In his online column June 8, 2007, National Catholic Reporter writer John Allen floats an idea that should be getting more attention and push-back than it has: “from the point of view of Catholic-Jewish relations, the best thing the Vatican could do right now would be to beatify and canonize Pope Pius XII immediately.”
Allen’s column is at http://ncrcafe.org/node/1162
Eugenio Pacelli was Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1958, which of course included the Holocaust and other terrors of World War II, as well as challenges of the post-war period, such as the Cold War and establishing the state of Israel on land claimed by Palestinians. The greatest controversy about Pacelli is over the Holocaust: why did he express so little public opposition to fascism and its policies, and couldn’t he have done more to prevent the slaughter of six million Jews?
The occasion for Allen’s suggestion was a speech June 5th by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, widely regarded as the second most powerful official in the church. Bertone suggested that “Pope Pacelli” (as he frequently referred to him) had been the victim of a smear campaign that ignored many solid accomplishments, including behind-the-scenes activities to help the Jews, as well as doctrinal advances on scripture scholarship, evolution, liturgy, and the value of women.
In a few sentences toward the end of his speech, Bertone said the Vatican archives contained documents on “thousands of personal cases” (italics his) of Pacelli helping individuals, which have not been made public because they are in a disorganized state that would not allow coherent, comprehensive research.
Then, in a tantalizing aside, he added: “Maybe it would be possible, with the ad hoc help of some charitable foundation, to catalogue in a brief amount of time these papers which are stored in the Archives of the Holy See!”
Whether the Vatican really lacks the technical expertise or the financial resources to do its own cataloging could certainly be debated. However, use of an outside foundation might at least help the Vatican rebut one of the claims already made against the closed Vatican archives for the Pacelli period: that the Vatican may already have sanitized the records, by removing or destroying any that were not favorable to Pacelli. Unfortunately, the only way anyone can prove that it happened would be by contradictory documentary or oral evidence from outside the archives. Until such evidence is found, the fear has not been substantiated.
Although there has been pressure for decades for the Vatican to open the archives, so that critics of Pius XII would no longer be able to say that the archives hide documents unfavorable to him, Allen notes that 11 volumes of documents that Jesuit scholars have published from the archives have not changed the position of people on either side of this argument. He cites two reasons why he thinks that happened and why opening the rest of the archives still won’t resolve the controversy.
First, he says, the primary indictment against Pacelli is that he “failed to issue a straightforward public denunciation of National Socialism, or an unambiguous public appeal for Christians to rescue Jews.” Allen argues that since this criticism is based on what Pacelli did and did not do in public, the private archives will not sway the discussion.
Second, the other main indictment condemns actions Pacelli failed to try, e.g., publicly excommunicating Hitler, or meeting with Hitler, Mussolini, or both at once. Allen doubts that the archives can shed any light on how effective such alternatives might have been.
In light of the Holocaust and a perception that Pacelli favored Palestinian rights over establishment of the State of Israel, the Jewish critics of Pius XII are quite passionate. As Allen observes, it’s not as though the Vatican can wait a few more decades or centuries for their passion to subside.
It was just in April that Vatican Ambassador to the Holy Land created an ugly stir by threatening to boycott the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day state ceremony at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem, because of an exhibit caption about the Pius XII controversy. The ambassador later attended, but Yad Vashem’s position indicates that Jews’ deep misgivings about Pacelli are not going away.
Given this, what does the Vatican have to lose by opening the archives? If Pacelli’s proponents are right, the archives should provide additional positive facts. If the Jewish critics are right, are the archives likely to confirm anything worse than they already fear?
Allen may be right on both of his points. But no one will really know until independent researchers scour the archives in their entirety. It remains possible that documents and other assets still not researched can shed more light on the rationale and motivation for Pacelli’s public silence, perhaps providing more clues as to whether it was benign, malicious or negligent. It remains possible that the unresearched archives might also illuminate whether Pacelli considered some of the alternatives critics wish he had and, if so, whether specific factors influenced him not to pursue them.
Allen notes that Cardinal Bertone’s overture about letting a charitable foundation organize the documents he says prove Pacelli’s assistance to thousands of individuals got an enthusiastic response from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman told Allen that if lack of Vatican resources was an obstacle to opening those documents for research, “we should have an emergency meeting and figure out ways to make it happen.”
Rather than rushing Pius XII to sainthood, the Vatican could make a much more immediate positive contribution to Catholic-Jewish relations by actively pursuing Bertone’s idea.
