An Emory student notes this in-depth response by one of the seven arrested protesters to President James Wagner’s email to the community last week in a post of Emory’s Center for Ethics blog.  In the interest of equal time, I’ll post the entire letter below, just as I did with the President’s letter.

I reiterate that I don’t know a lot about this issue, but reflecting on what I highlighted in President Wagner’s letter – about “the form of coercion, which shouts down every reasonable counter-argument” – and some of the comments in response about the administration’s hesitancy to engage in conversation with students about Sodexo’s labor practices, I have just one question.

Before the SWS put out its “set of demands” in March 2010, did it attempt to engage the University in less public ways, sharing its information and position while also acknowledging the structural limitations of a budgeted organization?

I think that providing examples of other university ethical standards is a good move for moving forward – as is mentioned in the letter below – but to set forth “demands” prior to conversations with the administration might be what the President is referring to when he referenced being “shouted down”.   “Demands” certainly show your strong stance on an issue, but it also frames the conversation.  Peaceful protest certainly has its place, but perhaps it’s an unnecessary side-effect of not giving the administration any benefit of the doubt and instead listing a set of demands that not only details your distaste, but also insults your counterpart simultaneously.

Just a thought.  As I said, I’m not privy to a lot of info on this topic, so if I’m missing something, please let me know.

My name is Emiko. I was one of the seven students who was arrested on Monday evening for sitting in a tent in the Quadrangle. I am a fifth year PhD candidate at Emory University, and it is as a member of this beloved community that I am writing a response to President Wagner’s two statements regarding the “protest issue” on campus. As I do not have the privilege of having an All Emory button on my email account or the ability to post my statement on the home page of Emory’s website, I must rely on the good will of friends, colleagues, and strangers to communicate this message to the wider public. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this statement and for your willingness to evaluate critically both sides of this issue.

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Cat sends in this very detailed letter from Emory President James Wagner concerning the eight individuals who were arrested on the Emory quad on April 20th.  I’ll post the full letter after the jump, but I want to highlight a portion of it here.

What is at stake is the right of members of our academic community to hear from each other, determine the validity of what they hear, and then respond in a way that guarantees that their own response will be respected. That right to come to a conclusion and live by it, even when differences cannot be fully resolved, is violated when one side in an argument insists that only its perspective is correct, and that it is worth disrupting the life of the community in an attempt for its perspective to win out. That represents its own form of coercion, which shouts down every reasonable counter-argument rather than allowing room for either debate or the resolution of debate–even if the resolution is to agree to disagree. Those who employ such coercive practices deny to others the privileges of engagement in the academic community and risk the consequences of losing those privileges for themselves.

I don’t pretend to know many of the details surrounding these protests and the arrests, but you’ll never see me argue with the point made above.  To again quote Thomas Carlyle, “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.”.

Full letter below. Read the rest of this entry »