Commentary: A wish list for Nan

Dear President Keohane:         

Thanks for being a superwoman. Among your extensive list of achievements at Duke, you've spearheaded a $2.36-billion fundraising campaign, forged meaningful ties in Durham with the Neighborhood Partnership Initiative and had the vision to foster a real community with the successful development of an all-freshman East Campus. To add to that, you've strategically balanced your duties, your politics and your agenda--keeping quiet for so long to quell the critics of your feminist leanings--so that you could now at the end of your tenure stimulate a powerful and necessary discussion in higher education via the Women's Initiative.         

It seems so clear now: You raise a few billion dollars for a university, then no matter what your "minority" status nobody can question your motives or your commitment to what's best for the school. I think most people have even forgotten you're a woman; you've attained a sort of omnipotent quality. Most remarkably, you've been able to excel as a scholar and president in a way that at times seems--dare I say it--deceptively effortless. Robert Keohane sure is one lucky hombre, and you should let him know that. Every day.        

With all this meaningful, life-changing work behind you, I have a request: Can you stop President Bush and his ultraconservative cronies from highjacking this university, and our country?         

If Bush wants so badly to "respect every person and protect the institution of marriage," why don't he and his advisors check out all the love and hope now in the eyes of the thousands of newlyweds in Massachusetts and California? These gay couples surely do not intend to desecrate marriage as an institution; on the contrary, their only desire is to wholeheartedly embrace it.         

In terms of codified legal access to civil liberties, homosexuals--although often able to hide their preference--have it the worst in this country. Nan, I was hoping that you could persuade more scientists to work on studying the genetic bases of sexual behavior, so that we can once and for all prove to religious conservatives like the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chair and founder of the Traditional Values Coalition (read: irrational group), that gay marriage is not "a carefully calculated campaign to provide the appearance of normalcy to homosexual behavior."

Finding a "gay gene" or group of genes affecting sexuality would represent a substantial step forward in nullifying the religious right's argument that homosexuality is unnatural or purely based on choice. And if these same ideologues would venture to use that knowledge to eliminate gays from the gene pool, then any refutation they've been offering for the past half-century against the genetic engineering boom would suffice in response. Or you might just remind Sheldon and his followers that the individual liberty generally advocated by conservatives involves making one's own choices, and one of these choices could be homosexuality.         

Speaking of science, maybe your passion for knowledge and finding truth can persuade Bush to place sound medical evidence over party politics. Two advisory committees to the Food and Drug Administration voted in December to recommend that the agency allow sales of the morning-after pill without a doctor's prescription, but the Bush administration once again elevated ideology over scientific research by stalling over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive. Bush's concerns over greater promiscuity were considered and overwhelmingly rejected by the agency's expert panels.         

Add to this debacle the recent denunciation by leading professionals and distinguished Nobel laureates of how the Bush administration has systematically distorted scientific evidence to sway the American people, and we have on our hands a monster of amoral politicking.

But don't get me wrong, Nan. I love conservatives and respect their points of view, especially when they have strong evidence and try to engage in constructive debate--which is why I appreciate so much the recent investigation by the DCU into the political preferences of our professors.         

Please, though, can you help us all get something straight? I know it's a difficult concept to understand, but political conservatives are not the same as black people. Thus, perhaps surprisingly to some, a dearth of conservatives in any one department is not the same as a dearth of African Americans. While right-wingers are most likely absent in academia due to the extremely community-oriented nature of the work and the few financial rewards of the job, blacks are largely absent in university settings due to the historic disservice we have done them and continue to do them from an early age.         

Although I am quite sure members of the DCU would beg to differ, conservatives in this country have faced no systematic, virulent oppression like slavery and Jim Crow, nor can they be identified so easily by the color of their skin for the purposes of current discrimination. I believe there is some confusion over the notion of correcting for historic wrongs, because whenever someone tries to discuss an effective affirmative action for African Americans, somehow white conservatives complain that they are the ones who are truly being oppressed. When conservatives have gone through the same centuries-long process of cruel subjugation and lost identity as black Americans, then maybe we can talk about "conservative action."         

But until then, Nan, please make my wishes come true.

   Phillip Kurian is a Trinity junior. His column appears every other Monday.