Canonizing Pacelli would certainly announce to the Jewish people and to the world at large that the church has dug in its heels on his culpability for the Holocaust. But it would also only solidify the opposition in its conviction that Pacelli was wrong and the church since Pacelli has refused to admit it.
The result of opening the archives may be what Allen expects. But other outcomes remain possible. So long as that is the case, the only way to rule them out is to open the archives. Issues undoubtedly will remain afterwards. But at least the overarching issue—what secrets the archives may hold—will finally be laid to rest.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
QuikSCAT: Reprimand Bush, Not Hurricane Center Director
The acting director of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has reprimanded the director of the National Hurricane Center for telling the truth about the QuikSCAT satellite, which for years has provided the most reliable wind-speed measurements to predict where hurricanes will land: QuikSCAT has been on its last legs for months, it might fail at any moment, and NOAA has nothing in the works to replace it, this hurricane season or next.
In today’s print edition The Houston Chronicle notes that an administration that brought us FEMA’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina—and, I would add, broke every promise to New Orleans since—has no business letting another incompetent bureaucrat drive NOAA to less effective hurricane readiness.
If anyone needs reprimanding, it acting NOAA Director Mary Glacken—and the president who appointed her.
The editorial, which follows, is at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/4903748.html
Straight shooter: Rather than reprimand outspoken Hurricane Center chief, superiors should heed his warnings.
Since assuming the highly visible directorship of the National Hurricane Center in Miami in January, Bill Proenza has been telling it like it is, much to the chagrin of his superiors at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Proenza, a four-decade weather service veteran, criticized NOAA for planning a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign and anniversary party while slashing $700,000 from the Hurricane Center's budget for improving storm forecasting technology. He questioned the decision to "rebrand" information coming out of the Hurricane Center as coming from NOAA, the parent agency.
Proenza has spoken out about the tenuous state of the aged QuikSCAT satellite that provides a data stream measuring wind speeds in developing cyclones. He also opposed plans to cut the flight time of hurricane hunter craft to 354 hours this year, less than half the time used during the record-setting 2005 Atlantic storm season.
For his efforts, acting NOAA Director Mary Glackin paid Proenza a visit last week and delivered a three-page letter of reprimand accusing him of issuing confusing statements that cast doubt about the agency's ability to accurately forecast storms. Unfazed, Proenza circulated the letter to his staff, telling reporters he would not be muzzled by agency bureaucrats.
Proenza says Glackin is not the first federal official to try to silence him. Earlier this spring another weather service staffer, Louis Uccellini, warned him that his statements about QuikSCAT were angering officials in the White House, the Commerce Department and NOAA. The director says he will not be silent on issues critical to saving lives and increasing the accuracy of his agency's forecasts.
Lawmakers in Florida on the county, state and federal level have rallied behind Proenza. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and several members of the state's congressional delegation warned against any attempt to replace the director. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, whose department oversees NOAA, Nelson stated, "Clearly there are parties within NOAA who don't appreciate having their shortcomings identified to the public and Congress. However, shooting the messenger is not an acceptable response."
Two years ago the nation saw a previously well-functioning Federal Emergency Management Agency fail to provide vital services during Hurricane Katrina because unqualified political cronies had been put in charge.
The National Hurricane Center has served the nation well, tracking and forecasting storms while minimizing loss of life. It would be a tragedy if Washington bureaucrats more interested in anniversary parties than in maintaining weather satellites usurped the center's independence.
In today’s print edition The Houston Chronicle notes that an administration that brought us FEMA’s disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina—and, I would add, broke every promise to New Orleans since—has no business letting another incompetent bureaucrat drive NOAA to less effective hurricane readiness.
If anyone needs reprimanding, it acting NOAA Director Mary Glacken—and the president who appointed her.
The editorial, which follows, is at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/4903748.html
Straight shooter: Rather than reprimand outspoken Hurricane Center chief, superiors should heed his warnings.
Since assuming the highly visible directorship of the National Hurricane Center in Miami in January, Bill Proenza has been telling it like it is, much to the chagrin of his superiors at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Proenza, a four-decade weather service veteran, criticized NOAA for planning a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign and anniversary party while slashing $700,000 from the Hurricane Center's budget for improving storm forecasting technology. He questioned the decision to "rebrand" information coming out of the Hurricane Center as coming from NOAA, the parent agency.
