| Show t alt alit 70fibunc (7bt osi 1111N6 You WaNT To T11 f ' Page 12 College President Should Repay Institution for Costs of Travel penses asks too much of Utah taxpayers It also may violate state policy In fact since regents became aware in 1987 that another community college president J Marvin Higbee was spending public dollars for family expenses family travel they restricted state-paiTheir policy calls upon family members to finance their own expenses except when acting as official representatives of the state Dr Carnahan more than the Institutional Council he advises should have understood that There may be room for quibbling over Mrs Carnahan's role during the Soviet Union trip even though it's fairly clear she participated as the president's spouse rather than an official representative of the state But if regents feel the college should be reimbursed Dr Carnahan should comply By encouraging his Institutional Council to cover questionable travel expenses in defiance of regents he appears to be trying to circumvent regent authority The college council also has argued that private rather than public dollars were ultimately used and needn't be returned After regents ordered the replacement of the college investment funds originally spent the council tapped Salt Lake Community College's donated revenues Private dollars diverted to other purposes are unavailable for legitimate college needs If donors had realized they would be financing a vacation for the president's spouse they might have thought twice about parting with their wealth Now potential donors might be daunted by such a pos6ibility in the d future President Carnahan as an officer answerable to the State Board of Re- gents should put this unpleasant episode behind him the college and the state as soon as possible He needn't wait for a regent order to do what's best for all concerned — ri N 1111 Q0- 1E a LTNvk' 41) uN-:i- It merican unrealized The flame of those ideals must be kept alive the movement must go forward The past year has been a troubling one While Americans can share the joy of people in Eastern Europe who are winning new freedoms after decades of totalitarian oppression there are warning signs in the United States itself Americans have yet to find a way to free their society's underclass from cycles of chronic poverty and ignorance that plague successive generations Homelessness and hunger are increasing and literacy the bedrock of a democratic state is in decline Even college campuses have seen an increase in bigotry Yet there is hope The message from Eastern Europe is that the human spirit is capable of surviving the worst and if people around the world have looked to the United States for inspiration during their bleakest hours it is because America symbolizes the best and highest ideals of freedom democracy and human rights Americans should listen to that message from the east and take it to heart It should move them to put aside the disillusionment and moral emptiness of the past two decades and build anew By realizing how they have inspired others Americans can inspire themselves Let that be the theme of Human Rights Day 1990 Martin Luther King Jr had a dream Let Americans work together once again to make it reality Another Viewpoint From The Los Angeles Times Just 10 years ago the National Park Service adopted a visionary master plan for YoSemite National Park that looked to a future in which visitors could step into Yosemite "and find nature uncluttered by piecemeal stumbling blocks of commercialism machines and fragments of suburbia" Major progress in reaching this goal particularly in Yosemite Valley was to be achieved by 1990 the park's centennial year Today Yosemite Valley is a better place — but only somewhat — for the improvements that have been made But the progress toward the goal of the 1980 master plan has been achieved in agonizingly small increments What the Yosemite master plan needs now is a great leap forward In particular the park must have a truly adequate public transportation system hi place of all the private autos that often jam the valley floor :0 The master plan proposes that visitors and employees park their cars outside the valley and ride in by some form of shuttle Cost is a problem But the transit portion of the plan is so critical and so vital a part of the nation's park system that the Bush administration or Congress should consider a special appropriation to make it possible The issue has arisen again because the Park Service released in August a review of steps taken so far to implement and plan and an assessment of likely future progress Alas this document is entirely too gloomy about the prospects for progress Its tone in fact has touched off a new controversy over the prospects for moving nonessential buildings and operations — such as visitor accommodations park headquarters and major concessionaire facilities — out of the valley and into areas of the park The fight between conservation groups on one hand and the Yosemite Park and Curry Co the concessionaire has assumed unhappily a rather nasty tone The liming of the fuss also is unfortunate coming just as new park Superintendent Michael Finley is getting his feet on the ground in Yosemite Also the Park Service and the Curry Co soon will