JUSTICE AND JUSTICES
As a WWII veteran who re-entered college (Harvard) in 1946, I was quite interested to read about the educational background of Chief Justice William Rehnquist as well as his distinguished career (“The Education of William Rehnquist,” July/August). At the same time, I could not help concluding that, regrettably, we Americans live under a system of government that occasionally results in judicial dictatorship. With only nine members on the Supreme Court, it is disturbing that sometimes fundamental decisions, affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, boil down to the vote of one person. That is a very odd way to run a democracy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized this problem and tried, unsuccessfully, to increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court. However, although that would have helped to alleviate the problem, it would not have resolved it. The question is whether on such fundamental, nontechnical legal issues as who should be president and vice-president, whether or not abortion should be legal, what should be the voting or drinking age, etc., there should be an amendment to the Constitution that would require a national referendum to decide the matter.
Thus the issue of who should replace Justice O’Connor, and Chief Justice Rehnquist after he retires, is only the tip of the iceberg. The real issue is whether the structure of our government is properly democratic. There is also the issue of just how democratic the citizenry (not just the framers of the Constitution) want the nation to be. These issues cannot be overlooked when,
at the same time, at the cost of great human sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are attempting to spread democracy there, and to other parts of the world. People in these countries will ask these questions, and we should be prepared to answer them.
Frank R. Tangherlini, PhD ’59
San Diego, California
Inspiring. Demanding. Scholarly. These are a few of the adjectives that describe Professor Charles Fairman as he taught United States constitutional law classes during the winter and spring quarters of 1949—after Chief Justice Rehnquist was inspired by him. Dr. Fairman made U.S. constitutional law “alive.” He created not merely an interest, but a love for the Constitution and the process of interpreting it.
However, most notable to me was a class session during the spring quarter
of 1949 that had nothing to do with U.S. constitutional law. Professor Fairman entered the classroom, piling his law books on the table. Immediately he sensed that something was amiss. When he asked the class what was wrong, a student in the back row referred to an article that had appeared in the Palo Alto Times indicating that there was a surplus of attorneys. The student expressed his concern, saying he had spent several years in the Army during World War II, had a wife and children to support and was concerned about his future earnings.
Dr. Fairman closed the law books, took off his steel-rimmed “GI” glasses and commenced a passionate “sermon” to the class. The essence of his message was that being in the constitutional law class at Stanford University was an indication of our ability. If we wanted to be successful and were willing to work hard to achieve our goals, we could—and would. He stated that if there were 25,000 people in the city of Palo Alto and all of them were attorneys, if we graduated from Stanford Law School and were willing to work hard, we would be at the top of the heap, achieve success and earn excellent incomes.
This impressed me greatly, and I believe it had a similar effect on the other students in the class. I have tried to promote a comparable reaction from my children, grandchildren, students, staff members and co-workers. This “sermon” was a major reason why I consider Professor Charles Fairman one of the best two teachers I have had—the other being a marvelous lady named Lota Blythe who taught me English at Santa Ana (Calif.) High School.
William Benton Howard, ’50, MA ’51, EdD ’61
Tustin, California
In September 1950, I arrived at Stanford as a freshman and started my new job as a breakfast hasher at Encina Hall. The hashers gathered for their breakfast at about 6 a.m. There were eight or 10 of us—all undergraduates with the exception of a tall, lanky older fellow who introduced himself as Bill Rehnquist, a Law School student.
For the next year and a half, breakfast at Encina was a special treat. We quickly realized we were dealing with a superior intellect, and Bill became the leader of our discussions. Many of these were more challenging than those we encountered in the classroom. Contrary to the cold, austere person that is often described, we found him to be a warm individual with a sly sense of humor. In our discussions he treated us as equals.
In November 1951, we gave him a great cheer when he announced that he was going to Washington, D.C., as a Supreme Court clerk. Our breakfasts were never the same after he left.
John Shields, ’54, MBA ’56
Westlake Village, California
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
Who could disagree with Sam Harris in fearing and condemning religious dogmatism that leads to violence (“The Iconoclast,” Showcase, July/August)? But why does he exclude secular dogma from his purview? Isn’t it potentially as poisonous and lethal as religious dogma? The violence of suicide bombers among the Muslims and Tamil Tigers can’t hold a candle to the violence of secularist Joseph Stalin. Do we really have more to fear from those who believe that bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ than from those who know that the earth is warming and do nothing about it, or from those who believe in miracles than from the folly of “the best and the brightest” who took us into Vietnam, and from leaders infected with hubris and arrogance who took us into Iraq?