Proenza has spoken out about the tenuous state of the aged QuikSCAT satellite that provides a data stream measuring wind speeds in developing cyclones. He also opposed plans to cut the flight time of hurricane hunter craft to 354 hours this year, less than half the time used during the record-setting 2005 Atlantic storm season.
For his efforts, acting NOAA Director Mary Glackin paid Proenza a visit last week and delivered a three-page letter of reprimand accusing him of issuing confusing statements that cast doubt about the agency's ability to accurately forecast storms. Unfazed, Proenza circulated the letter to his staff, telling reporters he would not be muzzled by agency bureaucrats.
Proenza says Glackin is not the first federal official to try to silence him. Earlier this spring another weather service staffer, Louis Uccellini, warned him that his statements about QuikSCAT were angering officials in the White House, the Commerce Department and NOAA. The director says he will not be silent on issues critical to saving lives and increasing the accuracy of his agency's forecasts.
Lawmakers in Florida on the county, state and federal level have rallied behind Proenza. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and several members of the state's congressional delegation warned against any attempt to replace the director. In a letter to Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, whose department oversees NOAA, Nelson stated, "Clearly there are parties within NOAA who don't appreciate having their shortcomings identified to the public and Congress. However, shooting the messenger is not an acceptable response."
Two years ago the nation saw a previously well-functioning Federal Emergency Management Agency fail to provide vital services during Hurricane Katrina because unqualified political cronies had been put in charge.
The National Hurricane Center has served the nation well, tracking and forecasting storms while minimizing loss of life. It would be a tragedy if Washington bureaucrats more interested in anniversary parties than in maintaining weather satellites usurped the center's independence.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Happy Juneteenth
Today’s celebration of Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States in 1865. It is also a reminder that what ended on paper has taken much longer to end in fact.
June 19, 1865, was the day toward the end of the Civil War when a Union general landed in Galveston and advised “the people of Texas” that “all slaves are free.” The general declared: “This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."
Abraham Lincoln actually issued his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. He said as Commander in Chief that slaves were free in any of the Confederate States of America which did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863.
It was probably no accident that the wording was quite calculated, and not without some loopholes. The two and a half years it took for emancipation to become effective in Texas are often seen as emblematic of the nation’s half-hearted commitment to ending slavery.
Indeed, in 1862 the Republican leader in the House of Representatives saw emancipation primarily as a wartime tactic to disable the South’s economy. As originally framed, it did not free any slaves in the border states or any Southern states already under Union control. So it could not become effective in any Confederate state until the presence of Union troops made it so.
By July of 1865 nearly all of the estimated four million slaves had been freed. Slavery was finally abolished as an institution by ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865. But official oppression continued for another hundred years—through Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and segregation—until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg Hines uses the occasion of Juneteenth to note that we still have work to do before we can be satisfied that the legacy of slavery has been overcome. He suggests that official apologies for slavery are a constructive way for the country to atone and perhaps begin a final chapter in the healing of our oldest national wound. He also notes some progress—in some surprising places.
Below is his column, originally available at
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/hines/4895211.html
Why it's important to get the debate on slavery right
The approach of Juneteenth brings us again to an annual reminder of the nation's indelible sin of slavery.
Remarking on the "peculiar institution" and the continuing lack of national atonement seems, judging by the vein-popping e-mails that pour in when I write about the issue, to discomfit a lot of people.
Good.
A number suggest, as did a particularly tone-deaf white Virginia legislator amid consideration of an Old Dominion apology measure this year, that blacks "should get over it."
Just so you get the full picture, let's note that Delegate Frank D. Hargrove Sr., a suburban Republican, went on to ask in a newspaper interview: "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"
Yes, this debate regularly — if unintentionally — reveals how far some people have not come. It is clearly not time to "get over it" but to continue to examine the history of slavery, the diabolical role it played in our nation and its continuing manifestations.
But even among the continued outcroppings of hatefulness, there have been some achievements over the last year.
The most stunning development, at least in symbolic terms, was a resolution adopted by the Alabama Legislature expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery "and its aftereffects" on the nation.
An apology, the resolution said, "cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help African-Americans and white citizens confront the ghosts of their collective pasts together."
In signing the resolution, Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican, said: "I want the world to understand that Alabama has changed for the better."
Alabama was not the first state to act, but given its record — do we need to say anything more than "Selma"? — the action in the capitol in Montgomery seems the most notable. Even now, eight Republican state senators took the trouble to vote against the apology measure, and some GOP members in the House, where there was a voice vote, tried to demand a roll-call so that they could officially record their opposition.
