An open letter to President Bacow Re: The Fares Lecturer

Dear President Bacow,

Is there a good educational reason for having former President Bush as Fares Lecturer this year? Though you have received letters from faculty suggesting the answer is no, you have publicly defended the invitation. In your words, it is evidence of intellectual diversity at Tufts.

We are not convinced that intellectual diversity is the issue. If the point, as you have indicated before the faculty, is to make sure one side of the debate over United States policy in the Middle East, as represented by last year's Fares speaker, former President Clinton, is balanced by the opposing view, a lecture by former President Bush is hardly the ideal means. Not only has he spoken at Tufts before in this same venue (the 1994 Fares Lecture), as a key architect of the policy now in force, whose historical reputation as First Executive may rest on how one views his involvement in it, he is also poorly placed to air his honest opinion.

But if the issue is not diversity -- an ideal we otherwise applaud you for pursuing -- then what is? Two more obvious possibilities come to mind. First, the predicament of America and the world in February 2003. In this day of instant communication, almost no one on the globe is unaware of preparations for war on Iraq. Daily in the United States we confront newspaper and TV debates over our country's march to war, as well as a media blitz from the current Bush administration defending its role and making war more likely. To host the father of the President -- a man who deeply shaped the policy being implemented by his son and members of whose own administration are prominent among his son's chief officers and advisers -- at what is possibly Tufts' most prestigious annual event, where he will be almost required to focus his speech on questions concerning the imminent war in Iraq, strikes us as beyond comprehension. A recent article in the Daily served as a reminder of Tufts' new policy on political speakers. The intention is to rule out any formal reception on campus of lecturers campaigning for office or political advantage. Maybe former President Bush doesn't fit that prescription exactly, but he comes awfully close. At a moment like this, he is precisely the kind of invitee to avoid. The publicity and political spin inevitably weighing on his visit to Tufts will overwhelm every other aspect of his appearance here, including any potential for insight into his or his son's geopolitical goals.

But second, and of even greater importance for the academic health and integrity of Tufts itself, is the question of endowment-oriented politics. In contrast to the difficulty of imagining educational and inquiry-oriented reasons for choosing former President Bush as lecturer, it is easy to conceive of local but extra-academic political motives for inviting him. Issam Fares, the benefactor of the Fares Lectures, is both a prominent Lebanese businessman and a senior member of the Lebanese government. That the lecture series he has subsidized, and over which he apparently still maintains considerable policy-setting influence, should for a second time in its mere ten years of existence honor former President Bush by selecting him as Fares Lecturer, creates a public image of this university we should do everything to avoid. A glance at the list of Fares Lecturers reveals the dominating presence of the most illustrious members of the former and current Bush administrations: former President Bush (now twice); former Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury and White House Chief of Staff James Baker; former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Secretary of State Colin Powell. In light of both past and current relations between the United States and the British government, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fits in perfectly. Just slightly less at home is former French President Val?©ry Giscard d'Estaing. Only former peace-negotiator and Senator George Mitchell and former President Clinton provide any contrast, a secondary motif, perhaps, in what is from beginning to end a paean to the United States governing elite.

This does not look to us like intellectual diversity; rather it suggests that Tufts is being used to further an external agenda. It makes us wonder whether Tufts, a university that should rightly command respect, exercises any control over the funds it accepts from well-placed donors. Or whether it recognizes how precious is maintaining intellectual independence from powerful and partisan interests outside the world of ideas. Here, after all, is where an institution of higher education must be most punctilious, defending the freedom of inquiry unique to academe. We are deeply saddened by the example Tufts now risks presenting to the world, and to its own student body, on its attitude towards these, the values that ought to lie at its core.

Sincerely,

Steven Marrone

Elizabeth Ammons

Steven Marrone is a professor in the Department of History and Elizabeth Ammons is a professor in the Department of English.