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Petitioning Northwestern

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Blacks Protest Cancellation of Jeremiah Wright Honor

African American students and alumni at Northwestern University — including some graduates of its highly regarded journalism school — are protesting the university’s rescission of an honorary degree to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former pastor of Sen. Barack Obama whose remarks caused headaches for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

In a March letter to Wright, announced on May 1, Northwestern President Henry Bienen wrote that he decided to withdraw the degree in sacred theology because controversy about Wright could disrupt graduation ceremonies, as Jodi S. Cohen wrote May 2 in the Chicago Tribune. The rescission is believed to be the first in the history of the Evanston, Ill., school, founded in 1850.

“In light of the controversy surrounding statements made by you that have recently been publicized, the celebratory character of Northwestern’s commencement would be affected by our conferring of this honorary degree,” Bienen wrote to Wright.

For the protesters, who have gathered 1,348 signatures on a petition demanding that the degree be reinstated, the issue is about more than Wright.

“I’m participating in the petition not based on the merits of whether Rev. Wright does or does not deserve an honorary degree,”

 

Sidmel Estes-Sumpter

Sidmel Estes-Sumpter, a member of the Medill School of Journalism Board of Advisers and a former president of the National Association of Black Journalists, told Journal-isms.

“I have issues with the lack of process by the university. Northwestern always seems to ‘change the rules’ when it comes to African Americans. This latest episode is only the latest insult by the university that has led to a dramatic decline in the number of African American students, the decreasing number of African American professors and the almost nonexistent numbers of African American administrators. Northwestern has failed to serve the needs of African Americans across the board and is listed in the latest Journal on Blacks in Higher Education as one of the top four universities in the country with the largest decrease of African American presence on campus,” said the 1977 Medill graduate, who now heads a media relations firm.

The number of black freshmen dropped from 118 in 1998 to 111 in 2007, according to the Journal.

 

Kevin B. Blackistone

“This is absolutely outrageous, straight up reactionary politics,” said Kevin B. Blackistone, AOL Sports national columnist newly appointed to a chair at the University of Maryland, and a 1981 Medill graduate. “The president said he was rescinding the offer because he didn’t want to detract from the celebratory nature of commencement for graduates and their families. Then why give any honorary degrees at all or have any invited speakers who drone on seemingly forever only to be quickly forgotten? Wright certainly would not have been forgotten. The sound bites that have been used to slay him are exactly what graduates need to hear: a challenge to do differently, if not better. No uncritical yammering from him.

“Interestingly, James Cone, the theologian who coined the phrase black liberation theology, that frightens so many, called Wright one of the finest practitioners of the craft. Where did Cone get his Ph.D? Northwestern. Come on, now!”

Alan K. Cubbage, vice president for university relations, told Journal-isms, “It is highly unlikely that Rev. Wright will receive an honorary degree at commencement” on June 20.

But C. Cole Dillon, who heads the Northwestern University Black Alumni Association and is an organizer of the petition, said it addresses more than the rescinded degree offer. An underlying reason for the protest is “to try to change the conversation on race.” It irks Dillon, she said, that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley is to receive an honorary degree when he is a defendant in a lawsuit over police torture of blacks that was prosecuted by Northwestern’s own MacArthur law clinic. Daley was Cook County state’s attorney at the time of the 1980s incidents.

Not all African Americans support the petition. Some Medill graduates who are professional journalists did not feel comfortable taking a public position, Dillon said. Others are sympathetic but have other concerns.

“I think they’re a day late and a dollar short. This announcement was made nearly two months ago,” Charles Whitaker, director of Medill’s Academy for Alternative Journalism, told Journal-isms. “That was the time to rally the troops, circulate petitions and express alarm about rescinding the honorary degree. That ship has sailed now. There is absolutely nothing to be gained from circulating a petition at this point. The president certainly isn’t going to have an epiphany and decide to reinstate Wright no matter how many signatures he gets on a petition at this point. The black community snoozed on this one.

“But,” Whitaker continued, “there are bigger issues tied up in this as well: The lack of senior black faculty at NU to lead this charge, the fact that the black student body is relatively small (about a third the size that it was when I was an undergraduate here nearly 30 years ago) and has no place to rally, and finally the fact that many people were initially conflicted about Wright and his comments and unsure how to respond.”

The controversy over Wright, who was retiring as pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ at the time of the controversy, was ignited in mid-March when broadcasters and Web sites showed excerpts of Wright’s sermons that are offered for sale by the church. Wright’s statements — which included denunciations of U.S. policies and such assertions as the federal government might have helped spread the AIDS virus — were denounced as anti-American and unpatriotic. Obama distanced himself from the remarks, but when Wright repeated some of them during a question-and-answer period April 28 at the National Press Club, the candidate broke with his pastor of 20 years.