The Alabama resolution observed that "the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism" found in commerce, health care, education and law enforcement.
The legislatures of three other states in which slaves were held at the time of the Civil War — Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina — have also moved this year to adopt apologies.
It's a step that any state with a slave past could take.
With the 50th anniversary of Little Rock's Central High School integration crisis coming up later this year, an apology for slavery would certainly be the correct move for Arkansas.
Recent attempts by Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, to stymie an apology drive in Arkansas is virtually unfathomable.
Beebe is correct, as he told the Associated Press, that "race relations and the ability of people to get along is based upon deeds more than it is words," but that does not mean that the words should not be said.
The words should be said not only in slave states — including Texas — but nationally where chattel-like enslavement of men, women and children was commonplace for almost 150 years.
That history, as well as the rampant de jure segregation of "Jim Crow," is addressed in an apology resolution, H. Res. 194, that has been introduced by Rep. Stephen J. Cohen, D-Tenn.
The resolution speaks to the history of slavery and its lasting effects. It notes that while visiting the old slave-shipping port of Goree Island, Senegal, in 2003, President Bush correctly labeled the trade in humans as "one of the greatest crimes of history."
"A genuine apology," Cohen's resolution says, "is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation."
When Bush visited the slave-shipping site off Dakar four years ago, he made an important point: "The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted."
That corruption remains and can be heard loud and clear in the "get over it" sentiment that too many glibly express today.
June 19, 1865, was the day toward the end of the Civil War when a Union general landed in Galveston and advised “the people of Texas” that “all slaves are free.” The general declared: “This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer."
Abraham Lincoln actually issued his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862. He said as Commander in Chief that slaves were free in any of the Confederate States of America which did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863.
It was probably no accident that the wording was quite calculated, and not without some loopholes. The two and a half years it took for emancipation to become effective in Texas are often seen as emblematic of the nation’s half-hearted commitment to ending slavery.
Indeed, in 1862 the Republican leader in the House of Representatives saw emancipation primarily as a wartime tactic to disable the South’s economy. As originally framed, it did not free any slaves in the border states or any Southern states already under Union control. So it could not become effective in any Confederate state until the presence of Union troops made it so.
By July of 1865 nearly all of the estimated four million slaves had been freed. Slavery was finally abolished as an institution by ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution on December 18, 1865. But official oppression continued for another hundred years—through Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws and segregation—until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Houston Chronicle columnist Cragg Hines uses the occasion of Juneteenth to note that we still have work to do before we can be satisfied that the legacy of slavery has been overcome. He suggests that official apologies for slavery are a constructive way for the country to atone and perhaps begin a final chapter in the healing of our oldest national wound. He also notes some progress—in some surprising places.
Below is his column, originally available at
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/hines/4895211.html
Why it's important to get the debate on slavery right
The approach of Juneteenth brings us again to an annual reminder of the nation's indelible sin of slavery.
Remarking on the "peculiar institution" and the continuing lack of national atonement seems, judging by the vein-popping e-mails that pour in when I write about the issue, to discomfit a lot of people.
Good.
A number suggest, as did a particularly tone-deaf white Virginia legislator amid consideration of an Old Dominion apology measure this year, that blacks "should get over it."
Just so you get the full picture, let's note that Delegate Frank D. Hargrove Sr., a suburban Republican, went on to ask in a newspaper interview: "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"
Yes, this debate regularly — if unintentionally — reveals how far some people have not come. It is clearly not time to "get over it" but to continue to examine the history of slavery, the diabolical role it played in our nation and its continuing manifestations.
But even among the continued outcroppings of hatefulness, there have been some achievements over the last year.
The most stunning development, at least in symbolic terms, was a resolution adopted by the Alabama Legislature expressing "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery "and its aftereffects" on the nation.
An apology, the resolution said, "cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help African-Americans and white citizens confront the ghosts of their collective pasts together."
In signing the resolution, Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican, said: "I want the world to understand that Alabama has changed for the better."
Alabama was not the first state to act, but given its record — do we need to say anything more than "Selma"? — the action in the capitol in Montgomery seems the most notable. Even now, eight Republican state senators took the trouble to vote against the apology measure, and some GOP members in the House, where there was a voice vote, tried to demand a roll-call so that they could officially record their opposition.
The Alabama resolution observed that "the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism" found in commerce, health care, education and law enforcement.
The legislatures of three other states in which slaves were held at the time of the Civil War — Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina — have also moved this year to adopt apologies.
