Gilbert Cranberg: HARVEY SHAPIRO AND MARTIN LUTHER KING

For the most part, editors operate behind the scenes. They work in anonymity, seldom receiving credit. A recent New York Times obituary of Harvey Shapiro, a poet and former Times editor, recounts that it was Shapiro who was indirectly responsible for "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King. Shapiro suggested to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that Dr. King write a piece the next time he was jailed, as he was frequently in those days. As the Times obituary noted, King's resulting letter, written on pieces of toilet paper and margins of newspapers and smuggled out by aides, "endures as one of the canonical texts of the civil rights movement," but Shapiro was unable to persuade his bosses at the Times to publish it. Thus, it did not appear in the Times, but as fame of the letter spread, Shapiro did have the ultimate satisfaction of knowing that he had made the right call. As the country marks Martin Luther King Day, we provide a link here to Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html .

Geneva Overholser: GENE PATTERSON -- HE KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT

Gene Patterson's death Saturday evening http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/us/eugene-c-patterson-editor-and-civil-rights-crusader-dies-at-89.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 leaves a hole in journalism, and a hole in my heart. He was a giant of a civil rights-era editor, whose column after the Birmingham bombing won a Pulitzer Prize and was read live on TV news by Walter Cronkite. (Read the column here: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/gene-patterson-a-flower-for-the-graves/nTt8Q/ ).

I went to see Gene in late November, having heard he was in hospice care. Few I know in our field have thought more lucidly about journalism. What's more, I was confident that, even at age 89, he would be ready to grapple with the future (something I'm attempting to do myself, for a research project). When I arrived at his St. Petersburg, Florida, home, Gene, as always, was fully prepared. He had written up his thoughts in detail. (You can read them here, at the Poynter Institute site http://www.ajc.com/news/news/gene-patterson-a-flower-for-the-graves/nTt8Q/ ).

When, after my visit, I heard about the tragedy in Newtown, I thought immediately of Gene's column after Birmingham. He knew at that moment, he said, that it was an occasion on which even the most hardened souls would at long last be open to the need for change. "Nobody can stomach the idea of little girls being killed in Sunday school," he told me. Surely, I thought in turnm nobody could stand the notion of 20 little children being shot in their classrooms. So I wrote a piece called "Could Newtown Be for Gun Control What Birmingham Was for Civil Rights?" http://mije.org/could-newtown-be-gun-control-what-birmingham-was-civil-rights That's the kind of effect a conversation with Gene would have on you.

Last Thursday, I went back to St. Pete to see Gene. He was still as lucid as could be: Names, dates, full quotations -- they rolled off his tongue. He was full of laughter, of stinging critiques, of warm flattery. But, this time, unlike in November, he was ready to go. “Don't worry”, he told me, “I'll get back to you from the other side. But I won't be around much longer now.” As usual, he knew exactly what he was talking about.

Gilbert Cranberg: A SHODDY HIGH COURT RULING

Some court cases have become so embedded in the public’s consciousness that you know immediately from the title what the issue is. Thus, almost everyone identifies Roe v. Wade with abortion. Increasingly, so, too, has “Citizens United” become shorthand for free speech rights of corporations and unions as well as the role of money in politics.

A recent book also could make “Citizens United” synonymous with a Supreme Court ruling that is grievously mistaken. The book, “Too Much Free Speech?” (University of Illinois Press), is by Randall P. Bezanson, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Iowa law school.

Here is Bezanson’s unsparing take on the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion: “… there is good reason to find it logically wanting, historically and textually arid, given to grand and broad statements of law and ultimately dissatisfying. The Court’s opinion never really gets to the substance of the corporate speech issue, instead escaping the need to grapple with text and history and theory by what proved to be a weak and unconvincing expedient of claiming that the decision had already been made in many Supreme Court decisions….With all respect, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Bezanson is not given to overstatement. I know him and his work well, having coauthored two books and several articles with him. He is a careful and painstaking scholar who knows the Supreme Court from the inside, having clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun. If Bezanson denounces the high court ruling in Citizens United as shoddy, as he essentially does, the critique has to be taken seriously.

He could have sensationalized his attack on the ruling by denouncing its reliance on a law student’s work. At one point, the high court’s opinion in Citizens United cited a student’s law review article as support for a particular point. Bezanson noted the reference but didn’t make much of a deal about it. In fact, he praised the student’s effort as “a quite nicely argued piece of scholarship.”

The same can be said for Randall Bezanson’s important book.

Michael Gartner: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

For more than 125 years, universities have been giving “sabbatical leave” to teachers. The goals are to help the teachers become better teachers, to add to the luster of the institution, to further research into areas of keen concern to the public, and to produce broader and better-educated graduates.

Usually, the universities give a teacher full pay for taking off one semester. In Iowa, proposed sabbaticals for teachers at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa must be approved annually by the state Board of Regents. No one can recall the board ever rejecting a request, though the universities themselves turn down some requests before they reach the Board of Regents.

