[Peace-discuss] AAUP statement

[Al Kagan]

>FYI
>
>From the American Association of University Professors:
>>
>>  > Dear Colleagues,
>>  > The events of September 11, 2001, have undermined our sense of security in
>>  > many ways. They are not just violations of our people and of our 
>>symbols of
>>  > power. They are violations of our basic trust in reason. Despite some
>>  > internal national conflicts, our members have chosen to work within our
>>  > democracy with a sense that we could make a difference in deciding how to
>>  > use our great power justly in the world. Although we have been deeply
>>  > disturbed about injustice, poverty, and inequity and the violence they
>>  > instigate, we have also harbored a belief that we could find ways to
>>  > remediate these evils by understanding them. And now the evidence of such
>>  >  immense violence, used so irrationally, has challenged our belief that we
>>  > could make sense of things to ourselves and to others.
>>  > In the presence of such a rebuke to our deepest convictions, it 
>>is tempting
>>  > not to think at all, but to act instinctively. As an association of
>>  > university professors that is distinctively American, however, we are
>>  > called by all the elements of our identity to reaffirm our faith in the
>>  > power of knowledge to hold back the irrational. We therefore affirm, for
>>  > our colleagues throughout this country, that we will continue to fight
>>  > violence with renewed dedication to the exercise of freedom of thought and
>>  > the expression of that freedom in our teaching.
>>  > Jane Buck, President
>>  > Mary Burgan, General Secretary
>--

-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu