and the other 66% of Gaza was where the 1 million plus Palestinians lived. No attempt was made to spread the wealth and comfort of the settlers to the inhabitants. Had Egypt received Gaza in addition to the return of the Sinai, a lot of this misery could have been avoided. Arabs don’t like being governed by Jews and Israel is learning they can’t kill them all or force them to pay obeisance to Zionism.

The press is focusing on the turmoil of the settlers as they are being removed from occupied Arab land. I wish half the attention that has been paid to the experiences of the settlers, had been paid to Palestinians, who were forcibly repatriated in 1948, who have been killed by IDF, whose houses were destroyed and razed, whose travel was severely disrupted. One of the great ethnic crimes of modern history has been the treatment of the Arab Nation, the Palestinians in particular, by Israel. Let history judge them for this atrocity.

All, not some, all of the 250,000 invaders who stole portions of the West Bank must be removed as well. The “roadmap” to peace must have the fundamental outcome of land restored, and a two-state solution. While it is true that partition of Palestine was rejected by the Arabs in the 1940s, clearly a two-state solution is essential in resolving this conflict. Israel is a nuclear power, the strongest military power in the region and one of the strongest in the world, and needs to show restraint, understanding and respect for different peoples of different religions. It cannot continue this outrage and we shall see if they will return the West Bank, portions of Jerusalem, allow the right of return to Israel of those expelled in the diaspora. Without these concessions or some compromise, violence will continue and the U.S. will continue to be in the crosshairs of a Muslim world tired of poverty, preemptive crusades and colonisation.

The following schools have racist names and or mascots of Native-Americans who were devastated by white-settler genocide following the invasion of Columbus–although he technically did not invade the upper mainland of North America. Note one of the nicknames is “savages.” Here we are in 2005 and these universities continue as the N.C.A.A. charges to engage in “hostile or abusive” action toward these precious people. I find it revolting that the U of I has a lack of courage to eliminate such nonacademic names: The Illini, The Fighting Illini and Chief Illiniwek–a racist symbol that defames the university and the state of Illinois. The corporate university is frequently unwilling to stand for principle for a few pieces of silver.

I have found the Florida State University football games to be exercises in hate speech as white fans use hand motions and a silly war whoop to defame the glorious Seminole who fought a guerrilla war to resist American genocide and repatriation in the 1830s-1840s. Unfortunately, football is not covered by the anti-racist ban because there is no N.C.A.A. tournament.

· Alcorn State (Braves)
· Central Michigan (Chippewas)
· Catawba College (Indians)
· Florida State (Seminoles)
· Midwestern State (Indians)
· Utah (Utes)
· Indiana (Pa.) (Indians)
· Carthage College (Redmen)
· Bradley (Braves)
· Arkansas State (Indians)
· Chowan College (Braves)
· University of Illinois at Urbana (Illini)
· Louisiana-Monroe (Indians)
· McMurry University (Indians)
· Mississippi College (Choctaws)
· Newberry College (Indians)
· North Dakota (Fighting Sioux)
· Southeastern Oklahoma State (Savages) shame on their president and governing board to engage in such explicit racism and hate speech.

World class universities such as the Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin will not engage out of conference contests with institutions with Native American names or mascots. Why not boycott games with U of I too and work for a conference-wide boycott? If not, let U of I win every game through forfeit. That should do it as the money dries up and the racist practices of the University of Illinois are challenged where it hurts: the pocket book.