Dear Editor:
On Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, Steven Latimer
indicated he felt the university had shown a bias for
“left-wing” and “bizarre” speakers over the past year.
He suggested the university bring more conservative
speakers, such as Deroy Murdock or Pat Buchanan.
For the sake of full disclosure, let’s examine one of
Mr. Latimer’s suggestions, Pat Buchanan, through the
following quotations:
(1) Trying to justify apartheid in South Africa, Pat
Buchanan denounced the notion that “white rule
of a black majority is inherently wrong. Where
did we get that idea? The Founding Fathers did
not believe this.” (syndicated column, 2/7/90)
(2) “Rail as they will about ‘discrimination,’
women are simply not endowed by nature with
the same measures of single-minded ambition
and the will to succeed in the fi ercely competitive
world of Western capitalism.” (syndicated
column, 11/22/83)
(3) In 1983: “The poor homosexuals – they have
declared war upon nature, and now nature is
extracting an awful retribution (AIDS).”
Why has VCU chosen to bring liberation fighters
like Elaine Brown and Ward Churchill instead of
“conservative” speakers? Because “conservative” is
nearly always synonymous with “racist, misogynist,
classist and homophobic.” “Conservative” speakers
identify themselves as such in order to mask their true
intentions: to legitimize and perpetuate an oppressive
status quo from which they benefit at the expense of
marginalized minorities. Is this sort of exploitation
really what Mr. Latimer thinks institutions of higher
learning like VCU should be encouraging?
VCU is a university that values diversity, especially
along the lines of gender, race, sexuality and national
origin. Bringing speakers like those Mr. Latimer suggested
would be a slap in the face to that tradition. I
applaud VCU’s efforts to encourage critical discourse
through its recent selection of lecturers and performers
and hope to see this trend continue. Increased
intellectual exploration, not conservative stagnation,
will help to shape compassionate and empathic future
leaders of our society.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Kidd