begin negotiating a new concessions contract The disputants should mute their anger and give Finley a chance to take control of the master plan review process Then the Park Service should make implementation of the plan an integral part of the Curry Co contract negotiations Yosemite is too valuable to use for activities that do not contribute directly to a quality park experience I ei 112 1 1‘1 14 at 'AN " &MK? -- v $16 ' ' Nk'N '4"' 1' 7o) RP ii 7'is I tillov 41 loozi - le Ail 1 63 t Is 91 -- V: tilit:11:9 ifilt it3 ---- ce4 r s!"11 IIIIHb - I cl-- 1 1 1 z i 4 IL fit ' criF King Message Over the Nation's Head? Rights Efforts Faltered Under Reagan By Vincent FA Golphin Newhouse News Service Let me be the first to wish you "Happy Martin Luther King Jr Day" I really hope your King day is a happy one A day of peace A day of insight In most of the country the national holiday for the slain civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner is celebrated today The fact some state and local governments and private businesses continue to make excuses rather than give employees the day off shows King's message has yet to trickle down That kind of thinking is the legacy of the Reagan era Ronald Reagan could not see racism He seemed to think that America would not have to answer the problems of the social disease as long as he declared racism nonexistent From 1980 to 1988 two previous decades of work to remove race as a factor in a person's access to everything from birth to burial faltered and faded Churches and religious groups decried the growing prejudice bigotry violence in the United States and But in the pews and the streets jobs money and the arms race were put ahead of improved race relations on the list of things to race-relate- d do The Rev Martin Luther King Jr challenged the nation to make real a biblical vision No matter how historians and social scientists reconstruct the details and meaning of his life King's writings and speeches clearly show he believed that people could live as Jesus teaches Some people find it hard to believe that the lessons of the gospels can transform the world through them Then what is there to celebrate on King Day? King was shot and killed in Memphis more than 20 years ago Is what he left more than a blurred memory? King was more than just a black religious leader The things he said and did molded an age Yet how do we remember him? Most of the nation will have its collective memory jogged today PBS plans to run the first of eight parts in the continuation of TV "Eyes on the Prize" an series on the civil rights movement The Monday program "The Time Has Come" looks at the civil rights era's call for black social political and economic power Does the place blacks occupy in American society correspond with the dream?" If you're not sure read "A Common Destiny: Blacks and Society" the 1989 report by the Washington Nation Research award-winnin- DC-base- During his crusade in Syracuse NY last the Rev Billy Graham said that there are people who do not know a person of another race How will such people live in the April They can only live in fear g d Council "Under conditions of increasing economic hardship for the least prosperous members of society blacks because of their special legacy of poverty and discrimination are afflicted sooner more deeply and longer" the report states "This distress should be viewed in the context of the underlying changes within American society that affect not only differences but all disadvantaged blacks and whites who face the difficult economic conditions of the late 1930s" King dreamed of America's advancement "A Common Destiny" makes it clear that black America's progress or demise is key in the development of the nation Again a bibliblack-whit- e cal vision Using the resources of historically black churches King rose from the pastor of a church in Montgomery Ala to the status of a world leader His vision was freedom and equality for his people But "the dream" doesn't stop there Black America is like an iceberg Most of what the average person gets to look at seems overwhelming but more of it is hidden than seen The National Urban League in its 80th year had little good news in its report "The State of Black America" released last Monday John E Jacob Urban League national president called upon the Bush administration to commit $50 billion to a "Marshall Plan" to develop opportunities for minorities Are the problems faced by the disadvantaged blacks and other minorities a matter of of the money? Or are they the American spirit? The answer will tell you Martin Luther King Day bow to celebrate Reinhold Niebuhr Shaped King's Ideas Tribune Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — As our nation commemorates the life of one its most influential figures the Rev Martin Luther King Jr it is ironic that — according to a recent study — American high school history textbooks skimp on giving biographical details about important American leaders and frequently fail to discuss the impact of religious beliefs on the shaping of our democracy school year began the As the 1989-9American Federation of Teachers (AFT) released a study showing that the five most commonly used American history textbooks give Thomas Gorey - 0 the impression that American