The Herald’s Nov. 12 editorial, “The Function of the University,” was a most comedic statement suggesting a mission to preserve objectivity and be a patron of different opinions. Has anyone questioned if President Christina Paxson has violated any codes of conduct with her statements and associations?
The function of the University is to be a cultural apparatus subordinate to big business, the state and empire.
Paxson is depicted as judicious in smacking down the students who protested New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and shut down his presentation because of concerns with disproportionate police brutality and mass incarceration that people of color face. Is she an objective arbiter on racism and empire?
Paxson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations — that bipartisan body that makes strategic plans to conquer the world. Is she non-partisan on the bombing and subordination of people of color nations? What about Kelly’s training of the Iraqi police during the U.S. military occupation? Why do these associations not lead The Herald to question their ethics? Do administrators who manage killing merely hold “opinions”? The student protesters, comparatively, are not associated with premeditated mass murder.
Paxson ironically studies “health disparities.” Is the function of the University to document inequalities for the entertainment of royalty or to cultivate their abolition? Protesting students understand police misconduct is documented sufficiently and needs no further discussion but action.
Paxson should not be permitted to victimize our most courageous students and then create a commission or institute to study policing and uplift her humanistic fraud-world.
Matthew Quest MA’04 PhD’08
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