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When you enter the main library at the University of Rhode Island, you pass between two inscriptions carved in black granite.
One is from Thomas Jefferson: “Enlighten the people … and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.”
The other is from Malcolm X: “My alma mater was books, a good library … I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”
The quotes inscribed on the library were chosen from among student submissions, and according to the artist who prepared them, it was not until after the stones carved that it became known that the Malcolm quote was incomplete. Here is the quote as it appears in his autobiography:
My alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book I want to read — and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity — because you can’t hardy mention anything I’m not curious about.
–Malcolm X.
The unveiling of the bowdlerized quote in the fall of 1992 sparked protest from students of color on the RIU campus, helping to provoke a sit-in that won the creation of a major in African and African-American studies at the university.
Happy Birthday, Malcolm.
A federal appeals court last week overturned rulings from immigration officials that denied asylum to Togolese student activist Messan Amen Kueviakoe.
Kueviakoe, a campus and political activist at Togo’s University of Lome, was beaten and tortured by Togolese police in 2003, and threatened with arrest after he participated in a campus protest in 2004. Fearing persecution, he escaped to the United States, later learning that the friend who had helped him obtain a visa had been killed by the government.
An American immigration judge denied Kueviakoe’s asylum petition in 2006, saying that the account of his persecution that he gave in court testimony was inconsistent with a written statement he gave earlier. The US Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the judge’s finding, but last week a panel of federal judges rejected it, finding that all three “inconsistencies” in Kueviakoe’s statements were not inconsistencies at all.
- Immigration claimed that Kueviakoe had called the vehicle he was dragged into by police a car in one statement and a truck in another. The court found that he had used both terms interchangeably in his written statement, that he had identified the “car” as holding ten people, and that his statements had, at any rate, been translated from French.
- Immigration claimed that Kueviakoe had indicated in one statement that he was “tortured for two days” by police, but in another said that he was only beaten for one day. The court found that Kueviakoe had consistently stated that he was beaten on the first day he was held in custody, and thrown in a jail cell with rats — and denied access to food and drink — on the second.
- Immigration claimed that Kueviakoe had said that he was “hospitalized for two days” in one statement and hospitalized for three weeks in the other. The court found that Kueviakoe had actually said “I was hospitalized two days after my release [from jail],” and that it was the immigration judge who added the word “for” to his statement.
The appellate court vacated the previous ruling and sent the case back to immigration authorities for further review. Kueviakoe remains in the United States.
Notre Dame’s commencement begins this afternoon at 2 o’clock, with live streaming video here. President Obama will receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address. I’ll be liveblogging the event, which anti-abortion activists have threatened to disrupt.
Obama beat John McCain 57% to 41% in a straw poll of Notre Dame students last October, and the Notre Dame Observer has said that initial feedback from their student readership was strongly supportive of the commencement invitation. A poll out on Thursday, by the way, finds that only 34% of American Catholics, and only 43% of regular Catholic churchgoers, think UND should rescind their invitation to Obama.
1:40 pm: Anti-Obama protesters have been out in force at Notre Dame for weeks now. Perennial GOP also-ran Alan Keyes was arrested on campus pushing a bloody doll in a Spongebob Squarepants stroller last Monday, and a plane flying a banner bearing an image of an aborted fetus has been buzzing the campus since late April.
1:50 pm: The live feed from commencement is up now, with video of graduates filing into the venue. The commencement is being held in the Joyce Center, the campus’s 11,000-seat basketball arena. The official list of prohibited items is a long one.
1:58 pm: Commencement is beginning two minutes early, with the procession of the faculty.
May 26 update: The AP is reporting that Obama has picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. I’ve got a new post up this morning exploring her views on race and gender in the judiciary.
In August 2007 Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled on an appeal in a high school free speech case, Doninger v. Niehoff.
The ruling in that case has come under heavy criticism from some civil libertarians, but though it’s not good, I’m not convinced it’s as bad as some people have made out. Here’s the deal:
Avery Doninger was a member of the student council of Lewis Mills High School in Connecticut. In the spring of 2007, the student council and the LMHS administration butted heads over a school concert called Jamfest, which administrators were not allowing to go forward on its originally scheduled date.
At one point in the dispute Doninger put up a blogpost saying that the principal had canceled the concert because she was “pissed off” about student pressure. Doninger called the administration “douchebags” for canceling Jamfest, and urged students to complain to the principal and “piss her off more.”
According to the principal, however, the concert had never been canceled, and in fact the day after Doninger put up her post, students and administrators reached an agreement to reschedule it.
The principal learned of Doninger’s blogpost two weeks after it went up, and punished Doninger for posting it by not allowing her to run for Senior Class Secretary. She gave four reasons: Doninger had not followed proper procedures for resolving disagreements with the administration, the post’s language had been “vulgar,” claims in the post had been inaccurate, and the exhortation to other students to “piss her off more” had been inappropriate.
Doninger ran as a write-in candidate in the election, and won, but was not allowed to take office. She and her parents then challenged that decision in court, asking for an injunction that would allow her to be seated as class secretary.
A federal district court denied that request, saying that Doninger did not have a strong enough likelihood of winning her case at trial. In making that ruling, the court accepted the principal’s account of several factual matters, rejecting Doninger’s claims.
This is where Sotomayor enters the picture, sitting as a member of a three-judge appeals court panel.
Update: Here’s my review and analysis of the case., and here’s my take on Sotomayor’s perspective on race and gender in the judiciary.
Back in January I reported on the case of a high school student who was barred from running for student government after she referred to school administrators as “douchebags” on a LiveJournal blog.
Now comes word that federal judge Sonia Sotomayor, widely believed to be on Obama’s Supreme Court shortlist, issued a ruling in that case a year ago — and it wasn’t a good one.
According to media studies prof Paul Levinson, Sotomayor was part of a panel that ruled against the student on the grounds that high schools have a responsibility to instill “shared values,” including a “proper respect for authority,” in students.
Ouch.
I haven’t had a chance to read that court’s ruling in full yet, but I’ll update this post when I do.
studentactivism.net 
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