Timely letters in reference to George Street Journal articles are welcomed. The George Street Journal reserves the right to edit for style, clarity and length. Submissions should not exceed 300 words

Regarding the Sept. 21 George Street Journal article by William Beeman, some points are important to consider. They are clearly expressed in the words of Ed Koch, former mayor of New York City:

"Some will claim our support for Israel is at the root of the extremist Muslims' hatred of the United States. Not true; it is only one reason. They also hate us for supporting secular Arab regimes such as Egypt and Jordan, and because they simply do not want us to have a role anywhere in the Mideast. Fanatics detest us because we are the world's best example of freedom of thought, freedom of religion and democracy. Terrorists and the regimes who support them tolerate none of these.

"For moral, historical and strategic reasons, we decided in 1948 to support Israel's security and viability. If we had not, Israel would have been overrun early on and we would have been extremely vulnerable in a region with 70 percent of the world's oil reserves. If we had permitted Israel's destruction by Arab states, we would not have been able to defeat Iraq in the Gulf war. Remember Israel's courageous destruction of the Iraqi nuclear facility in 1981, for which she received world criticism?

Without that act, the Arab states would have allied with Iraq simply out of fear, and Iraq would now be the oil colossus of the world. Supporters of terrorism and the terrorists must be squashed."

I pray that peace will soon prevail on this earth.

Sincerely,
Nancy Lee, Brown parent
Setauket, N.Y.
9/21/01

Tell us if you can, Professor Lipsitt, what we should tell our children here in New York City. What should I have told my daughter, who was home sick from school on Tuesday, the 11th, watching with me as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center and it became clear that the first crash was not an accident? What should I have told her, 45 minutes later, when one tower crumbled to the ground and, for the first time in her life, she saw her father cry? What should we tell our children when they smell smoke in their bedrooms at night: not to worry because there is no fire in the apartment, but only the smoldering remains of the World Trade Center a few miles downtown? What should we say to our children as we walk down the street past posters of other children's missing mothers and fathers, of other people's missing children? What should we tell them every morning and afternoon when we pass the firehouses with memorial candles, flowers and shrines to the missing firemen, and groups of mourners gathered outside? What should we tell our children here in New York City who are old enough to understand that we cannot completely guarantee their safety: that we love them and will do everything we can to care for them but that when they're in school and we're a mile or two away at work in skyscrapers, a plane could hit their school or ­ perhaps more fearful to them ­ their parents' offices? Tell us if you can, Professor Lipsitt.

Joel Maxman '78
New York City
9/23/01

Topping-off ceremony

The pine sapling pictured in your notice of the topping-off ceremony for the Watson Institute (George Street Journal of Dec. 8, 2000) has an older and deeper meaning than as a Christmas tree. Since well before the Christian era, northern European peoples have honored the spirit of the trees they cut for their building timber by crowning the ridgepoles of their new structures with an evergreen. It is only in recent times, and only when winter is approaching, that we update this ancient tradition by adding decorations to our topping-off trees.

- Robert P. Emlen, University curator and senior lecturer in American civilization, Dec. 12, 2000

Pope Pius IX

Like Professor David Kertzer, I, too, was initially put off by the idea of the beatification of Pope Pius IX. That is, until I read that Pope John XXIII, whom everyone recognizes as a saint, wrote several times in his diary that he hoped he could someday have the honor of canonizing Pius IX. Perhaps there's more to this controversial figure than meets the eye of late 20th-century Americans.

Also, a rereading of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, e.g. the one entitled "On the Church (Lumen Gentium)," will show that the recent paper from the Vatican, "Dominus Jesus," which Professor Kertzer says seems "to reject many of the ecumenical principals of the Second Vatican Council" actually reaffirms the teaching of Vatican II.

- Fr. Henry J. Bodah, associate University chaplain; chaplain, Brown/RISD Catholic Community, Sept. 27, 2000

Graduate study of foreign language

Rarely has a piece in the George Street Journal enraged me as much as that of William Monroe regarding the graduate study of foreign languages.

Monroe seems to be operating under several misconceptions, the foremost being what exactly it means to study a foreign language at the graduate level. What does he think, that we're sitting around conjugating verbs and testing each other on arcane uses of the past subjunctive? As a Ph.D. student in French at this institution, I can assure you that we are undertaking the serious study of the literature, culture and film of our respective languages. We are thinking critically about such texts in order to further our own research (something that Monroe fails to recognize as a worthy undertaking in and of itself) and to prepare ourselves for teaching at the university level.

How does Monroe propose we train the future professors of foreign language at Wellesley and Oberlin and the other institutions to which he compares Brown? The comparison is pointless: The above-mentioned schools are not research universities, so why would they have graduate programs in foreign language in the first place?

Monroe wants to generalize his own language-learning experiences to what is right and just for Brown. I can assure him that when he does "go back ... and take(s) a course in Italian," he will be taught by someone who worked as hard as any other graduate student to obtain a Ph.D. in Italian, a degree for which Monroe seems to have little esteem. Sadly that person will not have been trained at Brown.

