Investments

Dialectic: Peace Prize Forum workshop raises unsettling questions

Date 3/1/2001 12:00 AM | Topic: Opinion

This year Luther College is host to the 13th annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum. The Forum presents an unparalleled opportunity to learn more about peacemaking from many perspectives. One of this year's workshops, however, has an uncomfortably peculiar distinction: it is defends an institute identified by many in the peacemaking community as responsible for war crimes.

I think that raises some tough questions. Before posing them, however, I want to be very clear: I am not intending any disrespect toward the Forum planning committee. I have spoken with a couple committee members, and I know that this workshop was not placed on the schedule without significant discussion.

Still, it deserves some further discussion.

The workshop in question is being led by Colonel Glenn Weidner, the commandant of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA), an institute responsible for training Latin American military personnel. Critics of the School charge - and with substantial evidence - that the SOA actually promoted the abuse of civil, political, and human rights by its graduates. Indeed, its graduates comprise a rather grisly "who's who" of Latin American officials implicated in systematic patterns of employing torture, rape, and murder as instruments of military policy. After years of criticism, the SOA has allegedly cleaned up, but its critics remain undeterred in their efforts to close it down. They contend that the problem is not a particular school but a whole worldview that willingly undervalues human life in other cultures in the pursuit of U.S. foreign policy goals.

Three years ago, precipitated I believe by an anti-SOA workshop offered at an earlier Peace Prize Forum, the Pentagon invited students and staff from the sponsoring colleges to visit the SOA. This year the military is going further yet, bringing its case for the SOA to the Peace Prize Forum itself. Arguments can be made for allowing workshops that promote dialogue on controversial issues. And the Forum will have a second workshop with a critical view toward the SOA led by a Concordia College professor. But I

don't think that settles the matter so easily.

Would the Peace Prize Forum accept a workshop endorsing "change therapy" for homosexuals, an approach decried with near unanimity by homosexuals themselves? Would that constitute dialogue about homosexuals? Would the Forum allow someone to present the case in favor of ethnic cleansing as a sometimes necessary solution to intractable conflict? Would that constitute dialogue about genocide?

These are not happy questions to pose. And I do not claim that the Commandant's workshop exactly parallels either of these examples. But how it differs from them is not immediately obvious to me either. Too often what passes for genuine dialogue is a discussion in which some of the essential conversation partners are notably absent. Perhaps Col. Weidner does deserve a chance to present his case in favor of the SOA (or its present incarnation), but _____________________ _______________________ and this dash should be dreadfully long because it drips with blood, so do the thousands of persons raped, tortured, and murdered by SOA graduates. That would be genuine dialogue.

The victims, however, will not have a voice in this conversation. How do we promote open dialogue here - without failing to honor the victims whose participation is no longer an option?

All five of the Forum's sponsoring schools are colleges of the ELCA. All

share a heritage rooted in the Christian tradition with its deep emphasis on hospitality, even toward those who might be deemed our enemies.

Yet another part of that tradition calls us to speak truth to those in power, to ask on behalf of those whose voices are muffled by the dirt that covers their graves, "What do you mean by crushing God's people, by grinding the face of the poor?" (Isaiah 3:15).

I hope that, amid our hospitality, Col. Weidner hears this question persistently set before him. We may owe him the chance to have his say, but we owe the victims at least that much as well. They are, without question, "the least of these, my brothers and sisters" (Matthew 25:40), and if we do not speak for them, who will?

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David R. Weiss
Professor of Religion and Philosophy

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