Welcome to Minnesota?? [Nobel division]

This blog is primarily about local matters so this piece is perhaps a little misplaced, but it does involve local universities.

Being awarded a Nobel prize has to be some kind of personal accreditation in whatever one is doing. I do not agree all the time with who gets them and nobody reallyl cares about that. And, of course, they don’t ask me ahead of time abut whom they shuold tap for the honor. But most of them seem to make a fair amount of sense.

So it seems a little surprising that a local semi-Catholic university which has expanded beyond its Merriam Park roots would deny a chance for a bishop, a successor of the apostles, somebody who has been given the Nobel prize for peace to speak on its campus next year. Metro State will extend a welcome instead.

Bishop Tutu’s primary offense to the Merriam Park educational institution seems to be suggesting that the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians might not be the fault of just one side and the both sides are unequally represented in various governments’ power structures, including the United States. Since few conflicts are ever just one person’s or group’s fault and power structures are never evenly balanced, this hardly seems like a radical opinion.

The administration of St. Thomas is undoubtedly free to invite, not invite, or disinvite pretty much whomever it wishes. But students and patrons might want to continually monitor who does and does not get invited there in the future. When a Nobel laureate bishop doesn’t pass muster, we wonder who can. Likely these students and patrons are going to end up disappointed.

And I trust that the good bishop will get the welcome on the East Side that Merriam Park cannot give.