- Heather McCoy, Department of French Studies, April 9, 2000

I read the article "Don't equate closing of three graduate programs with dismissing three great cultures" with great dismay. For a head librarian of an Ivy League university to lightly dismiss work in foreign language studies as essentially unnecessary is unfathomable.

What Mr. Monroe didn't consider is that my field is much more than the study of languages. I cannot speak for all departments, so I will specifically address mine (Italian studies). Here, graduate students do research on many aspects of Italian culture, contributing with their research not only to our field, but also bringing their knowledge into the classroom, contributing in this way to the entire field of foreign language teaching. When Mr. Monroe finally takes the Italian language course that he has been considering taking at Brown, who does he think will be teaching it? Is he aware that many (in fact, I think, most) beginning language courses at Brown and all over the country are taught by teaching fellows who are in the process of completing their graduate degrees? Where does Mr. Monroe think the undergraduate program is going to go, aside from downward in quantity and quality, if the University has no more graduate students to teach the language courses, and full-time faculty members are thrown completely into language teaching, leaving them no time to teach more advanced courses such as Dante, Boccaccio or modern Italian literature?

When did Brown become a politically- and financially-minded corporation only interested in fields that bring it a lot of money (can we say millions of dollars and biology in the same breath?), an entity unwilling to invest in higher learning?

Come to our department, Mr. Monroe. Have a look at the kind of work we are doing before deeming it unimportant.

- Vika Zafrin, second-year graduate student, Department of Italian Studies, April 13, 2000

I am sorry that some readers distort my meaning (or perhaps I simply was not clear enough) in my April 7 opinion piece in the George Street Journal.

I am very much in favor of studying languages for their own sake, and I realize that we need to have some people doing graduate work in the languages and literatures of the world. I was merely pointing out that this is not the only reason to study languages, and even that one can study Italian or any other language and literature (even for its own sake) without going to grad school for it.

I have in no way advocated the closing of these particular programs, and indeed, I do not like to see them close. I do think that Brown needs to make such decisions, but as I said, they are hard choices. In this regard, I think you should see my essay for what it is, as a response to the earlier essay in the Providence Journal. I thought the author of that piece made some very simplistic (and worn-out) arguments to which I wanted to respond. I hope that it raises the level of the discussion, and if that discussion ends with the continuation of these programs (with adequate support), I would be very happy. I just think that these issues need to be argued on the merits of the individual programs, and not on the basis of whether studying languages is "a good thing" (which I firmly believe).

The point raised about who teaches language courses is a crucial one. It is true that many programs rely on their graduate students for this, leaving the regular faculty to teach the upper level literature courses. I simply want to point out that this is not the only way to do things. We offer languages here at Brown (Chinese and Arabic, e.g.) for which we have no graduate programs. The Chinese classes are very heavily enrolled. Who teaches them? This is the kind of thing we need to discuss, not whether Italian, German, and Russian are worth studying. I think we already agree on that.

So I would like to assure these readers that their anger at me is misplaced. I hope we can have a good discussion of these issues and that Brown will, in the end, make the best decision. Meanwhile, I will do everything I can to provide the best library support for these and other programs, as I hope I've done all along.

- William Monroe April 13, 2000

In the April 7 George Street Journal William Monroe made a persuasive case for doing away with three undergraduate majors, though his argument - which boiled down to "Who needs a language and literature major anyway?"- is not of the kind that lends itself to constructive ongoing debate. I fail to see, however, what it has to do with his ostensible reason for writing, which was the closing down, not of three undergraduate majors, but of three graduate programs. A more specific response to that issue might have been: Who needs a graduate program in language and literature anyway? The answer to that question is of course: people who are planning to become college teachers of the smattering of language and literature courses our head of collection development would approve of undergraduates taking. People, that is, who have already graduated from good colleges where they ill-advisedly pursued a language and literature major.

I did not see William A. Viall's Providence Journal piece which provoked Monroe's ire, but Viall's reasoning must have been very faulty if it takes this kind of reasoning to rebut it. As chair of one of the departments whose graduate program is in danger of being amputated, I view the prospect of amputation (without anesthesia) with considerably less equanimity than Monroe does. Monroe faults Viall for his misinformation; but Monroe's own article is itself misleading. Some graduate programs, he declares, have produced only one or two Ph.D's in 10 years. While he doesn't specifically say so, it seems natural for the uninformed reader to assume that his statistics apply to the three programs in question. This is certainly not true of the Italian studies program, which has graduated 17 Ph.D's over the past 10 years, with a bumper crop in 1998, when we graduated six! Viall's "meta-program" is more than rumored: It is imminently threatened, though no one knows exactly what it will be or what useful function it will perform. One hopes for the best and relies, like Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of colleagues like Monroe. And look where it got her!

