Correspondence Ms Kissling takes umbrage
KISSLING, FRANCES & DISTEFANO, TONY & WOLBERT, JEROME & PICARD, MARIE & Godfrey, A. W. & O'Brien, Dennis
Claws exposed Commonweal, claws exposed and teeth bared, has taken its annual lazy and tiresome leap at Catholics for a Free Choice [editorial, March 14]. One wonders what values lead the editors...
...MARIE PICARD Aurora, Ohio...
...Readers have experiences that differ from those of editors and writers...
...For some it may have been a one- or two-note set of issues...
...These readers deserve our respect and thanks...
...The editors reply: Demonizing...
...Why not regard the ability to express one's views succinctly and to be heard as a gift, not a curse...
...Jealousy...
...But nothing about the Common Ground Initiative requires our editor to suspend her powers of critical reasoning...
...O'Brien just sit back and relax while his younger colleagues are made into a new class of migrant workers...
...Dehumanizing...
...In brief: We do not favor the recriminal-ization of all abortions, but we do think that more restrictive abortion laws would better serve to protect human life and dignity...
...If I have to convince people with the experience of Mr...
...JEROME WOLBERT Morris, Minn...
...Kissling finds it improper that this magazine criticizes her organization while its editor participates in the Common Ground Initiative...
...tony distefano Alexandria, Va...
...that is why they write...
...This path will also enhance the lack of communal vision among a university faculty, with part-time faculty coming and going regularly without being allowed to develop a strong commitment to an institution and its student body...
...My concern is that faculty and administrators have not yet recognized the depth of the crisis and the urgency of reform to preserve the liberal arts and establish a rational funding structure...
...Further: Can a computer program really teach students to think clearly and communicate effectively...
...to prohibit abortion the paramount issue of our time and the litmus test of Catholicism...
...Until recently the flagship colleges of City University-CCNY, Brooklyn College, and Hunter-were free and produced many distinguished graduates, including Nobel Laureates...
...Yet in the past eight years state support for public higher education has been cut from 89 percent to 48 percent...
...Democratic pluralism is not a justification for narrowing such legal protections...
...Have they bothered to learn that CFFC was the first to dub the debate about "partial birth" abortions a discussion characterized by "partial truth...
...Put most (too) provocatively: Is public higher education a service to the poor, or a middle-class welfare benefit (like most welfare benefits in America...
...Of course I speak from a private university bias, but I believe that SUNY would benefit from higher tuition accompanied by significant financial aid directed to the needy...
...Yes, there are difficult cases and possible exceptions...
...Rochester's experience was that, in a one-on-one competition with SUNY, half the students to whom we offered financial aid enrolled at Rochester, half at SUNY...
...The high cost of neglect The cover graphic advertising Dennis O'Brien's "The High Cost of College (Continued on page 4) (Continued from page 2) Education" [March 28] was unfortunately appropriate to the article in its replacing students' faces with dollar signs, which are all that many administrators see...
...On the other hand, assuming that higher education can "ele-vate and adorn personal character," I believe that texts and teachers play a necessary role...
...The magazine seems to make the passage of laws (or a Constitutional amendment...
...But by all means, let us reduce the hysteria...
...I have enough trouble convincing my students of the importance of understanding the ideas behind techniques they would rather just assume to be correct...
...Too quickly have we forgotten how the G.I...
...Bill changed the face of higher education in America...
...Many studies have demonstrated the correlation between teacher-student contact and interest in and retention of subject matter...
...We do not assume bad motives on the part of CFFC...
...In our view, it is precisely the concept of boundaries that is at issue here with Catholics for a Free Choice...
...True enough, but, as a former private university president in New York, I find it worth noting that the combination of public and private colleges in that state (133 private institutions alongside CUNY and SUNY) has led to a paradoxical flight of the wealthy to public higher education-at least to SUNY...
...Programmed instruction" on CD-ROM may have glitzy graphics, but when I started teaching (at the very secular University of Chicago) I remember learning the importance of human contact...
...Kissling is overwrought...
...DiStefano is also mistaken...
