University Ministry J.U.S.T.I.C.E. Teach In: Encouraging Students Not to Think

As we type this, a debate is going on (elsewhere in the Alumni Memorial Union) where advocates on both sides of the debate on universal government health care engage each other.

The event is sponsored by the College Democrats and College Republicans.

Three weeks ago, the conservative Federalist Society at the Law School had a debate on gun control. They expended considerable effort in getting capable advocates on both sides.

But such programs are rare on the Marquette campus.

More common are propagandistic programs run by the Office of Student Development, the University Ministry, Manresa, the Office of Mission and Identity and Marquette University Student government.

On their programs, both sides of controversial issues are never heard.

The orientation is “activist,” meaning the world is chocked full of injustice, and the task of education is to mobilize students to go out and fight that injustice.

How is this a problem? Because the definition of “injustice” is a partisan left definition, and the students are discouraged from ever questioning whether the standard leftist solutions are the correct ones.

Exhibit One, the JUSTICE Teach-In held on campus just last month.

The program for the event shows no concern whatsoever with the notion that there are different, competing ideas about what “social justice” consists of, and different ideas about how to achieve it (even if we could agree on what it is).

Some of the program consisted of pretty bland stuff like an after school program to teach African dance and drumming to students on Milwaukee’s South Side. Then there was something called Capoeria, defined as “a Brazilian fight-dance, game, and martial art created by enslaved Africans during the 17th Century.” We suppose the fact that black slaves created it makes it politically correct. But how it relates to any serious “social justice” issue remains a mystery.

Some of the sessions were rather silly, for example three different presenters talking about Fair Trade coffee! But saying that the subject is “silly,” unfortunately, understates the case. The trendy leftist obsession with “fair trade” comes at the expense of pushing for free trade -- which is something that promises to have vastly more impact in improving the lot of the world’s poor.

But the “fair trade” crowd doesn’t much like free trade. The problem is: it’s capitalism. It’s not under the control of bureaucrats -- and they most certainly identify with bureaucrats. And it doesn’t make them feel self-satisfied.

More controversial, and more suspect, are groups like Voces de La Frontera, a group that promotes violating the nation’s immigration laws. You absolutely won’t hear, at any event sponsored by the campus leftists, the view that immigration laws should be enforced, or that this nation needs to control its borders.

But most odd, at a university that claims to be Catholic, is the full-blown promotion of homosexuality, and even a transgender and transsexual agenda.

Quoting the description of two of the groups presenting:

GSA (Gay Straight Alliance)- The purpose of this organization is to provide awareness, education and support for people that are lesbian, gay, straight or bisexual. They offer the support of a community that works for justice in issues that are in regard to one’s sexual orientation and study the effects of that on the Marquette community.

And then there is this:

Project Q “What is Transgender and Transexual?” Project Q is the youth program of the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center. Project Q offers three main services to LGBTQ youth. They build a supportive community for the youth, provide them education on essential topics. The center offers a lounge area with computers, TV, DVD/video players, and a library for the students that participate in drop-in activities. They also provide support services where they can receive valuable information from programming staff and peers. The third service is a skills building program which empowers youth for the future. Project Q believes in the ability of youth to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to become healthy educated adults.

The view that homosexual acts are sinful (which is, after all, the Catholic view) is something that will never be presented at any program mounted by the campus leftists.

What else is never dealt with? Abortion. That’s right. None of the programs staged by the leftist axis on campus has, for at least the past several years, dealt with the issue.

We can only conclude that the bureaucrats in places like the University Ministry and the Office of Student Development (and their pet students) think that abortion should be legal. But actually having pro-abortion speakers would be a “bridge too far.” So they evade the issue.

Last April: MUSG Diversity Conference

The fall Teach-In was pretty much a clone of the MUSG Diversity Conference last spring.

The usual obsession with “fair trade” was much in evidence there, as was the usual politically correct tripe about race, gender and sexual orientation.

The gay lobby, in the form of the Gay/Straight Alliance was there, and so was Voces de la Frontera.

But one example of the sort of presentation that is designed to dull the critical faculties was a session titled “Hurricane Katrina: A Man-Made Disaster.” According to the description:

In the aftermath of Katrina it is hard to ignore how certain populations have been demonized, victimized, and ignored in the recovery process. A look at the lower 9th ward, a primarily black, home-owning community, shows many of the injustices experienced in New Orleans. New Orleans can serve as the shining example of what not to do. They have allowed the rich, elite class, which is primarily white, to take over the city.

Given that New Orleans had a black mayor (who was, strangely reelected in the wake of the fiasco) it’s difficult to know what she is talking about. But we suppose, for this kind of activist mentality, all things come together (even hurricanes) to oppress blacks and empower the evil white male elite.

A University ought to, first and foremost, teach students to use their critical faculties.

How this is done is no mystery. One critically examines arguments. One listens to people with different positions. One asks whether the conclusions follow from the premises -- and this after actually trying to determine whether the premises are true.

But on a politically correct campus, all of this is discouraged. Of course the University bureaucrats who mount these programs would say they are encouraging students to engage in “critical thinking.” But they stifle critical thinking about the politically correct orthodoxy.

Philip Agee: Cold War Traitor Has Fans in the University Ministry

From a post on (of all places) the Internet JFK assassination newsgroup:

Wednesday, Sept 19, 12 noon - 1pm, Marquette Univ. Alumni Memorial Union, Ballroom A, 15th & Wells Street, Milwaukee; Soup with Substance screening of the film, “One Man’s Story: Philip Agee, Cuba and the CIA”, and Agee’s update, with discussion sponsored by Campus Ministry at Marquette University.