- Anthony Oldcorn, Director, Brown-in-Bologna Program, April 13, 2000

Men and contraception

I just read the article by Frances Goldscheider on the last page of this week's George Street Journal (12/11/98). I am angered by the author's reference to the unfairness of "women's control over pregnancy" and statement that it is a woman's decision "whether to become mothers and hence whether their partners should become fathers."

Any man in this situation should ask himself how he was making decisions during the conception process. If a man does not want the responsibility of fatherhood, preventive measures are available to him, ranging from over-the-counter to surgical options. Maybe the author should consider these options before suggesting that women subject themselves to the physical and emotional effects of birth control pills and abortion.

- Melissa Trend, graduate student, December 1998

New web page

An article in the Feb. 6 NEWSbytes [the CIS newsletter that appears in the George Street Journal] mentioned that I worked on the Brown home page redesign project with three other staff members from Brown. I wanted to make sure they get credit too: Ann Caldwell, University Library-catalog department; Ronald Fark, University Library-reference department; and Tracie Sweeney, News Bureau.

- Mark Handler, University webmaster, February 1998

Graduate students

As an advocate for graduate students and the ways they expand Brown's energy and intellectual wealth, and for the difference their efforts will continue to make in an ever-widening circle, I want to thank you for the story on Miguel Moniz ["Strangers in Two Lands" examines effect of deportation to Azores, Oct. 24-30 issue]. In addition to his poignant and challenging research chronicled in your article, he has also written about the Fox Point neighborhood, and he is an attentive and goal-oriented president of the Graduate Student Council.

The backdrop to Miguel's story is that he has many, many peers in the graduate student body, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and making invaluable contributions to our community and to the world, utilizing hours in a day that seem to add up to far more than twenty-four.

- Carla Hansen, associate dean, Graduate School and Student Life, October 1997

Sheridan Center

On behalf of the Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, I'd like to thank you for your coverage of the upcoming dedication on Oct. 24 and the tenth anniversary conference on Oct. 25.

I want to correct what might be a source of confusion for the Brown teaching community. One of the articles headlines our former name [George Street Journal, Oct. 17] but, based on the decision of the Corporation in February, we are and have been the Sheridan Center since July 1. Our focus is the entire teaching community, which includes our permanent faculty and the graduate students who teach during their course of their graduate study. Hence, our programs invite collaborations among instructional levels and across disciplines and, as appropriate, attend to the particular needs of individuals and groups.

I hope that the entire Brown teaching community will join us at the dedication and conference to celebrate both the achievement of the last decade and the prospects for the future contributions of the Sheridan Center to our common goal, excellence in undergraduate instruction.

- Nancy R. Dunbar, director, Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, October 1997


De Klerk and apartheid

The interview with Prof. Newell Stultz ["Remembering the white man who dismantled apartheid," Sept. 12] not only paints a deceptively rosy portrait of F.W. de Klerk as an "apartheid destroyer" but also gives him sole credit for a complex political process that involved multiple players. As Stultz himself acknowledges, de Klerk's break with classical Verwoerdian apartheid was overwhelmingly motivated by political necessity rather than any sense of moral responsibility. Though de Klerk certainly deserves some credit for his contribution to the dismantling of the apartheid state, his failure to apologize for nearly 50 years of brutal racial oppression must also be considered in any critical evaluation of his actions since 1990.

De Klerk's failure to offer an official apology has returned to the national spotlight recently, as the National Party [NP] has recently submitted its second round of amnesty applications to the Truth and Reconciliation commission with no offer from de Klerk to accept moral responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated while he was in power. Though de Klerk has, on behalf of the NP, accepted "overall responsibility" for the period of his rule, he has consistently distanced himself from any atrocities, claiming that the cabinet "had never authorized, and the NP never supported, any gross violations of human rights ... so his acceptance of 'overall responsibility' did not include responsibility for what he called 'the criminal actions of a handful of operatives of the security forces of which the party was not aware...'" as Andre du Toit explained in a recent issue of the Weekly Mail & Guardian.

De Klerk's attempts to distance himself and the NP from the dirty war of the early 1990s is divisive and dangerous in a society struggling to cultivate a spirit of reconciliation. As du Toit goes on to argue: "If de Klerk can claim he had no knowledge of and responsibility for the Vlakplaas and other dirty deeds, then the same surely holds for ordinary white South Africans. ... If F.W. de Klerk can claim not to have known what happened, so can we all."

De Klerk's actions may appear heroic to those who observed the transition of power from afar. However, as Stultz himself recognizes, many still believe that despite the historic role he played "de Klerk still has blood on his hands ... [and] he is not absolved of any responsibility for the terrible things that went on in that period..." It is my belief that, if true healing is ever to take place in South Africa, de Klerk and his high-ranking colleagues must accept responsibility for what they have done. Likewise, we as Americans must be careful to look beyond the facade of the Nobel Peace Prize and consider both de Klerk's successes and his failures when evaluating his role in dismantling the apartheid state.

- Sasha Polakow-Suransky, '01, September 1997