freedom political stability and prosperity are the result of a "happy accident" The AFT study written by historian Paul Gagnon said that each of the five high school textbooks "fails to make explicit enough the sacrifices hard thought hard work and high cost of producing and sustaining democracy in America There is little analysis of the hard choices that leaders and ordinary people made and the difficult battles they fought Nor is there clear recognition of the tragic results that often follow wrong decisions" (The textbooks surveyed were "Triumph of the American Nation" Harcourt Brace lovanovich 1986 "People and Our Country" Holt Rinehart and Winston 1982 "The United States: A History of the Republic" Prentice-Hall 1981 "History of a Free People" Macmillan 1981 and "A History of the United States" Ginn and Company 1986) "Text writers skimp on providing biographical background on those leaders who shaped our country failing thus to give students a sense of the intellectual background and the personal qualities that produce democratic statesmen" the AFT study said "Three of the five texts fail to provide a evaluation of George Washington The longacest sketch of Lincoln is a count in Boorstin (Daniel J Boorstin of "A History of the United States") but even it does not reach to Lincoln's beliefs or depth of character One text "It's not that space is lacking that provides no biography of Lincoln devotes 20 out of 43 pages on the Civil War to pictures maps and such special features as 'Photography on the Battlefield"Lee's Crisis of Conscience' and 'Women on the Battlefield' The AFT study titled "Democracy's Half-TolStory: WhPt American History Textbooks Should Add" also concluded that "The impact of religion and religious beliefs upon this country's history is frequently neglected From the Puritans to the present the religious ideas and communities which have influenced America are not explained "For example texts so simplify their accounts of Puritan and Calvinist religious beliefs that discussions of the Salem witch trials of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams end up as melodrama though students would better be introduced to tragedy — the clash of two right impulses "These accounts and later textbook coverage of religion leave students with the impression that toleration is the only 'religious' idea worth remembering But its real meaning its real complexity and high cost in those religious days is incomprehensible without a d I p i ' d 'Let New Yosemite Chief Take Control 1) x - 4" ' lowoolpownoc '''''e' —: v t 7 Allis 4' I - 1990s? Dr King's Legacy 7 tRA al coo il 1 vxAcK - t — Section A 01 ‘s -- CIA 11ma 'It- II vv Anglo-A- XT TRIP To THE 1405P1TaL A - He would have been 61 years old today but Martin Luther King Jr died a young man He was only 39 when he was cut down by an assassin's bullet in that dark year 1968 The movement that he led the struggle for civil rights also was young when he died at least in the sense that it had yet to fulfill many of its goals That still is true today more than two decades after Dr King was martyred In other ways the quest for guarantees of human rights is very old and was when Dr King began his work The legal tradition can trace it back at least as far as Magna Carta in 1215 and Western Civilization as a whole can take the time line back even further to the concepts of law citizenship and democracy developed first by the Greeks then the Romans In fact this human yearning for social equality may be as old as the concept of society itself Though he lived a century after Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation the close of the American Civil War and the ratification of the 13th 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution that abolished slavery and extended the protections of the Bill of Rights to all Americans Dr King still had to give his life to the cause of fulfilling the promises enshrined in the basic law of the United States Americans remember Dr King and what he came to symbolize today because some of those promises remain ON louR -a il Monday Morning—January 151990 Whether Dr and Mrs Orville D Carnahan should have traveled to the Soviet Union at state expense last fall is hardly a dead issue as members of Salt Lake Community College's Institutional Council contend Neither does it boil down to a power struggle between the State Board of Regents and the council as council members also have charged The college president and his wife spent $8800 from the college budget to participate in a trip promoted by the private sector as a professional exchange The college Institutional Council approved the arrangement but regents have since reviewed the matter twice and will take it up again later this month "Technically" said Board of Regents Chairman Douglas Fox ley "that is college money and using it for a personal trip needs review" An Institutional Council member speaking anonymously argued that Dr Carnahan followed proper channels including obtaining council approval for a trip that promised to provide economic development experience connected with the college's mission "I think the only reason this is an issue is because the regents are upset that we didn't go to them to authorize the trip It's a pow" er struggle More likely it's