It's a step that any state with a slave past could take.
With the 50th anniversary of Little Rock's Central High School integration crisis coming up later this year, an apology for slavery would certainly be the correct move for Arkansas.
Recent attempts by Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, to stymie an apology drive in Arkansas is virtually unfathomable.
Beebe is correct, as he told the Associated Press, that "race relations and the ability of people to get along is based upon deeds more than it is words," but that does not mean that the words should not be said.
The words should be said not only in slave states — including Texas — but nationally where chattel-like enslavement of men, women and children was commonplace for almost 150 years.
That history, as well as the rampant de jure segregation of "Jim Crow," is addressed in an apology resolution, H. Res. 194, that has been introduced by Rep. Stephen J. Cohen, D-Tenn.
The resolution speaks to the history of slavery and its lasting effects. It notes that while visiting the old slave-shipping port of Goree Island, Senegal, in 2003, President Bush correctly labeled the trade in humans as "one of the greatest crimes of history."
"A genuine apology," Cohen's resolution says, "is an important and necessary first step in the process of racial reconciliation."
When Bush visited the slave-shipping site off Dakar four years ago, he made an important point: "The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted."
That corruption remains and can be heard loud and clear in the "get over it" sentiment that too many glibly express today.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Stem Cell Creativity: The Uncanny Whitehead Connection
There was a Whitehead connection in reports yesterday about the researchers who successfully reprogrammed mice skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells. A source for many of the media accounts is at http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070604/full/447618a.html
The connection is the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Cambridge, MA, affiliated with MIT. A Whitehead Institute group led by Richard Jaenisch was one of the three that accomplished the new technique. The other U.S. research was a collaborative effort between Konrad Hochedlinger of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Kathrin Plath of UCLA.
The Nature article says the approach was pioneered last year by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. He transferred four specific proteins known as transcription factors into the skin cells using retroviruses, triggering other genes that allow the cells to become “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS). Yamanaka headed the third group which announced the results this week, replicating his findings and presenting a second generation of iPS cells.
Actually only a moment of creativity connects the name Whitehead with this research. The namesake of the institute is not Alfred North Whitehead, who taught at Harvard from 1924 through 1937, but Edwin C. “Jack” Whitehead, who made big bucks as a medical equipment innovator and became a philanthropist. In 1982, after ten years of interaction with MIT, he co-founded the institute with MIT Nobel laureate David Baltimore.
The institute’s webpage describes the creative decision that gave Jack Whitehead his name. See http://wi.mit.edu/index.html
Born Edwin C. Weiskopf in New York City in 1919, to Edwin C. and Bertha Weiskopf, he got the nickname Jack when a housekeeper took him out to a local park and her friends thought he looked like the child film star Jackie Coogan. So goes the family story, anyway, says his eldest son John Whitehead, who adds cheerfully that “the good looks failed with time.”
“My father's parents divorced when he was a preteen, and his mother went to work selling real estate in New York,” says John Whitehead. “She changed her name to Whitehead to avoid the anti-Semitism that might otherwise have affected her business, and that was how Jack Weiskopf became Jack Whitehead.”
The moment of creativity was Bertha Weiskopf's decision to translate her last name into English. So Jack Whitehead got his name before Alfred North Whitehead came to Cambridge, MA. And the Whitehead Institute of Cambridge has no direct connection with the philosopher of creativity who lectured and published in Cambridge for 13 years.
But isn’t the symmetry remarkably uncanny: an innovative entrepreneur named Whitehead founded a creative institute named Whitehead, in a place where an innovative philosopher named Whitehead lived and taught—and the institute participates creatively in what may be an historical turning point in stem cell research?
The connection is the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Cambridge, MA, affiliated with MIT. A Whitehead Institute group led by Richard Jaenisch was one of the three that accomplished the new technique. The other U.S. research was a collaborative effort between Konrad Hochedlinger of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Kathrin Plath of UCLA.
The Nature article says the approach was pioneered last year by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. He transferred four specific proteins known as transcription factors into the skin cells using retroviruses, triggering other genes that allow the cells to become “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS). Yamanaka headed the third group which announced the results this week, replicating his findings and presenting a second generation of iPS cells.
Actually only a moment of creativity connects the name Whitehead with this research. The namesake of the institute is not Alfred North Whitehead, who taught at Harvard from 1924 through 1937, but Edwin C. “Jack” Whitehead, who made big bucks as a medical equipment innovator and became a philanthropist. In 1982, after ten years of interaction with MIT, he co-founded the institute with MIT Nobel laureate David Baltimore.