Since virtually all of the universities’ operating funds come from state appropriations or from tuition paid by students or their parents, the sabbaticals really are paid leaves subsidized by the state or the students. Yet few people outside academe ever look at the issues being studied. Some of the sabbaticals are for important study in the physical sciences, research that helps lead to innovations that help explain the world and help students explore that world.

But some seem less urgent. Here’s a batch of the latest approved paid leaves:  

Corey Creekmur, an associate professor of English at the University of Iowa (fiscal 2012 salary: $79,300) will complete his book on “the first full-length study of the representation of the British Raj in popular Indian cinema.”        

Armando Duarte, a professor of dance ($71,500), will “write a book on the choreographic aspects of the renowned and culturally important samba processions of Brazil.”          

Michael Moore, an associate professor of history ($70,200) is writing a book that “explores the gruesome posthumous trial of Pope Formosus in 897.”          

Roland Racevskis, a professor of French and Italian ($92,500), “will prepare a book manuscript on a largely unexplored topic, the significance of material environments for the human experience in works of seventeenth-century French literature. The focus throughout the book is on the urgent question of humanity’s relationship to the nonhuman world....”          

Carol Severino, a professor of rhetoric ($100,744), “will pursue second language writing research,” in which she will “identify and classify word choice errors and their sources in drafts submitted by Chinese students whom she will also interview.” She will also “write a follow-up travel essay to two previous pieces about her encounters with Quichua people and language in Ecuador, focusing on communication failure from word-choice error.”          

Katherine Tachau, professor of history ($105,177) will spend the spring semester completing “the research and writing of a book concerning the interaction of painters and academics in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris.”          

Donald Simonson, professor of music ($65,791) at Iowa State University, “will work in several locations during his assignment, including Denmark and Norway, where he will research, write, and compile the Norwegian section of the book, ‘Scandinavian Song: A Guide to Diction and Repertoire.’”          

Maximilian Viatori, associate professor of anthropology ($65,758) at ISU, will travel to Ecuador and Germany, “where he will analyze public discourses of national unification.”

Here are a few from a year ago:

Marybeth C. Stalp is an associate professor of sociology, anthropology and criminology at the University of Northern Iowa -- a university that was going through a financial crisis so severe that the faculty voted “no confidence” in President Ben Allen because he was trying to solve the issue strategically.

Stalp earns $60,000 a year. She spent the spring semester collecting her salary in southern Ireland, conducting “ethnographic research on women’s quilting and knitting efforts.” Quilting is “an important means of autonomy and identity development for midlife women,” the summary of Stalp’s application says, and in her study Stalp said she would focus “on the meaning-making processes in women’s cultural production efforts, examining finished work from the perspective of the maker as well as exploring a more complex definition from within a sociological perspective of what constitutes art.”          

How will this help UNI students and the state in general? “Iowa citizens, and specifically quilters and knitters, can learn about similarities and differences with Irish women.” As for UNI students, “she will infuse her Sociology of Gender and Sociology of Culture classes with this newfound international comparative research, and her Qualitative Methods course will improve with the additional research experiences of this project.”        

Of course.          

Her application also notes that since 2006 “she has given eleven guest quilting lectures to lay audiences.” That’s almost two lectures a year.

Meantime, the University of Iowa’s Scott Schnell, an associate professor of anthropology, said he planned to spend the fall semester in rural Japan studying the “traditional hunters of bear and other animals in the forested mountains of Japan’s interior.” This work will “promote better understanding of Japanese culture,” and “the Japanese case example, whether positive or negative, will inform people’s approaches to similar problems at home in Iowa and will promote interdisciplinarity.” Schnell earns around $70,000 a year.

Professor Schnell’s colleague, Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication Frank Durham, said he would spend the fall semester “analyzing news coverage of partisan news ‘pranks’ by conservative media activists Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe.” The study will ask: “Who controls sourcing, how has the process of cultural meaning production changed, and what does partisanship mean for the news as a site of consensus?” With not a little bit of boasting, Durham says “the study will gain prominence within national professional and scholarly media circles.” Breitbart, incidentally, died the other day. Durham earns around $75,000 a year.

Two years ago, Kimberley Marra, a professor of American Studies at the University of Iowa, was approved for a sabbatical so she could write a chapter of her book, “Fashioning the Thoroughbred Ideal: Show Women and Show Horses on New York Stages, 1865-1930.” This book will be “a cultural study of how human interactions with horses both empowered women and enduringly shaped dominant race, class, gender and sexual ideologies in the period when women entered the sport of riding in large numbers for the first time in the United States.” She will “use this material to enrich her courses in the curriculum of the newly merged units of American Studies and Sport Studies as well as her performance history courses in Theatre Arts.” Marra made $97,240 annually at the time.

Four years ago, the Regents sent University of Iowa associate professor Michael E. Lomax to the Philippines for his sabbatical to study how billiards “has been perceived as an alternate route to upward social mobility among young men” in that country. On his return, according to documents on the Board of Regents Web site, Lomax reported he “examined the Philippine experience in billiards. . . . He conducted an extensive review of the literature on sport and globalization and Philippine history, collected several primary sources on Philippine pool players. . .  He also constructed an analytical framework to conduct oral interviews of Philippine pool players. [Read: talked to some guys.] These activities will promote his research effort to analyze the ways in which the emergence of several Philippine pool players to an elite level contributed significantly to billiards evolving into a global enterprise.” The report does not explain how the study will “contribute to the improvement” of the university, as board policy requires. Lomax at the time made $63,200 a year.