President Lincoln spoke of the irony of people who read the same book and prayed to the same God yet engaged in mortal combat. How can one Muslim lash a bomb to his body and blow up scores of humans and another lead a nonviolent army of 100,000 Muslims? Badshah Khan and his disciplined followers worked side by side with Mahatma Gandhi and Hindus to nonviolently force the British to withdraw from India. Badshah Khan drew his inspiration and guidance from the Koran.
John V. Moore, ’41
San Diego, California
Seldom do the obvious truths articulated by Sam Harris reach beyond readers of such journals as Free Inquiry. As a global society, we need to move beyond the myths of three millennia ago. Should we choose to do so, we may yet flourish rather than perish.
Nor do we need to abandon totally the snippets of wisdom contained in the traditions of ancient cultures. We can employ them usefully if we define “religion” sufficiently broadly—e.g. “any object of conscientious regard and pursuit” (No. 4 in Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th edition). This could work if we internalize only those snippets that are consistent with reason and with results gleaned from the scientific method.
Edward Fremouw, ’57
Ashland, Oregon
As reported by Lewis Rice, Sam Harris is probably overlooking a basic human trait. Be it religion, ethnicity, business or which end of the egg to crack, humans look at the world as containing “us” and “them.” Those who crave power routinely seek to increase “us” at the expense of “them.” So what’s new? Religion is just one of an infinity of excuses.
Robert Avakian, MS ’70
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Mr. Harris is apparently intolerant of all beliefs that cannot be backed by evidence and thus makes an effort to discredit “religious dogma of all types.” While the scientific method is the proper and necessary mode of inquiry within the sciences, the limits of the questions it can reasonably answer restricts its sphere to ideas that are potentially verifiable by experimentation and proof. To make a “religion” of this method by making a “god” of human reason and by attempting to apply the scientific method to religious, ethical and moral issues, however, is inappropriate and dangerous. A case in point is the increasing secularism and relativism of Europe and Russia following World War I, which led to the horrors of national socialism in Germany, fascism in Italy and communism in the Soviet Union. With no effective moral compass, the resultant degradation of individuality and loss of respect for human life brought us the Holocaust, the U.S.S.R. gulags and the atrocities of related regimes. In fact, Mr. Harris’s intolerance appears to be teetering on the brink of anti-Semitism (“Anyone who lives based on Old Testament tenets is a sociopath”) and anti-Catholicism (“The idea that a cracker turns into the body of Jesus . . . is no more supportable than a claim that frozen yogurt makes a person invisible”). He uses the behavior of radically pathological fringe extremists to demean Islam as making “sacraments of illiberalism, ignorance and suicidal violence.” Mr. Harris appears to either forget or to minimize the important role that Judeo-Christian tradition played in the development of Western civilization and the role played by Islamic tradition in the development of Middle Eastern civilization and culture. It is not religious belief, but rather the marginalization of faith proposed by Mr. Harris, which is “antithetical to our survival.” When I was at Stanford, a Stanford education was built upon a firm grounding in the history of Western civilization. Reading this article has caused me to wonder if that is still the case, and if not, what we may have lost.
Richard A. Lloyd, MD ’66
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Concerning beliefs that cannot be backed by evidence, the poet Piet Hein says it all:
We glibly talk
of Nature’s laws.
But do things have a natural cause?
Black earth becoming yellow crocus
is undiluted hocus-pocus.
Laurie Hale Feeney, ’56
Washington, D.C.
I read “The Iconoclast” only a day after the terrible underground and bus bombings in London, yet I still could not accept the offensive and ignorant words of Sam Harris. As a Muslim who does not find herself in any way correctly represented by the insane Al Qaeda militants, I was outraged by the statement made by Harris: “[Islam] makes sacraments of illiberalism, ignorance and suicidal violence.”