an attempt by regents to fulfill their statutory duty to set policy and oversee budgets for this state's public colleges and universities If regents immersed themselves in every detail of each institution's budget they would get so bogged down in minutiae they would no longer effectively supervise the overall system But this is different Regents are directly responsible for school presidents They hire set standards for monitor and can fire those presidents Sending a community college president to the Soviet Union to promote economic development is questionable enough but paying for his wife's ex 1- solid grounding in matters of faith "Modern readers always ready to mistake their own indifference to religion for the virtue of toleration could profit from betteeper- religious spective Moreover the deep-fel- t convictions that motivated so many of our leaders such as Abraham Lincoln William Jennings Bryan Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King are barely mentioned" The importance of religion in Dr King's life was obvious: his grandfather and father were pastors of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta he attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester Pa he became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Ala in 1954 he earned his doctorate in theology from Boston University in 1955 he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to expand his fight against racial discrimination in 1957 he became of Ebenezer with his father in 1960 Taylor Branch in his 1988 Pulitzer Prizewinning history of Dr King "Parting the Waters" points out the influence of the brilliant Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on Dr King Professor Niebuhr (1892-1971- ) who was dean of Union Theological Seminary in New York for a decade shook up Protestant liberal theology with his book "Moral Man and Immoral Society" published in 1932 Niebuhr assailed the social gospel's premise that the alleged steady advance of reason over ignorance would eradicate social evils Niebuhr said there was no evidence that men became - ri----' ' Al ei ' Ako 7 r ! ')- -I rt I I tetio--- i k71wy' el (0) 'XI 4 '? ' ' 1 " '''''''' 7 : : IA: r V r' d' te JozG )1 k 11(0 -w :- - it' -----— 1 well-know- n half-doze- n i L less selfish as they became better educated and that war and injustice would persist because humans were by nature sinful Niebuhr who as a pastor for 13 years in Detroit championed the cause of autc workers and black migrants held that while individuals could respond to reason social groups responded substantially only to power "How- ever large the tiumber of individual white men whowill identify themselves com- pletely with the Negro cause" Niebuhr wrote "the white race in America will not admit the Negro to equal rights if it is not forced to do so" Niebuhr's book caused a sensation in Intellectual circles with Marxists hating him for criticizing Stalin and social gospelers suggesting that Niebuhr's doctrine of sin made him an enemy of progress Biographer Branch notes that by the time Dr King read "Moral Man and Immoral Society" — in 1950 when the future civil rights crusader was 21 — Niebuhr had become a figure During the 18 years after Neibuhr's book was published Adolf Hitler had seemed to vindicate Niebuhr's view of immoral society and irrepressible human evil The young King found Niebuhr's message disturbing but compelling "It did not bother King a great deal to hear religious conservatives say that the social gospel was too secular to be religious" Branch writes "but it was quite another matter to hear Niebuhr say that the social gospel did not touch the evil in the world and was therefore not moral" Niebuhr described the resistance methods of Mohandas Gandhi as a type of coercion that offered hope to oppressed groups and suggested how America's blacks might use a nonviolent strategy to achieve social justice Branch notes: "In later years King never' tried to stem the rivers of ink that described him as a Gandhian Part of his acquiescence was a product of public relations as he knew: that within the American mass market there was a certain exotic comfort in the idea of a Gandhian Negro King mentioned buying a books about Gandhi in a single eve fling but he never bothered to name or describe any of them "He almost never spoke of Gandhi personally By contrast he invoked Niebuhr in every one of his own major books always with a sketch of 'Moral Man and Immoral Society' He confessed that he became 'enamored' of Niebuhr who 'left me in a state of conf- artin hillier king Jr 4 usion' " Dr King wrote that "Niebuhr's great con- tribution to contemporary theology is that he has refuted the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism without falling into the of the As continental theologian Karl Branch observes: "This meant a great deal to King but doubtless very little to his readers "lie said little more in public In private however he came to describe Niebuhr as a prime influence upon his life and Gandhian nonviolence as 'merely a Niebuhrian stratagem of power' King devoted much of his remaining graduate school career to the study of Niebuhr who touched him on all his tender points from pacifism and race to sin" Barth" - F401109543t 04910VIV4PilF04VOI4Dr"r4 ! |
