[Vision2020] Response to Recent Christ Church/Co-Op Letter

[Nicholas Gier]

I consider Jim and Bertie Wadell very good friends, but I have to disagree
with them on this issue.  Here is my letter to them; it's also posted on
the DNews Blog.

Hi Jim and Bertie,

As a proud Intolerista I have to explain a few things. Let me go back to
2002-2003. At that time I was invited to give a lecture to NSA students. I
was well received, and I got a nice bottle of French wine as an honorarium.
I then invited them and their faculty to participate in the regional
meeting of the American Academy of Religion, to be held in Moscow in May
2003. NSA President Roy Atwood said that they had better things to do, and
our relations, fueled by the slavery booklet debate, got worse and worse.

But each year I still invited them to our annual meeting, where, one year,
I counted and found that 40 percent of the papers were presented by faculty
from conservative evangelical schools. (No one of course would deny them
the right to attend the meetings!) We will host the meeting again in Moscow
in 2016, and I'm still hoping that they will not only attend but help me
with the logistics. Our meeting at the University of Oregon was greatly
benefited by the efforts of a very conservative evangelical school right
near campus.

Please notice that there was never any discrimination about beliefs or
denial of rights at these meetings, or in Moscow; rather, it was criticism
of behavior: plagiarism, uncollegial and juvenile acts (e.g., stealing
letterhead from the English dept. to announce [falsely of course] a topless
feminist lecture), setting up NSA in a neighborhood without the city's
permission, criticism of UI faculty who dared to speak out against the
slavery booklet, and many other boorish acts. This is precisely what any
person of good will should not tolerate.
More will be added in the column.

Sincerely,

Nick

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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