Edolphus Towns’s claim to distinction, in Fordham’s pre-commencement
publicity, relates to his bringing “millions of dollars” to his
district. Unmentioned is Towns’s membership in the Congressional
Unmanned Systems (Drone) Caucus, which serves as a lobbying arm for
drones — a new cash cow for the defense-industrial-congressional
complex.
Since John Brennan has been accorded the dual honor of commencement speaker cum Doctorate of Humane Letters honoris causa, let’s try to piece together why Fordham’s Trustees decided to single him out for such glory. What, in other words, is the causa behind the honores?
Why does George Orwell have a smirk on his face; and why are many past
and present Jesuits holding their noses — Justice Jesuits like Rupert
Mayer, Pedro Arupe, Dean Brackley and Dan Berrigan?
Could it be that Brennan is being honored for his role in serving up
fraudulent intelligence to “justify” attacking Iraq in 2003? Or is it
perhaps his open advocacy of kidnapping Muslim clerics off the streets
of Milan (he calls it “extraordinary rendition”) and rendering them to
“friendly” intelligence services more practiced at torture techniques
than the CIA?
Is it the secret prisons he favored for “enhanced” interrogation
techniques; or maybe his role in promoting illegal eavesdropping on
Americans? Or could it be his stalwart defense of the intentional drone
killing of American citizens without charge or judicial process? Or is
it the aggregate set of abuses. And could intelligent Jesuits actually
believe these approaches are okay because they are “keeping us safe?”
This would mean the teaching of moral theology at Fordham has changed
markedly. Five decades ago, torture was very clearly put in the same
category as slavery and rape — always “intrinsically evil” — no gray
areas. I wonder where Fordham’s moral theologians now put remote-control
drone killings of people on the hunch they are “militants.”
The causa of the honores could have a simpler
explanation, one that risks damage to the mystique of Jesuit
sophistication — no, not sophistry. Maybe the Fordham Jesuits and
Trustees get their news from Fox. Perhaps their thought process was
simply this: Brennan is a Fordham alumnus; he works in the White House;
isn’t that enough?
Earlier Indignities
This is hardly the first time a Jesuit university has succumbed to
the “prestige virus” and given a proven scoundrel high honors at a
commencement. There are, sad to say, numerous examples, but one comes
immediately to mind.
It is George W. Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice,
who, according to ABC News, chaired White House deliberations in 2002
and 2003 at which CIA torture techniques were “almost choreographed” by
the most senior national security officials. The objective was to
determine which particular technique, or combination, might be most
effectively applied to which “high-value detainee.”
Rice gave the commencement address at Boston College on May 22, 2006,
and was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (yes, George
Orwell, that is ironic.).
An onlooker would be permitted the reasonable inference that one causa of the honores must be the promoting of torture that Rice and Brennan held in common.
Maybe an objective history of the Inquisition, and the Jesuit role in
it, was not included in the books available at Jesuit seminaries.
Or, worse still, maybe it is the case that ingrained habits — like
jesuitically justifying torture — can apply for renewal after several
centuries. Habits die slowly. Has torture and killing of innocents now
entered some sort of gray area in moral theology because a
Jesuit-trained, White House functionary now says these things are
necessary to “keep us safe?”
O Tempora, O Morons!
It remains to be seen whether what happened when the hapless Jesuits
of Boston College invited Rice turns out to be a harbinger of what is in
store at Fordham next Saturday. Ten days before the commencement at BC,
Steve Almond, adjunct professor of English, resigned in protest. Here
are excerpts from his letter to BC’s president, Rev. William P. Leahy,
S.J.:
“I am writing to resign … as a direct result of your decision to
invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement
speaker at this year’s graduation.
“Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced
their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice’s actions as
secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values
of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which
those values derive.
“But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to
the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice
is a liar. She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly,
often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a
pathologically misguided foreign policy. …
“This is the woman to whom you will be bestowing an honorary degree,
along with the privilege of addressing the graduating class of 2006. …
Honestly, Father Leahy, what lessons do you expect her to impart to
impressionable seniors? … that it is acceptable to lie to the American
people for political gain? …
“I cannot, in good conscience, exhort my students to pursue truth and
knowledge, then collect a paycheck from an institution that displays
such flagrant disregard for both. I would like to apologize to my
students and prospective students. I would also urge them to investigate
the words and actions of Rice, and to exercise their own First
Amendment rights at her speech.”
