Word: tutu
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bishop Desmond M. Tutu this week called for immediate punitive economic sanctions against South Africa, in an apparent move to urge Western governments to pressure Pretoria into liberalizing its racial policies, The New York Times reported yesterday...
University Vice-President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 returned from a fact-finding mission to South Africa, claiming that Blacks in that country wanted Harvard interns. But in the face of subsequent denunciations of the program by Bishop Desmond M. Tutu and other South African leaders and vocal oppostion from several faculty members as well as students, the committee charged with administering the internships voted to cancel the program. In the context of Harvard bureaucracy at least, they moved with an alacrity that deserves commendation...
What so inscensed Bishop Tutu about Harvard's ostensibly philanthropic desire to send interns to his country was the arrogant and paternalistic way in which Harvard conceived and established the program without regard for the views or concerns of those the program was supposedly designed to help. It is the same paternalism that bolsters Harvard's decision not to divest. And instead of helping Black South Africans in a way that many of them have requested, the University decided it knew better. It didn't, and it doesn...
Especially given the criticism leveled last week by Bishop Desmond M. Tutu and the Rev. Allen Boesak--widely recognized leaders of the very people the university intended to aid by sending interns--it seems likely that Bok will now have to scrap the program, at least as currently conceived. And while administrators may avoid such an embarassing conclusion to their prized project by waiting out criticism and proceeding slowly on the internships in the future, Harvard has clearly lost this round in the continuing battle to win credibility for its engagement-oriented position on relations with South Africa...
...Bishop Tutu has so clearly stated, it is time for the leaders of the majority population to take control of their own destiny. And every overture from concerned parties must now conform to their struggle for freedom, as outlined in their own words--not by a university on the other side of the world...