[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: Learning what's important

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Posted by The Night Writer:
Learning what's important
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1208227373.shtml


   The University of St. Thomas has yet another speaker controversy on
   its clumsy hands. Just months after inviting, then [1]disinviting,
   then re-inviting Archbishop Desmond Tutu (he respectfully declined) to
   speak at the school, the University has now blocked [2]another speaker
   from [3]appearing: author and pro-life advocate [4]Star Parker.
   Enough people (see the links above) are covering this latest
   development that I really didn't feel the need to cover it here. That
   doesn't mean, however, that I didn't have an unction to apply the
   needle a little bit to the young woman who works for me as I left the
   office today. She's a St. Thomas grad. "What's with your old school
   and it's treatment of would-be guest speakers, anyway?" I asked. She
   wasn't up on the news of the day (I work her too hard for her to peek
   at headlines).
   "What now?" she asked, with a roll of her eyes.
   I gave her the quick rundown, and wondered why a Catholic university
   would block a pro-life advocate from appearing on its campus,
   especially after the Tutu hoo-doo. "Don't they have PR people over
   there, or at least someone who'll tell them that if you try to play in
   the middle of the road you get run down by both sides?"
   I don't have her exact quote, but she showed the kind of keen mind and
   insight that caused me to hire her in the first place. The gist of it
   was, "It's not the politics, it's the money." She said she used to
   work the phone bank on campus, calling alumni to ask for money. "So
   many times I'd call and get someone who was angry about this speaker
   or that speaker who had come, or a book that was selected for a class,
   and they'd say they weren't going to give any money because of that."
   She finished by saying something to the effect that St. Thomas was
   more concerned about the money drying up rather than, say, the same
   thing happening to free speech.
   Wow -- here I was, thinking that St. Thomas wasn't interested in
   principle, when it turns out that principle and interest are pretty
   important to them after all!

References

   1. http://www.freeexchangeoncampus.org/index.php?option=com_tag&tag=campus%20speakers&tag_id=663
   2. http://www.startribune.com/local/17648494.html
   3. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/04/020244.php
   4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Parker