More recently, Obama announced his family was leaving the church.

The facts around the Northwestern decision aren’t clear to everyone. “Cubbage couldn’t define exactly what made Wright controversial way back in March before his image and words exploded on YouTube and became a headache for Barack Obama,” Mary Mitchell wrote in her Chicago Sun-Times column on Sunday. “So what gives?”

Medill alumnus Aldore Collier, a Los Angeles freelance writer and longtime reporter for Jet magazine, just wants answers. “I don’t know Rev. Wright, but it just seems odd and upsetting that you decide to bestow an honorary degree on somebody” and take it back. “I sent the president a letter” asking why. But Collier said he had not heard back.

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Obama vs. Dobbs vs. Dobbs vs. Navarrette

 

Ruben Navarrette

“A certain segment has basically been feeding a kind of xenophobia. There’s a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it’s not surprising that would happen,” Barack Obama said at a Palm Beach, Fla., fundraiser on May 22.

“The presumptive Democratic nominee for president needs to be more careful in his use of statistics,” Michael Dobbs wrote in his “Fact Checker” column Wednesday in the Washington Post. “If he is going to blame Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh for ‘ginning up’ hate crimes against Hispanics, he needs solid data to back up his allegation. The hate crimes statistics that he threw around at a fundraiser in Florida are wildly inaccurate — and a subsequent modified claim provided by his campaign was also off the mark.”

 

Lou Dobbs

CNN’s Lou Dobbs, no relation to Michael Dobbs, was ecstatic.

“I have to tell you, you may be surprised that I received the support of a liberal newspaper, surprised especially when it comes to my reporting on the issue of illegal immigration,” Dobbs said on his show Saturday. “But the rather liberal Washington Post this week defended me, and found that Senator Obama had issued what it calls a whopper when referring to me in his third attack on me on the issue of illegal immigration.”

Dobbs went on to settle another score. “In spite of the fact Senator Obama was simply and plainly wrong, some apparently don’t care whether he was right or wrong,” he told viewers.

“A rather disturbing little fellow by the name of Ruben Navarrette — disturbing because he knows nothing about the issue of illegal immigration and nothing about journalism, wrote a piece about me in the San Diego Union-Tribune. And he said and he wrote it with a title, ‘Stirring up Anti-Latino Sentiment.’ Isn’t that lovely?

“In the column, Navarrette conceded that Obama probably had his facts wrong but went on to say Obama was on the right track. This is the kind of idiocy that is going on in the closed loop of radical left-wing open-borders amnesty advocates. Navarrette went on to say some cable hosts and radio talkers grow their ratings by pandering to the anti-immigrant crowd. Navarrette calls it pandering.

“What’s he doing to — let’s say all of the open-border advocates, all of the amnesty advocates — that closed loop that has created the network of self-interest. And that self-interest has nothing to do with the national interest. It is only a socio-ethnocentric interest.”

Perhaps conveniently, Dobbs neglected to mention that the Post piece wasn’t at all flattering to him.

“The CNN anchor has repeatedly made use of flawed statistics to fuel his anti-illegal immigrant campaign,” the Post’s Dobbs wrote. “His claim that illegal immigrants were responsible for introducing 7,000 new cases of leprosy into the country between 2002 and 2005 was grotesquely inaccurate. (The number of new leprosy cases discovered in 2006 was 137.) He was also way off the mark in saying that a third of the prison population is made up of illegal immigrants. (Immigrants, legal and illegal, account for about six per cent of the total prison population.)”

. . . Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Anchor Weigh In

Meanwhile, on the June 2 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, Rush Limbaugh asserted that the Democratic Party was “go[ing] with a veritable rookie whose only chance of winning is that he’s black,” according to Media Matters for America.

And not all understood the “dap” gesture that Obama and his wife, Michelle, exchanged Tuesday night after commitments from superdelegates put Obama over the top and in line for the nomination.

“On the June 6 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion on a gesture Sen. Barack Obama shared with his wife, Michelle, saying, ‘A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently,'” Media Matters reported on Monday.

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Media Reform Conferees Fear Stolen Election

“Barack Obama supporter John Nichols brought ‘media reform’ activists to their feet on Thursday night with wild and strident attacks on the Bush Administration,” Cliff Kincaid reported from the National Conference for Media Reform, held in Minneapolis. ‘George Bush was not elected,’ said Nichols, working himself into a frenzy.

“Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine and a member of the board of the Free Press, the official sponsor of the National Conference for Media Reform,” Kincaid wrote for the Small Government Times.

“Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, ‘seized’ power and launched an ‘illegal and immoral war,’ Nichols continued.

