Tutu the Fifth Time

We gave considerable attention in October to the brouhaha about Archbishop Tutu and St. Thomas [the college, not the saint].

So it would seem in order to note that the anticipated visit from the South African bishop/activist/Nobel laureate is upon us.

Details of the Archbishop’s visit are available in a MinnPost story posted this morning.

I am sure that even those of us who will not be seeing him will wish our distinguished visitor welcome.

Previous posts:

Tutu the Fourth Time [10/10/08]

Tutu the Thrid Time [10/9/07]

Congrats, A L Brown AND Tutu the Second Time [10/7/07]

Welcome to Minnesota?? [Nobel Division] [10/5/07]

Tutu the Fourth Time

Well, now Fr. Dease has changed his mind. You have to admit that it can be hard to make a decision based on moral certainty and then change it so soon afterward.

If I were Desmond Tutu, I would be tempted to tell Fr. Dease that he and St. Thomas could shove off. But since archbishops should be made of more forgiving stock than I am, maybe he will give the folks at St. Thomas a visit.

Father Dease's letter [excerpted below] is on the St. Thomas web site

One of the strengths of a university is the opportunity that it provides to speak freely and to be open to other points of view on a wide variety of issues. And, I might add, to change our minds.

Therefore, I feel both humbled and proud to extend an invitation to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak at the University of St. Thomas.

I have wrestled with what is the right thing to do in this situation, and I have concluded that I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do.

PeaceJam International may well choose to keep the alternative arrangements that it has made for its April 2008 conference, but I want the organization and Archbishop Tutu to know that we would be honored to hold the conference at St. Thomas.

Tutu the Third Time

From a letter from Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director to Father Dennis Dease of St. Thomas

While Archbishop Tutu is not a friend of Israel, we do not believe he is an anti-Semite. As you rightly point out in your letter, his words have often stung the Jewish community. However, while he may at times have crossed the line, we believe that he should have been permitted to speak on your campus.

This is probably all I will be saying about this, but I'll leave the news bar on the right set to news about the archbishop for a while.

Congrats, A L Brown AND Tutu the Second Time

It was nice to see an op-ed piece from A. L. Brown in today’s DPP. He also addressed the St. Thomas–Archbishop Tutu matter in a little different way than I had here. The paper identified him as a KSTP talk show host, but did not say when his show is on. Wonder why?

Maybe because the Hubbards just seem to use him as fill-in [and never for Soucheray]. They used to give him Sunday afternoons which has to be the worst spot available [which had once been made available to somebody else they would consider to be strangely radiclib, Nick Coleman – not the real Nick Coleman, but his son who shuttles his very ordinary predictable pablum between newspapers like Elizabeth Taylor was shuttling between husbands forty years ago] , but they made other programming choices and forced him out of that.

KSTP used to have more diverse minds on its air. Remember Barbara Carlson [who by herself sometimes coujld be a year’s quota of diversity in just a few hours of the morning]? Dick Pomerantz? Michael Jackson [no, not that one – the white guy from South Africa who actually challenged apartheid amid all his show-biz sycophancy but was dumped for the Missouri Mouth]? The Mayor of Brooklyn Park, James Janos? Or Turi Rider? Are your ears still ringing from that last one?

Back to Mr. Brown’s comments. I did not go into things like why Ann Coulter was allowed to speak there. It is indeed strange when somebody who seems so void of fact or world perspective is allowed and a Nobel Prize winning bishop is not, but that’s their business. I was focusing forward. If Tutu is not allowed, disinvited even, who will be tolerated? I suggested that the students and constituency of the Merriam Park-based semi-Catholic university [named after a man noted for his intellect] can accept banning the good bishop that they ought to be ready to mobilize to see to it that nobody else similarly opinionated [whether of similar opinions or contrary] be permitted an audience there either. It would leave a lesser university, but it would be consistent.

And I do wonder if Archbishop Tutu were a Catholic bishop if the action would have been the same.

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.