Letters to the Editor

No more delays

To the Editor:

After reading University President Judith Rodin's letter to the graduate and professional students concerning unionization, I am disgusted. Although, as a law student I am not eligible to join the union, I find Rodin's anti-union tactics to be quite hypocritical. I graduated from Cornell University undergraduate last year and observed the administration's attitude toward potential unionization there. President Hunter Rawlings did not appeal the decision to the National Labor Relations Board to hold a unionization election. He simply let the election take place. The union lost, but at least they had a fair chance without interference by the administration.

This election is not even near, and Rodin has already sent out a captive audience letter about the drawbacks of unionization. In her letter, she states, "We hope that the students themselves, like their counterparts at Cornell, would come to the same conclusion." Maybe she should learn from her Cornell administration counterparts and let the election take place without these delay tactics, and allow for the eligible graduate students to decide for themselves whether or not they want to unionize.

Russell Miness Law '05

Hardly agnostic

To the Editor:

Dan Fishback's column (" Doing battle with words," The Daily Pennsylvanian, 11/18/02) attempts to dispassionately examine both sides in the divestment debate. Although Fishback professes to be agnostic on the divestment question, he belies his even-handedness by introducing two erroneous objections to the anti-divestment stance.

First, he posits that those who disagree with divestment accept "a priori" that the motivation behind the divestment campaign is anti-Semitism. Fishback may be right that the Penn petition is different than others because it includes all human rights violators, but he is apparently unfamiliar with the origins of the petition in the first place -- the fact that the petition was watered down by Israel's detractors so that it would not reek of anti-Semitism.

Second, Fishback betrays his purported objectivity by questioning whether it is in fact true that Israel is "not the most egregious bully in a world of bullies." According to Fishback, "This is the most difficult position to refute, not because it's more valid, but because the response involves not facts, but something more abstract -- identity." Yes, the above position is easy to refute, but this has nothing at all to do with "identity." Except, of course, if one means that those in Israel with Arab "identities" participate far more in the democratic process, have far higher standards of living and education levels and far better safeguards against wanton violence than they would in any other state in the region.

"Divestment is a huge, complicated, torturous issue." Huge and torturous maybe, but complicated, divestment is not.

Max Abrahms SAS '00

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