{"id":5185,"date":"2015-11-13T10:47:57","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T15:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=5185"},"modified":"2015-11-13T10:47:57","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T15:47:57","slug":"missouri-iowa-and-moral-emptiness-in-presidential-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2015\/11\/missouri-iowa-and-moral-emptiness-in-presidential-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Missouri, Iowa, and Moral Emptiness in Presidential Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Missouri <\/a>is the latest flashpoint for expressions of rage over the continuing prevalence of racism in American life and higher education.\u00a0 Black students at Missouri and elsewhere have organized effective protests in the face of ugly racial offenses.\u00a0 The Missouri university president and system chancellor both lost their jobs\u00a0because of their\u00a0indifferent and obtuse administrative responses to racially offensive incidents on campus; however, the resignations were less about accepting responsibility for a lack of moral leadership in the face of racism and more about the economics of big time college football.\u00a0 The Mizzou football team used the leverage of threatening a boycott of games, raising the spectre of a potential loss of $1 million in breach of contracts, to hasten the resignations.<\/p>\n

While students at Missouri, Yale, Claremont McKenna, Purdue and other universities have been organizing protests that decry specific incidents of racial hatred and the corrosive\u00a0environments of prejudice and hatred\u00a0that allow\u00a0such incidents\u00a0to happen, some presidential candidates <\/a>stumpting\u00a0in Iowa and New Hampshire are revealing a stunning level of moral emptiness on America’s continuing crisis of racism and inequality.\u00a0 One candidate yesterday termed the protesters “disgusting,” another said the leadership resignations were because of “the politically correct police,” and several candidates said they were “too busy” to follow the Mizzou situation.\u00a0 Another candidate went so far as to blame President Obama, implying that if the president were not African American, perhaps there would be no racial unrest.<\/p>\n

Really???\u00a0 Have these candidates not paid any attention to what’s been going on for the last year in America, to Ferguson and Cleveland and Baltimore and so many other places where the abominable treatment of African Americans by law enforcement authorities has provoked widespread protests and given birth to the Black Lives Matter movement?\u00a0 What’s happening at Missouri and elsewhere is part of the ongoing national struggle with racism, the great American original sin that just does not seem to abate.<\/p>\n

Some of these same candidates have repeatedly expressed shocking disrespect for human beings in other ways.\u00a0 They talk about rounding up and sending undocumented immigrants “back” as if they were herds of cattle; one candidate actually proposed labeling immigrants <\/a>like Fedex packages.\u00a0 The presidential candidates talk about obliterating people in other countries as if human life were meaningless; they speak with utter contempt about people who disagree with them — even each other — and with a few notable exceptions, to date most of the candidates have demonstrated precious little concern for issues of social justice, human rights, civil rights, poverty and economic inequality.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20151112_123310947\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Yesterday in Social Hall, Trinity Alumna Barbara Kennelly ’58 — former member of Congress (D-CT) and distinguished professor of Political Science — gave a lecture about the current presidential campaign that triggered some excellent student questions and comments.\u00a0 One student asked, paraphrasing here, “How can we care about the candidates when they don’t show they care about us, when they don’t address the issues we care about?”\u00a0 This student and others went on to cite the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the protests at Missouri and Yale, the concerns of African American and Latina students and communities about poverty and inequality that are not addressed by many (not all) of the current presidential candidates.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20151112_124532919\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Kennelly, as Trinity’s first alumna in Congress, is a marvelous example of the leadership of Trinity Women in the public square — she paved the way for Nancy Pelosi ’62, the first woman Speaker of the House, now Democratic Leader, and other Trinity Women who have stepped up to take on the great issues of each era.\u00a0 In yesterday’s talk, Professor Kennelly challenged today’s Trinity students to follow in her footsteps, to become deeply engaged in the issues of this era, to speak out about injustice, racism and the imperatives of social justice in law and legislation, in presidential politics as well as local elections.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20151112_125033900\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Trinity students, faculty, staff and alumnae have a great deal of moral leadership to offer in the current confused and often disappointing political discourse.\u00a0 At yesterday’s gathering in Social Hall, I heard Trinity Women speak about the issues more coherently and with more moral clarity than we are hearing from many presidential candidates.\u00a0 Many Trinity students are already engaged in the current campaigns and in public interest work more broadly.<\/p>\n

As the current presidential campaign heats up, I urge all Trinity students to step up, speak out, be involved and show leadership.\u00a0 I welcome ideas about how Trinity can be a place for genuine dialogue, reflection and action to promote justice and equal opportunity on campus and in our city and nation.<\/p>\n

Your comments are welcome, click on the comment link below.<\/p>\n

Read my opinion piece in the Hechinger Report How Can Mizzou Heal?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students voice a level of moral leadership on racial justice and equality that is absent from the current presidential campaign rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[509,24],"tags":[1570,1563,1565,1567,1564,755,1569,1566,1568],"class_list":["post-5185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-human-rights","category-social-justice-issues","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-iowa-caucuses","tag-missouri","tag-mizzou","tag-new-hampshire","tag-presidential-campaign","tag-racial-protests","tag-university-of-missouri","tag-yale"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}