First, the real reasons behind Al Qaeda’s attacks on countries such as the United States, Great Britain and Spain (and I am not in any way justifying them), are based on 1) the continuous financial exploitation by these Western countries of Arab and predominantly Muslim countries’ natural resources; 2) the war in Iraq; and 3) the blind support the United States has offered to Israel in the mistreatment of the Palestinians, amongst many other secular reasons. By stating that Islam is waging a war against Christianity and Judaism, Mr. Harris is once again feeding into the simplistic Bush break-up of the world between good and evil.
Second, his ludicrous statement that the Western world’s democracies are superior to Islamic government because their morality stems from secular values is completely wrong. On a daily basis, in the United States court system, people place a hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth “so help me God.”
Similarly, issues such as gay marriage, abortion and embryonic cloning are matters of heated discussion between the liberals and the conservatives whose deep Christian morals make any form of secular debate impossible. After 9-11, President Bush declared that the United States would be staging a “crusade” against the Muslim world. Neither one of those aspects of American democracy strikes me as secular, and these are only a few examples of the overpowering Christian overtone we encounter in the United States.
Would we blame Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians on an unfair and violent Jewish people? No. Because religion and war have mostly nothing to do with each other.
Religion is simply another excuse for humans to divide and hate each other, but is not the root of the harm itself. If it’s not religion, it’s race, gender, sexual orientation, political partisanship and, more importantly, financial status. The Al Qaeda militants have twisted a beautiful religion to fit their political purpose, because religion has and always will be filled with symbolism and room for interpretation. So, it’s not religion that will kill us all. It’s mankind’s hunger, greed and deviousness. And that important fact the defiant Harris has unfortunately not yet understood.
Amira Salaam Amro, ’99
New York, New York
STADIUM BLUES
I read recently that Stanford Stadium is to be replaced by a smaller stadium (“Stadium Renovation Planned,” Farm Report, July/August). The article noted that among the reasons for replacing the old stadium was that the recent embarrassingly small crowds looked even smaller in the vastness of the historic cavernous stadium.
I am disappointed on a number of fronts. I am pushing 63, with a very short stick, and have been attending football games at this great stadium since I was 10. My life has known many of its highest and lowest moments there. This great stadium is all I have ever known as a venue for football at Stanford. I also attended the U.S.-Russian track meet there. Years after graduating, I worked out on the track and ran the stadium steps to stay in shape.
I think, though, that the most unkind cut is that the Stanford athletic department, the one that has defined excellence in sports achievement for more than a decade of Sears Cups, chooses to fill the stadium not by reviving a great football tradition that once could fill the place, but by downsizing it to a pitiful 50,000 seats. Is this how Stanford sees greatness? Create the illusion of a full house with mediocre teams performing in a “little house” instead of filling the “grand house” with the greatness it deserves and inspires? Or is this actually a way to downgrade the football program to a level consistent with the Ivy League?
Bill Lorton, ’64
San Jose, California
I am appalled at the proposed stadium renovation. Coach Harris is quoted as saying this is “the beginning of a new era and a new outlook for Stanford football.” Is he hinting at a Division II program? UC-Davis is already on the schedule. The stadium could probably stand renovating and updating, but the rationale for downsizing is without merit. Recruits want large crowds and national exposure. I’m sure there have been many occasions where the capacity of that stadium has been a real asset. Aren’t Big Game crowds usually in excess of 60,000? You need to create a “demand model.” I suggest that attendance relates directly to the success of the program. The Buddy Teevens era was a considerable setback.
Please don’t replace the natural turf with plastic grass. All evidence says it causes many more injuries, not to mention the aesthetics. Stanford has the wealth and climate to maintain a beautiful natural grass playing surface.
Stanford has the respect of many for its ability to put forth nationally prominent athletic teams in concert with very high academic standards. Let’s continue to support big-time football.
Stephen Hare, ’64
Newcastle, California
A CIVIL TONGUE
I agree entirely with Robert Funk’s “Call for Civility” (Letters, July/August) and would only suggest that he might want to have a word with Karl Rove, who essentially called liberals traitors during a speech in New York City. Rove’s reference was to his assertion that Sen. Richard Durbin’s remarks were being replayed in the Arab media and thereby put U.S. troops in greater danger. Rove then said words to the effect of “we know what the motives of liberals are.” Civility should be extended to all, as I hope Mr. Funk would agree.
