Students For Academic Freedom

Peace Studies Politicized at Mizzou · 18 September 2003

This incident happened last semester, and I found it to be highly outrageous.

The director of the Peace Studies department at the University of Missouri in Columbia gave a guest lecture in a course I took known as "Irish History: Great Famine to Present." A week or so before the lecture, the course instructor said "I realize that some of you have been conditioned to believe that that Peace Studies Department is home to a lot of anti-American sentiment, but that's not my intention...of bringing him here to speak to you...I brought him because he's the only guest speaker I could find", which seemed to be a disclaimer statement.

In the guest lecture, the Peace Studies Director made comments that implied the state government of Mississippi is unethical, and claimed that Bob Jones College is racially segregated. In addition to that, he criticized John Ashcroft's enforcement of Homeland Security, by speaking about an instance that happened awhile back. John Ashcroft refused a visa to Irish citizen Bernadette Devlin McClosky, because she is classified as an undesirable alien, is a radical socialist with ties (definitely former, unknown if current) to the IRA, and is a possible threat to homeland security. What happened was that Tony Blair's government sent us a warning by fax that she could be a threat, and Ashcroft saw to it that she was promptly deported.

The Peace Studies Director's response to this was "I guess according to our attorney general, if you are damn-near killed by British paramilitary [forces], that makes you an undesireable alien." He then said that he has plans to try and get Bernadette Devlin McClosky back into the US so she can speak at the college! This is a move that I feel would undermine President Bush's Homeland Security policy

The Peace Studies Director compared the British government's arrest of IRA suspects without trial and internment to the way terrorist suspects were held at Guantanamo Bay, implying that the U.S. government didn't do the right thing with the terrorists. The way he said it was that the British government's arrest of IRA suspects was similar to Guantanamo Bay "not because you're a follower of Islam", but because people supposedly were just IRA sympathizers.

The Peace Studies Director claimed that some people see fundamentalism in President George W. Bush, and that "he [George W. Bush] thinks we should stamp out evil everywhere."

The Peace Studies Director also made a rude and obnoxious comment about Vice President Dick Cheney speaking at UMC's commencement, by saying "The university [UMC] has no shame, does it?"

He then went on to claim that George W. Bush has no interest in the peace process between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, because he "has bigger fish to fry and several people he needs to bomb."

The last comment I remember the Peace Studies Director making was him saying it was a "great disgrace that the British haven't put an end to this conflict", in regards to the conflict between N. Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and that he was a fool to think Tony Blair's Labor Party would. After that, he made a somewhat racist remark, saying that "maybe my grandparents were right, that all British people were bad."

Needless to say, I was highly disgusted after his guest lecture. At the end of the lecture, we were going to fill out teacher evaluations for the course instructor, and the Peace Studies Director told us not to hold the instructor responsible for people he brings as guest lecturers. If the Peace Studies Director wants to take the full responsibility, then so be it, that's his choice.

This account was written by a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

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