The institute’s webpage describes the creative decision that gave Jack Whitehead his name. See http://wi.mit.edu/index.html
Born Edwin C. Weiskopf in New York City in 1919, to Edwin C. and Bertha Weiskopf, he got the nickname Jack when a housekeeper took him out to a local park and her friends thought he looked like the child film star Jackie Coogan. So goes the family story, anyway, says his eldest son John Whitehead, who adds cheerfully that “the good looks failed with time.”
“My father's parents divorced when he was a preteen, and his mother went to work selling real estate in New York,” says John Whitehead. “She changed her name to Whitehead to avoid the anti-Semitism that might otherwise have affected her business, and that was how Jack Weiskopf became Jack Whitehead.”
The moment of creativity was Bertha Weiskopf's decision to translate her last name into English. So Jack Whitehead got his name before Alfred North Whitehead came to Cambridge, MA. And the Whitehead Institute of Cambridge has no direct connection with the philosopher of creativity who lectured and published in Cambridge for 13 years.
But isn’t the symmetry remarkably uncanny: an innovative entrepreneur named Whitehead founded a creative institute named Whitehead, in a place where an innovative philosopher named Whitehead lived and taught—and the institute participates creatively in what may be an historical turning point in stem cell research?
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Akinola Threatens Boycott of Lambeth Conference
Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola has again shown that his true intent is to transform the Anglican Communion into an orthodox church reflecting his own theology.
Thanks to Clerical Whispers for linking to my blog, and for the following posting May 29th at http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/search?q=Nigerian
A conservative Anglican prelate in Nigeria has warned that he might lead a boycott of the Lambeth Conference, the worldwide gathering of Anglican bishops, when it convenes at Canterbury in 2008.
Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Anglican primate of Nigeria, said that he was upset by the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury, had not issued an invitation to Bishop Martyn Minns.
Archbishop Akinola has been the prelate most outspoken in criticizing the acceptance of homosexuality by some leaders of the Anglican communion. He travelled to the United States to ordain Bishop Minns as a "missionary bishop" serving the spiritual needs of like-minded Anglicans in America.
Because Bishop Minns is affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, the failure to invite him to the Lambeth Conference is an affront to all the bishops in that country, Archbishop Akinola said; it could be "viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria."
The African prelate warned that he might react by refusing to attend the Lambeth Conference, and encouraging all other Nigerian prelates to join him in boycotting the meetings.
Thanks to Clerical Whispers for linking to my blog, and for the following posting May 29th at http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/search?q=Nigerian
A conservative Anglican prelate in Nigeria has warned that he might lead a boycott of the Lambeth Conference, the worldwide gathering of Anglican bishops, when it convenes at Canterbury in 2008.
Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Anglican primate of Nigeria, said that he was upset by the news that the Archbishop of Canterbury, had not issued an invitation to Bishop Martyn Minns.
Archbishop Akinola has been the prelate most outspoken in criticizing the acceptance of homosexuality by some leaders of the Anglican communion. He travelled to the United States to ordain Bishop Minns as a "missionary bishop" serving the spiritual needs of like-minded Anglicans in America.
Because Bishop Minns is affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, the failure to invite him to the Lambeth Conference is an affront to all the bishops in that country, Archbishop Akinola said; it could be "viewed as withholding invitation to the entire House of Bishops of the Church of Nigeria."
The African prelate warned that he might react by refusing to attend the Lambeth Conference, and encouraging all other Nigerian prelates to join him in boycotting the meetings.
Monday, June 04, 2007
True Immigration Reform: No Xenophobia, and No Guest Workers
Columnist Julie Mason notes that, for the first time, George W. Bush has served notice on conservative opponents of immigration reform that “he’s going to call them out on their xenophobia if he needs to.” Her column is at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/mason/4852625.html
Bush has talked before of his personal stake in addressing immigration issues, but never so directly to his political base—or what remains of it. In prior years he’s pushed immigration reform, but backed off in the face of conservative pressure. Whether he will sustain his enthusiasm this time remains to be seen.
For now, at least, he seems to appreciate that 12 million illegals did not end up in this country without lots of help from several administrations of both political parties. The illegals got that help because successive presidents and congresses—and those who elected them—said that the U.S. economy could not function unless some employers hired non-citizens, because there are some jobs that U.S. citizens won’t do.