Professor Almond was hardly alone. About a third of Boston College’s
faculty members signed a letter objecting to Rice’s appearance. And here
is how the New York Times reported the commencement event:
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered the commencement
address on Monday at Boston College to an audience that included dozens
of students and professors who stood, turned their backs and held up
signs to protest the war in Iraq.
“A small plane flew overhead twice, pulling a sign that said, in red
letters, ‘Your War Brings Dishonor.’ Outside Alumni Stadium, where 3,234
students received diplomas, protesters marched up Beacon Street holding
signs reading ‘No Blood For Oil’ and ‘We’re Patriotic Too.’”
“Inside, however, Ms. Rice received a standing ovation when she was introduced, and she drew applause throughout her address.”
Daniel Berrigan, S.J.’s Sad Prophecy
In his autobiography, To Dwell in Peace, Daniel Berrigan
wrote of “the fall of a great enterprise” — the Jesuit university. He
recorded his “hunch” that the university would end up “among those
structures whose moral decline and political servitude signalize a
larger falling away of the culture itself.”
Berrigan lamented “highly placed” churchmen and their approval of
war, “uttered … with sublime confidence, from on high, from highly
placed friendships, and White House connections.”
“Thus compromised,” warned Berrigan, “the Christian tradition of
nonviolence, as well as the secular boast of disinterested pursuit of
truth — these are reduced to bombast, hauled out for formal occasions,
believed by no one, practiced by no one.”
The good news is that, despite an out-of-touch president, Rev. Joseph
M. McShane, S.J., and his trustees, there remain people of strong
conscience at Fordham — people immunized against the “prestige virus”
infecting what some have come to call the Vichy Jesuits. There are
students and alumni with a good sense of history; people aware not only
of the Inquisition, but also of more recent history in Nazi Germany
during the 1930s, when the Catholic and Lutheran churches could not find
their voice.
Many Fordham people know they cannot in good conscience remain silent
on such matters; they know that what is at stake is the very soul of
our country. Justice-oriented students are now finalizing plans for
specific actions at commencement. A new Facebook page briefly outlining
the planning to date has already drawn intense interest — negative as
well as positive. It appears that many students abhor the unpleasantness
inevitably attached to witnessing to the abuses in which the main
commencement speaker has had such a key role.
One post read: “I just wanted to say that as a recent Fordham
graduate studying Islam and American foreign policy concerning Islam in
graduate school, I am so proud of the people … who will stage this
protest at commencement. I cannot overstate how much of an uphill battle
it is to have kind, sensible and ethical voices like yours heard in
this world, where monied and political interests stifle this kind of
informed and humane dissent, in the public realm and in academia as
well.”
Another read: “For the people complaining about their graduation
being ‘ruined,’ it is as much your right to have a graduation free from
protest as it is our right to have a graduation free of one of the most
despicable propagators of violence in our era. I do not condone torture,
I do not condone the indiscriminate use of drones, why should MY
graduation be tainted with political ideology I do not support.”
In addition, many of the faculty are signing on to a letter to
President McShane requesting a sit-down with Brennan before
commencement. They want to ask him how he justifies his support for the
kind of cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques (aka,
torture) that are banned by domestic and international law.
Meanwhile, many supporters of justice-oriented students are also planning appropriate protest actions. One activity is “Stop the Drone Week at Fordham.”
It may not be an exaggeration to suggest that, as Saturday goes, so goes Fordham.
Ray McGovern received a B.A. summa cum laude (Phi
Beta Kappa) and M.A. in Russian from Fordham University. He was also,
briefly, an adjunct instructor there, but was deprived of the
opportunity to resign in protest since it was not the practice, in those
years, to honor scoundrels at commencement. McGovern was a CIA and Army
Intelligence analyst for 30 years and now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.
Reprinted from ConsortiumNews.Com with Permission