Clearly, these teachers now are better teachers, the institutions now are more lustrous, the public is better informed about these key issues and Iowa's students are broader and better educated because of these sabbaticals.

Gilbert Cranberg: CHUCK HAGEL’S MIXED RECORD ON IRAQ WAR

Michael Moore, the gadfly film maker, has become a big fan of Chuck Hagel, the retired former senator from Nebraska. Hagel is being mentioned as the next Secretary of Defense. Moore likes Hagel because “back in 2007 he went totally crazy and told the truth about our invasion of Iraq.” Moore quoted Hagel as having said, “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America’s national interest. What the hell do you think they’re talking about? We are not there for figs.

Moore barely mentions how Hagel voted on whether to go to war against Iraq. The senator was for the Iraq War Resolution. The resolution was the proverbial blank check for the president “to use the armed forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate.” President Bush used the resolution to turn Iraq into a slaughterhouse. To his credit, later, in July 2007, Hagel was one of only three Republican senators who backed Democratic-proposed legislation to require that U.S. troops begin withdrawal from Iraq within 120 days.

The U.S. decision to wage a war of aggression against Iraq was a monumental blunder. To this day, the chief architects of the war, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, have not acknowledged responsibility or apologized for misleading the country into an unwarranted war.

Colin Powell, who gave a pro-war speech to the United Nations that was instrumental in swinging U.S. public opinion behind the war, had the decency to admit his mistake. He now refers to his United Nations speech as “infamous.” If Chuck Hagel becomes the next Secretary of Defense, it would be appropriate for him to follow Powell’s lead and make it an early order of business to recant his Iraq War Resolution vote.

Gilbert Cranberg: ENOUGH OF PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNISTS

The emergence the other day of the Tribune company from bankruptcy took me back to 1999 when I attended, as an observer, the Mid-Year Media Review, a gathering of investors and analysts who follow the communications industry. Media Review meetings are an opportunity for company bigwigs to address trends and developments at their respective businesses.
        
The gathering was an eye-opener for me because I hadn’t realized what an impressive performer the Tribune was. At the time, it owned newspapers and a flock of broadcast properties in such major markets as Orlando and Baltimore, in addition to its flagship Chicago paper. Soon thereafter it acquired the Los Angeles Times.  The top Tribune executives who made presentations seemed to me to be capable, competent and smart. I concluded, for what it was worth, that the Tribune was a thriving company in good hands poised to do better.
        
Was I ever mistaken. Enter Sam Zell in 2007, a real-estate investor and self-described “professional opportunist” who bought the company. Also joining the Tribune company, as CEO that year, was Randy Michaels. A recent computer search for Michaels turned up this entry:  “Under Mr. Michaels, The Tribune company was widely reported to have undergone a negative change in atmosphere, with instances of profanity from executives, as well as a controversial private poker party in the Tribune Towers.” In 2010, Michaels was asked by the company’s board of directors to resign. The following year he was picked up for drunken driving.
       
The fate of Tribune company newspapers and broadcast outlets now is up in the air.  Residents of those communities have a huge stake in the outcome. They cannot simply sit back and allow professional opportunists to do their thing. Newspapers and broadcast outlets are engaged in a public service. The beneficiaries of that service – the public – need to organize and mobilize resources to assure that the public-service mission of the press is regarded as paramount.

GIilbert Cranberg: TWO YEARS OF WARPED THINKING

January 8 will mark two years since Representative Gabrielle Giffords was grievously injured when she was shot in the head by a deranged gunman in the parking lot of a Tucson area supermarket. Wielding a weapon fed by a high-capacity ammunition clip, the shooter injured 18 others, including a federal judge, who was shot fatally.

It would be nice to report that in the interim, Giffords’s colleagues had done something to prevent future mass shootings. But that would be uncharacteristic of a Congress frightened into submission by gun owners.

Giffords was meeting with constituents when she was attacked. In other words, she was conducting congressional business. That alone is reason for her colleagues in Congress to react.

The horror over Giffords’s shooting has been exceeded by the reaction to the mass murder of kindergartners in Newtown, Connecticut. That atrocity was so extreme Congress may yet be moved to act. In the interim, it should use the anniversary of the Gifford shooting to enact, at the very least, curbs on high-capacity ammunition clips. The clips are accessories to mass murder and have no place in a sane society.

Yes, they are a convenience to target shooters. But the inconvenience of having to reload is a tiny price to pay for getting rid of a device that is a proven menace.

The failure to do anything to curb gun mayhem in the two years since Representative Giffords was maimed is itself irrational. Her assailant probably belongs in a mental institution. It’s ironic that those in a position to prevent more criminally insane acts simply do nothing and hope the public does not hold them accountable.