Just ask the Texas farmers with several hundred thousand dollars worth of onions currently rotting in the ground. They say they’re in this pickle in 2007 because the government has done too well at blocking unauthorized Mexican workers at the border!
Having enjoyed the economic benefit of the 12 million that it allowed in—having sweetened the pot by issuing thousands of them Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs) in lieu of SSNs, collecting income tax and self-employment tax on their 1040s, and in some cases subjecting their paychecks to backup withholding—the nation owes them more than forced deportation. As a matter of justice, the nation owes them a decriminalized status that leads, in a lawful and orderly way, to citizenship.
Several paragraphs from Ms. Mason’s column articulate why Bush believes xenophobia is not the answer:
“If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” Bush said during a stop in Glynco, GA. “That’s empty political rhetoric, trying to frighten our citizens.”
It was his harshest public backhand yet to the conservative bloggers, politicians and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, all gassing about how the bill amounts to amnesty.
“People shouldn’t fear our capacity to uphold our motto, E Pluribus Unum,” Bush told McClatchy Newspapers.
For Bush, the fight over immigration reform is a personal one — unlike Social Security or education reform, which were mostly political.
“I feel passionate about the issue. It’s something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas,” he said.
“Texas is a very diverse state. Houston is a very diverse city, and through that diversity, if you’re open-minded, you get a great sense of how it invigorates the society,” said Bush, a Houston resident in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Growing up in Texas, Bush said, “you recognize the decency and hard work and humanity of Hispanics. And the truth of the matter is a lot of this immigration debate is driven as a result of Latinos being in our country.
“A lot of us in Texas were very aware of the immigration issue way before the rest of the country,” Bush told McClatchy. Bush is working to keep the bill intact and moving forward.
His brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, joined former Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman in co-authoriing an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, calling on Republicans to support the bill.
If Bush appreciates that the xenophobia of the cultural conservatives is not the answer, he and the bill’s proponents seem not to grasp that the guest worker plan of the business conservatives is not an answer either. At best, it would help resolve the status of the current 12 million illegals, only to enable several million new non-citizens to re-create the problem down the road.
The fear that the proposed legislation will do just that is well reasoned and well justified. There can be no other outcome if we remain captive to the idea that we need a steady influx of non-citizens to do jobs that citizens won’t do.
If achieving citizenship means a farm worker won’t be a farm worker any more, where will the farm workers come from? Obviously, they must be non-citizens.
Yet one of the guiding principles of immigration reform is that it is not healthy for the country to have a permanent underclass of workers to do such jobs—workers with less than adequate health insurance and retirement benefits, less means to support themselves and raise their children, and less of a stake in our survival as a nation. If we truly want to avoid that outcome, no guest-worker program can be acceptable.
The logical alternative is to improve the wages and working conditions and benefits of back-breaking agricultural and sweatshop jobs to a level that U.S. citizens will do them. That has been the aim of the United Farm Workers Union in California for decades. Yes, it will cost more initially than a guest-worker program. But it has a livable future. A guest-worker program does not.
Until the politicians and the employers are sold on that idea—until they grasp that the long-term benefits will eventually outweigh the upfront costs—there will be no lasting immigration reform. We will simply replace one crowd of non-citizens with another, luring them with income we pretend is temporary, but knowing we will need them every year and we will conspire with them again to extend their stay.
Bush has talked before of his personal stake in addressing immigration issues, but never so directly to his political base—or what remains of it. In prior years he’s pushed immigration reform, but backed off in the face of conservative pressure. Whether he will sustain his enthusiasm this time remains to be seen.
For now, at least, he seems to appreciate that 12 million illegals did not end up in this country without lots of help from several administrations of both political parties. The illegals got that help because successive presidents and congresses—and those who elected them—said that the U.S. economy could not function unless some employers hired non-citizens, because there are some jobs that U.S. citizens won’t do.
Just ask the Texas farmers with several hundred thousand dollars worth of onions currently rotting in the ground. They say they’re in this pickle in 2007 because the government has done too well at blocking unauthorized Mexican workers at the border!
Having enjoyed the economic benefit of the 12 million that it allowed in—having sweetened the pot by issuing thousands of them Individual Tax Identification Numbers (ITINs) in lieu of SSNs, collecting income tax and self-employment tax on their 1040s, and in some cases subjecting their paychecks to backup withholding—the nation owes them more than forced deportation. As a matter of justice, the nation owes them a decriminalized status that leads, in a lawful and orderly way, to citizenship.