Don Tyson, ’69
Falls Church, Virginia
Thank you, Robert Funk. And, by the way, both left and right wings could learn from your call for civility. I am not surprised at the strong views and feelings that letter writers have; I would expect this from members of the Stanford community. However, please, let us write with civility, respect and tolerance for the points of view of other letter writers and authors, which will give more credibility to these letters.
Phil Rogers, MS ’58
Ocean Shores, Washington
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PYRAMID
In your article “What You Don’t Know About the Great Pyramid” (Red All Over, July/August), you state that “Khufu’s pyramid occupies 13 acres, roughly the equivalent of six football fields.” Well, that’s pretty rough, all right. I assume that “football fields” refers to an American football field, and not to a soccer or rugby pitch. The official dimensions of an American football field including end zones are 160 feet by 360 feet, for a total area of 57,600 square feet. An acre is 43,560 square feet, or approximately 90 percent of the area of an American football field excluding its end zones. Therefore, 13 acres is 566,280 square feet, or slightly less than 10 American football fields.
James Skrydlak, MBA ’75
Mountain View, California
Memorable Meet
I thoroughly enjoyed Gary Cavalli’s excellent recap of the 1962 U.S.-U.S.S.R. track meet at Stanford Stadium (“Cold War, Warm Welcome,” May/June).
I was fortunate enough to be a score-keeper at the discus event during the
two-day spectacle. I grew up on the campus with my parents, Phil, ’36, and Esther, who were longtime Stanford sports fans and friends of many of the coaches. I still consider this event my favorite of many wonderful memories at Stanford. I’ll always be grateful to Payton Jordan for giving me the opportunity. As a 15-year-old track fan, here I was in the midst of a number of legendary athletes. Two years earlier, Payton was able to bring the 1960 U.S. men’s Olympic trials to Stanford. Fans witnessed two world records at this meet, also: John Thomas in the high jump and Don (Tarzan) Bragg in the pole vault. I’m sure the great success of this meet played a part in showing to track and field advocates everywhere that Stanford and Payton Jordan could organize a top-quality track meet.
Tim Duffy, ’69
Montrose, Colorado
Thank you to Gary Cavalli for his excellent article. As John F. Kennedy once said, “Some people see things as they are and say ‘why?’ I see things as they could be and say ‘why not?’” While sports can never change politics, it can open us up to our shared humanity despite nations, cultures or ethnic groups. Payton Jordan was always a man to ask “why not?” I was one of his track and field athletes during the 1970s at Stanford. I will always treasure my days at Stanford, and being coached by Payton Jordan.
John Foster Jr., ’76, MA ’78
Pasadena, California
Palestine or ‘Palestine’
I agree with the three writers attacking me: it does sound unprogressive and intolerant to point out that there is no such thing as a “Palestinian” Arab people (“Regarding Palestine,” Letters, May/June). It sounds as though I’m denying the legitimacy of a people yearning to breathe free. That they construe my remarks this way is testimony to the success of the media campaign of Yassir Arafat and bin Laden. But the reality is that the “Palestinian people” is a propaganda ploy, nothing more. The best rebuttal to the letters attacking me is what PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein told the Dutch newspaper Trouw (3/31/77): “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
In other words, if the Arab who bursts into a preschool shooting is a “Palestinian,” why then, he’s a freedom fighter struggling to liberate his country, and while you disagree with his methods, you sympathize with his cause. As Carol Mullen writes: “A new nation is needed for the survival of its people.” If, however, there is no “Palestinian people”; if, as the PLO’s Muhsein says, that terrorist is no different nationally than other Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese, and he already has a homeland; and if, to top it off, there never even was an Arab country called “Palestine” (there never was—Palestine was a British mandate expressly for Jews), why then, he’s not acting to “liberate” anything; in fact, he’s just a Jew-killer like all the others! He’s just the latest of Arabs who have massacred Jews for centuries, long before the state of Israel. Only the justification is new. Denuded of the pretense of nobility, the PLO terrorist suddenly resembles KKK and Nazi murderers. Their motive: hatred. They—not those speaking out against them—personify ultimate intolerance.
Sound “extreme,” Rajaie Batniji? Of course. Sadly, though, anti-Semitism is the fuel of the PLO’s terrorist engine. Look at Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris’s May sermon on PLO TV: The day will come when we will rule America . . . and the entire world—except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquillity under our rule because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews—even the stones and trees which were harmed by them. Listen to the Prophet Muhammad, who tells you about the evil end that awaits Jews. The stones and trees will want the Muslims to finish off every Jew.
