PC Catholicism
Apparently, Providence College (PC) is trying to move beyond Catholic in Name Only status to a more impromptu version of Catholicism. When school officials demurred over a planned talk at the school by former U. S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., one of the reasons that they gave for their reluctance was “additional concerns about Trancredo’s views contradicting with those of the Catholic Church.”
Catholic Tancredo racked up a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee as an elected representative but was asked to speak at PC on immigration. His strong secure borders stance on that issue puts him at odds with Catholic political activists nationwide.
Nevertheless, there are no papal encyclicals on this issue while there are many on abortion. Moreover, PC has had some high-profile pro-choice Catholics grace its halls as lecturers including Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., from the neighboring bay state.
Attempts to get PC to clarify what views of the contrarian Tancredo might be contradictory to the school’s creed have thus far been unavailing. The school has yet to confirm or deny the position attributed to it by Youth for Western Civilization, the group that invited Tancredo to give an address on campus.
College Causes Global Warming
At George Washington, “The University released the first school-wide inventory of greenhouse gas emissions Wednesday, and administrators said the age of campus buildings is one of the largest contributors to GW’s carbon footprint,” Lara Kasten reported in the GW Hatchet on April 23, 2009. “In the 2007-08 academic year, 53 percent of GW’s emissions were the result of purchased electricity, while 24 percent came from stationary combustion, according to the data released Wednesday.”
“The inventory concluded that the overall emissions are ‘on par with an average of other schools.’”
Dude, Where’s my sovereignty?
There’s at least one group that might not look askance at the president’s recent apology tour of Europe and Latin America—the American Society of International Law (ASIL). “The Society’s 4,000 members from nearly 100 nations include attorneys, academics, corporate counsel, judges, representatives of governments and nongovernmental organizations, international civil servants, students and others interested in international law,” the ASIL website proclaims. If only it were as concerned about the national interest of their host country.
Hoped-for Change at Hofstra
Hofstra University, which has honored such Stalin apologists as lawyer Lynne Stewart and Peruvian poet César Vallejo, is being made aware of the darker side of the communist dictator of the former Soviet Union. “By a vote of 1,471 to 649, the undergraduate students at Hofstra University just answered YES to the following referendum question: ‘Should Hofstra University sponsor, at least once in every year, an event commemorating the victims of government-sponsored mass murder such as the Armenian mass murder, the Ukrainian terror famine, and the Holocaust?’ (Referendum No. 6, approved April 23, 2009),” Maximilian Longley, a law student at the university, reports. As universities go these days, the Hofstra administrative response was about as near to a concession as has been seen in many years. “A spokesperson for the university administration, while opposing the proposed referendum, indicated the possibility that the University might commemorate the Ukraine famine victims in the future,” Longley relates.
Realpolitik Comes to Academe
The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) recently held a conference on “Teaching the Nuclear Age.” Believe it or not, a surprising number of the 44 teachers invited saw the need for the U. S. to possess a nuclear deterrent.
God Bless America
On Friday, April 24, 2009, a delegation from the Westboro Baptist Church showed up at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland to protest homosexuality.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