“. . . The suggestion that the 2008 election might be stolen from Obama seems to be a developing theme of this event. One of the weekend activities is the advance screening of ‘Free for All!,’ a documentary that ‘uncovers startling evidence of varied schemes to steal the national elections in 2000, 2004 and 2006 and explores what we can do to take back our election in 2008.’

“Meanwhile, Amy Goodman of the ‘Democracy Now’ radio and TV program announced that she would soon interview former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who has turned on the President and has written a book opposing the Iraq War. ‘This year can be a turning point,’ she told the crowd.

“While the conference is designed in part to create the impression that the ‘progressive’ media have been discriminated against, Goodman told the crowd that her radio/TV show is on 700 stations and she claimed a bigger audience than Larry King on CNN or the MSNBC cable channel.”

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Ghanaian Writer Helps Break Human Trafficking Rings

“A reporter with an independent Ghanaian newspaper, Anas Aremeyaw Anas was responsible for breaking two major trafficking rings in Accra in a year’s time,” the State Department’s America.gov site reported Friday.

“He worked undercover for eight months, exposing the ring’s methods of transportation and the identities of immigration officials who were accepting bribes in return for overlooking fake visas and passports.

“Anas made recordings of his interactions, which allowed him to collect evidence that could be used by the police to prosecute the traffickers who were sending girls to Europe for prostitution. As a result of his investigation, and his collaboration with law enforcement agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other journalists, 17 Nigerian trafficking victims were rescued.

“Following this success, Anas posed as a janitor in a brothel where he collected evidence of a second ring trafficking children for prostitution. His efforts guided police in planning and executing a raid to rescue minors prostituted in the brothel. His exemplary courage and innovation were instrumental in disrupting two rings that profited from human trafficking.

“Anas is one of 17 ‘Heroes Acting to End Modern-Day Slavery’ named in the 2008 Trafficking in Persons Report.”

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Short Takes

 

Alicia Quarles

 

Terry Armour

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Feedback: Explain Why Clintons Were Wearing Black

In response to your June 7 item about Barack Obama pulling a fast one on the press, I say of course politicians must ditch the press every now and then. But at least the press generally knows what to pursue. I’m concerned that the media are not even pursuing the significance of Hillary, Bill and Chelsea all wearing black when Hillary suspended her campaign and announced support for Obama.

I’ve had some interesting Facebook conversations with my students and colleagues about this and want to know why I haven’t seen their group clothing choice discussed in major media and influential columns, even if only to say it was a coincidence or what the family meant to symbolically convey.

One student noted the Clintons’ “black suits along with shameless campaigning for vp.” Another said, “my first thought was who died? . . . yeah that disgusted me.” A third said, “(Y)eah that wearing black thing? Was that support?”

One conducted a little research on the color black in politics and learned that Confederate soldiers used it, that it signifies alignment with another political philosophy or anarchy, and that it means darkness, doubt, ignorance and uncertainty. They all poignantly remember wearing it to protest treatment of the Jena 6.

Still, one colleague said, “Having taught perception for decades, there are MANY significant symbols involved there, from elegance and power to mystery and evil. First of all, black is the color to wear at any serious professional occasion; I’ve worn black to almost every job interview or speech I’ve done, as has everyone I’ve ever seen give a speech or other important event. It is, after all, THE power color. Secondly, they are, after all, mourning the loss of a campaign. It has to hurt, and solemnity would seem appropriate. This was her speech to announce the end of her campaign, at which she reiterated her promise to support Obama, not a speech to pledge support for Obama without other purposes.”

Another said she’s “not sure why the media would cover that or why the (Clintons) should defend their clothing choices to the media. The party is very divided right now and I don’t see how writing about the (Clintons’) clothing choice is really (newsworthy). Wasn’t like she wore a black shroud or black veil or something truly odd! Also why should she wear bright colors?” This colleague also said she never has heard of male candidate “having to defend their clothing choice in defeat.” What matters to her is that Hillary’s “dream is dead. Although she said all the right words she must be heartbroken.”

Media discuss clothing choices other times, so let’s hear straight from the Clintons why they all chose black and straight from others how they reacted to that choice. Just two recent discussions of Hillary’s clothes are:

“Democratic women are angry, hurt and sad but also proud of Clinton”: “Austin lawyer Lulu Flores’ “anger is directed at the media, where pundits questioned Mrs. Clinton’s clothing, laughter and warmth and then attributed her success to her husband.”

“Hillary Clinton gives full backing to Barack Obama”: “Dressed in pearls and a black jacket, she told the crowd in the monumental flag-draped hall of the National Building Museum in Washington: ‘The way to continue is to take our energy, our passion, our strength and do all we can to help Barack Obama.'”

Pamela E. Foster
Director of Student Publications
Department of Communications
Tennessee State University
Nashville
June 9, 2008

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