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Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 11:35
PM
Subject: your recent email to President Brodhead
Dear Chairman Mozes:
Thank you for your e-mail to President Brodhead in which you expressed
concern about the national student conference of the Palestine Solidarity
Movement, which a Duke University student group will host on 15-17 October
2004.
As you can imagine, we have received a great deal of correspondence from
various groups and people of good faith who see a number of the issues
associated with the Palestine-Israel conflict from very different
perspectives.
Last week, I issued a statement on behalf of the university confirming
that Duke would, consistent with its longstanding commitment to free
speech and academic freedom, be a venue for this conference. You will find
my statement and associated documents at
http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/psc.html.
As my statement notes, Duke’s decision to register this student-sponsored
conference was relatively straightforward to make, given both the history
of the university and its commitment to academic freedom, and the
successful completion of the registration process by the Duke student
sponsors of the event. As my statement also notes, we are encouraged by
the activities of a number of pro-Israel groups on campus, which not only
have agreed with the university’s decision to host the event – while at
the same time disagreeing vehemently with the views of some members of the
pro-Palestinian movement – but have plans to provide multiple
opportunities for a wide variety of views to be heard on our campus. We
really do believe that the loudness of the voice should be leavened
considerably by the wisdom of the comments and arguments made. At the end
of the day, we hope members of our university community will have learned
a good deal more about the many complex aspects of Palestine-Israel
relations and will be better able to determine for themselves how they
feel about these issues.
I do want to note two points about the conferences at Michigan and at
Rutgers, since the information we have from those campuses is somewhat
different from that documented in your letter. While there, no doubt, was
a great deal of controversy at each institution associated with the
conference, we are aware of a letter from an officer of the American
Jewish Committee to the University of Michigan praising the university for
how it handled the conference and, equally important, for the robust and
constructive dialogue that this individual witnessed during the debates
there. At Rutgers, President McCormick did NOT reject the conference
request because of the content of the conference, but rather because the
student group there failed to complete the normal registration process
required of all such groups to host events. Moreover, we understand that
one of the representatives of the Rutgers student group used the phrase
“by any means necessary,” and not members of the Palestine Solidarity
Movement.
Indeed, we have been informed that the national organization determined to
pull the conference from Rutgers and move it to Ohio State even before
Rutgers made the decision not to host the conference, partly because of
their dissatisfaction with the extremist activities of the Rutgers student
sponsors.
Thank you again for your expression of concern. I am hopeful, as I know
President Brodhead and others are here at Duke, that the events at our
university will focus on education and understanding. We will do all in
our power to support such efforts.
John F. Burness
Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations
Duke University |