There you have it direct from the PLO the myth of a historic Arab people was created precisely so that Arabs could better fight against the Jewish state. Joe Ryan wonders why Israelis feel threatened by giving the PLO a state. Arab journalist Joseph Farah answers: “The Palestinian nationhood argument is the real strategic deception—one geared to set up the destruction of Israel.” The day Arafat signed peace principles at the White House, he explained: “Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”
True, many people with impressive titles and credentials, even PhDs teaching at Stanford, prefer to ignore the PLO’s anti-Semitism and promote its nationalistic fiction, and that just means you have to use your head to figure out what’s right instead of relying on someone else. And if you didn’t learn how to do that at Stanford, well, you deserve a refund.
Naomi Robinson, ’89
Bet El Bet, Israel
Adding Insult to Injury
Your article on students with disabilities (“This Is Who I Am,” May/June) prompts me to describe this experience. In 1965, I had a handicapped sticker on the rear window of my car, which entitled me to unrestricted parking on campus. One day I was ticketed and realized that the sticker had been stolen from my unlocked VW bug.
The record on file with the campus police indicated that I had a broken leg, and the man who responded to my request for a waiver of the ticket and replacement of the permit, confronted me in a sneering tone: “Just how long have you had this broken leg?”
I’d had this broken leg for seven years. It was a complication, a non-union of a fracture of the femur. I had enrolled as a graduate student in the Stanford communication department only because after a year of searching I was unable to find a job. I wanted to be a journalist. I’d been editor of the student newspaper at Reed College and won a prestigious national essay prize. But it seemed that the publishers who were willing to interview a woman were caught by surprise when that woman showed up on crutches.
The crutches didn’t slow me down. I could go just about as far and fast as anyone else. With a 16mm movie camera, I followed the first Peregrinacion led by Cesar Chavez from Delano, Calif., mostly by car, but walking the final several miles into Sacramento.
The campus police officer demanded a letter from a doctor to prove I was handicapped. I had wanted a chance to show an employer I was capable of getting anywhere I needed to be, to work as a reporter. Now I was being accused of faking it with the crutches, pretending I was less capable in order to get a special privilege. The memory still stings.
I didn’t renew my handicap parking permit. Unrestricted parking spaces were hard to find and often a long walk from my classes. I was able to do it on crutches, but I deserved to have that permit.
Carol Burns, MA ’69
Olympia, Washington
‘Unbalanced’
My attachment to the magazine remains too strong to be shaken, and I’ve published with you the two essays, over 40 years at Stanford, that I love best. But now again, as with an article on the administration’s ill-sited Munger housing-and-garage project, I’m troubled by the unbalanced, too-plausible stance of a recent piece.
“Solemn Symbolism,” an illustrated sidebar in the March/April issue (Farm Report), shows how “Stanford Students for Life planted 440 crosses in White Plaza,” each representing what the demonstrators call “100,000 legally aborted children.” You quote a sophomore: “The point is not to condemn women who’ve had abortions.” This same person “thought up the demonstration and led 20 students in manufacturing the crosses.”
Biking past those crosses in January, I was appalled—but not as I was meant to be. At first, in acute irony, I asked a student at the table whether Jewish women’s fetuses didn’t deserve at least one Star of David among those 440 crosses. But of course that’s not the point. How could this peaceful green field pierced with white crosses not evoke (in people aware of World War II) Europe’s military cemeteries harboring Americans actually slaughtered by totalitarianism?
Claiming that this student mock-up was “not to condemn women who’ve had abortions” seems disingenuous, at best, when the “Students for Life” flyer called legal abortion a “Holocaust.” This often-brandished analogy equates such women with Nazi killers of living human beings. The organizer claims they want “to provide women with financially feasible, emotionally helpful options.” Maybe so, but the flagrant display had nothing whatsoever to do with this.
A single sentence at the end of your article calls one junior “an impromptu one-woman counterdemonstration.” This makes her seem odd and solitary, but pro-choice students spoke out the next day in White Plaza and the Daily. Your respectful title, “Solemn Symbolism,” renders plausible the use of crosses to make a legal right appear murderous.
John Felstiner, Professor of English
Stanford, California
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