Several paragraphs from Ms. Mason’s column articulate why Bush believes xenophobia is not the answer:
“If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill,” Bush said during a stop in Glynco, GA. “That’s empty political rhetoric, trying to frighten our citizens.”
It was his harshest public backhand yet to the conservative bloggers, politicians and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, all gassing about how the bill amounts to amnesty.
“People shouldn’t fear our capacity to uphold our motto, E Pluribus Unum,” Bush told McClatchy Newspapers.
For Bush, the fight over immigration reform is a personal one — unlike Social Security or education reform, which were mostly political.
“I feel passionate about the issue. It’s something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas,” he said.
“Texas is a very diverse state. Houston is a very diverse city, and through that diversity, if you’re open-minded, you get a great sense of how it invigorates the society,” said Bush, a Houston resident in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Growing up in Texas, Bush said, “you recognize the decency and hard work and humanity of Hispanics. And the truth of the matter is a lot of this immigration debate is driven as a result of Latinos being in our country.
“A lot of us in Texas were very aware of the immigration issue way before the rest of the country,” Bush told McClatchy. Bush is working to keep the bill intact and moving forward.
His brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, joined former Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman in co-authoriing an op-ed in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, calling on Republicans to support the bill.
If Bush appreciates that the xenophobia of the cultural conservatives is not the answer, he and the bill’s proponents seem not to grasp that the guest worker plan of the business conservatives is not an answer either. At best, it would help resolve the status of the current 12 million illegals, only to enable several million new non-citizens to re-create the problem down the road.
The fear that the proposed legislation will do just that is well reasoned and well justified. There can be no other outcome if we remain captive to the idea that we need a steady influx of non-citizens to do jobs that citizens won’t do.
If achieving citizenship means a farm worker won’t be a farm worker any more, where will the farm workers come from? Obviously, they must be non-citizens.
Yet one of the guiding principles of immigration reform is that it is not healthy for the country to have a permanent underclass of workers to do such jobs—workers with less than adequate health insurance and retirement benefits, less means to support themselves and raise their children, and less of a stake in our survival as a nation. If we truly want to avoid that outcome, no guest-worker program can be acceptable.
The logical alternative is to improve the wages and working conditions and benefits of back-breaking agricultural and sweatshop jobs to a level that U.S. citizens will do them. That has been the aim of the United Farm Workers Union in California for decades. Yes, it will cost more initially than a guest-worker program. But it has a livable future. A guest-worker program does not.
Until the politicians and the employers are sold on that idea—until they grasp that the long-term benefits will eventually outweigh the upfront costs—there will be no lasting immigration reform. We will simply replace one crowd of non-citizens with another, luring them with income we pretend is temporary, but knowing we will need them every year and we will conspire with them again to extend their stay.
Friday, June 01, 2007
On Filling a God-Sized Hole
Today's Houston Chronicle had a front-page article on the passing of Dr. John P. “Jack” McGovern (1921-2007), “a noted allergist, scholar and philanthropist who is considered one of the Texas Medical Center’s most important figures…” The article is at http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/4853130.html
As an indicator of his thoroughgoing philanthropy, the article lists numerous Houston venues that bear his name, also noting that he endowed scores of professorships, honorary degrees and awards at universities nationwide. His charitable foundation was valued at almost $200 million in 2005.
The paragraphs at the end of the article are inspirational:
McGovern said he learned about generosity from his grandmother. As a child, he saw her feed the hungry from her home in Washington, D.C., during the Depression.
“I learned from watching my grandmother that giving and receiving is the same thing,” he once said. “…I think everybody’s got an empty spot inside, and I call it the God-sized hole that we have to fill. And you can’t do that with Caesar’s world stuff—money, property, prestige. That doesn’t fill that hole. Love does… Love in the sense of deep caring.”
As an indicator of his thoroughgoing philanthropy, the article lists numerous Houston venues that bear his name, also noting that he endowed scores of professorships, honorary degrees and awards at universities nationwide. His charitable foundation was valued at almost $200 million in 2005.
The paragraphs at the end of the article are inspirational:
McGovern said he learned about generosity from his grandmother. As a child, he saw her feed the hungry from her home in Washington, D.C., during the Depression.
“I learned from watching my grandmother that giving and receiving is the same thing,” he once said. “…I think everybody’s got an empty spot inside, and I call it the God-sized hole that we have to fill. And you can’t do that with Caesar’s world stuff—money, property, prestige. That doesn’t fill that hole. Love does… Love in the sense of deep caring.”
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