This collaboration between Cuban and Irish co-directors Roberto Ruiz and Bernie Dwyer, respectively, focuses on a dark side of United States foreign policy. Filmed in Havana with excellent archive material of numerous US covert and direct involvements in Latin America, “One Man’s Story” allows Agee, a former CIA agent, to tell his part of his captivating story.

Agee is famous for his international best selling book, “Inside the Company,” which exposed his own assignments and a history CIA covert operations to undermine and even terrorize progressive and democratic movements for social justice, particularly in Latin America where he served for 12 years until his resignation in 1968. This DVD focuses particularly on the CIA’s targeting of Cuba and Che Guevara.

Agee will not be present. Apparently, he refuses to come to the US while President Bush is in office.

When an Agee supporter says “progressive and democratic movements for social justice,” that means “Communist movements.”

The event is also listed here.

Agee, quite simply, was a traitor.

In 1975, he published Inside the Company: CIA Diary in which he identified 250 CIA officers and agents.

Agee was not simply a freelance critic of the CIA.

Of those [CIA defectors], the worst is arguably Philip Agee, who left the CIA and published the seditious Covert Action Information Bulletin, with the help of both the KGB and the Cuban DGI, a magazine dedicated to promoting “a worldwide campaign to destabilize the CIA through exposure of its operations and personnel.” Agee told Swiss journalist Peter Studer, “The CIA is plainly on the wrong side, that is, the capitalistic side. I approve KGB activities, communist activities in general. Between the overdone activities that the CIA initiates and the more modest activities of the KGB, there is absolutely no comparison.” Today Agee runs a website from his home in Havana, Cubalinda.com, and is a dedicated communist.

He, in fact, received help from the KGB and from Cuban intelligence in his attempts to undermine the CIA.

The evidence that Agee was supported by the KGB, by the way, comes from something called the Mitrokin Archive -- a treasure trove of KGB documents that KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin brought to the West. The documents were the basis of the book The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB.

So what we have here is the University Ministry still fighting the Cold War.

And even more absurdly, they are fighing it on the losing side!

Why Won’t Catholic Outreach Talk to the Media?

When The Warrior did a quite favorable feature on Catholic student organizations on the Marquette campus, one organization was conspicuously missing: Catholic Outreach.

Since Catholic Outreach is a project of the University Ministry, this was a rather glaring omission.

But the reason for the omission was explained in a column by Mike Rudzinski, Warrior editor.

It seems we weren’t the only student-run organization asking the question [who are we?]. This issue, we focus on Catholic leaders on campus who ask the tough questions: “who are you Marquette, and what is your true mission?” Go Roman Week sought out the soul of Marquette as a Catholic, Jesuit institution.

The answer to our paper’s own identity search came while investigating this week’s feature story. Catholic Outreach, a university sponsored Catholic organization, wanted to be included in the story but was unable to do so without university approval. University Ministry needed to review our questions and approve the article before it could be published.

This contradicts our journalistic code of ethics. As students, as Americans, as human beings we all have the right to speak freely without censorship. As an independent publication and voice of the student body, The Warrior refuses to be censored, and so should you.

We quickly established that what Rudzinski says about attempted censorship is accurate -- or at least, it correctly reflects what The Warrior was told when it tried to do an interview.

Wanting to get to the bottom of this, we yesterday phoned Ann Mulgrew, the University Ministry staffer who oversees Catholic Outreach. She said she was unaware of this situation, and would get back to us.

We also attempted to reach three officers of the organization: Riad el-Azem, Aaron Morey and Rebecca Baehrend.

Two of the three failed to respond to our multiple e-mail and voice mail messages. The third talked briefly, giving evasive and apparently disingenuous answers before terminating the interview.

We called Ann Mulgrew back today, and she was extremely huffy, objecting to the fact that we had tried to reach the officers of the group. Some, she said, had contacted her to “complain.” Apparently, in her view, journalists should accept the “authoritative” view of events that she hands out, and not try to develop independent sources.

In other words, she inadvertently reinforced the impression that the whole Warrior affair gave.

She then refused to talk further. It seemed to us that she was using a contrived grievance to evade answering embarrassing questions about University Ministry policies.

This raises some serious questions about the University Ministry, and about the bureaucratic culture there.

• Why are they so fearful about letting students speak? They, after all, constituted Catholic Outreach and chose the officers. Why don’t they trust their own student officers?
• Why are the student officers so fearful of the University Ministry? Why do they consent to be censored?
• Why the mania on the part of University Ministry to control information? They claim to want to prevent “inaccurate” information from getting out. But in the minds of bureaucrats obsessed with control, “inaccurate” is likely to equal “information that reflects badly on us.”

The truth, of course, is that if you let people speak freely, some will say inaccurate things, some will say dumb things and some things will be misreported.

Apparently in a couple of past instances, Catholic Outreach officers have gone a bit too far and said things that the University Ministry thought to be out of line.

That’s the risk anybody operating in the public arena takes. Why does the University Ministry think different rules apply to them?

The University Ministry is, at least nominally, a Christian operation. So it ought to be known for speaking truthfully and speaking boldly. Instead, it seems to be a haven for risk-averse bureaucrats.

And the ethos has infected the students in the organization’s orbit.