...It may be "reasonable" to predict outsourcing and more use of adjunct faculty, but we need to consider the effect on all the people involved: students, faculty, and their families...
...Instead of displaying petulance and, dare I say it, jealousy, regarding CFFC's success in capturing the imagination of popular media and winning increasing acceptance and respect among Catholic colleagues and friends, when will Commonweal look for that which is best in CFFC, that which is worthy, that which attracts others rather than what repulses Commonweal...
...CFFC is wrong in its evaluation of the moral principles that decisions concerning abortion entail, and irresponsible in promoting the idea that Catholics are "free" to conclude that abortion is generally permissible...
...This sounds bizarre, but the reason is simple...
...But a straightforward analysis in terms of dollars per student does not do justice to this issue...
...Even pre-calculus and calculus courses are taught (not just by me) for more than the techniques involved-there are fundamental ideas here...
...Why the constant assumption of bad motives, manipulative behavior, and "hardline" positions...
...This has resulted in impossibly large classes in required courses and a longer time in college for many students who cannot get the courses they need because of overcrowding...
...Professor Godfrey's letter comments on the radical cuts in state support of public higher education in New York and suggests that it is the poor who will * suffer most from disinvestment...
...I think it should be the former...
...As resources dry up, they will no longer have access...
...She is also as misleading in her letter to the editors as she routinely is in her presentation of the church's position on abortion...
...The financial crisis for higher education is real, and fervent liberal arts pieties or pleas for the poor will not win the day...
...It would appear that, to the contrary, Commonweal's enthusiasm for finding common ground is parsimoniously dispensed...
...As the letters from Mary Lou Quinn and Carol Dell-man-Andersen [March 28] in-dicate,there are some issues from those years which have just not gone away, contrary to the views of Mary Ann Glendon and Margaret O'Brien Steinfels...
...One wonders what values lead the editors to praise "British frostiness" over Christian civility and hospitality...
...Given the limited number of colleges and universities in most regions, any consortium would likely be sending its faculty across the country to new jobs, possibly every year, already the fate of many new Ph.D.'s...
...See Boston Globe column by Ellen Goodman, October 3,1996.]) Why the derisive conclusion that media crassly and ig-norantly turn to the CFFC "quotation factory...
...DENNIS O'BRIEN Women & everything The feminist movement of the 1970s (or the '50s or the '60s) was a highly contextual movement...
...Commonweal's editors and writers should do all they can to reduce the hysteria and fanaticism surrounding this issue...
...It seems odd that those who support abortion on demand in an absolutist fashion are regarded as progressive and open-minded, while those who have grave reservations about the killing of 1.5 million unborn children each year are labeled fundamentalists prone to fanaticism...
...The number of teaching faculty has decreased while in many cases the number of administrators has increased or held steady...
...we do find sloppy thinking and implausible rationalizations in its frequent public statements...
...But CFFC insists on making the exceptions the rule-and the rule of law...
...It is interesting that Commonweal continues its historical approach toward an organization with which it disagrees when its editor is central to the Catholic Common Ground Initiative-an enterprise that must count on wide dialogue to understand differences among Catholics...
...once again, a college education will be a vehicle to widen the gulf between rich and poor...
...Why not consider that CFFC has something valuable to say that resonates with many...
...Let's not assume that these forecasts, if realized, will have no negative effects on students...
...O'Brien of the value of the liberal arts, then I fear higher education is really in trouble...
...It is the poor who will suffer most from disinvestment in higher education...
...Faculty are not mere commodities...
...I hope his book takes a different tone from the one I see in his article, perhaps less accepting of purported economic eventualities...
...The Initiative's guiding statement, "Called to Be Catholic," asserts that "the very idea of boundaries is a necessary premise, without which no identity can exist...
...A crucial question: Who should make the decision whether or not to have an abortion-the woman (and her conscience), along with her doctor and her clergy person, or rather politicians and judges...
...The writer is president of CFFC...
...Professor Wolbert should note in the last paragraph of my presentation that "education by technology for technology may be just dandy...
...I note that the great management guru Peter Drucker recently predicted in Fortune the utter demise of universities within fifty years infavorof Virtual Reality U...
...Sadly, higher education is no longer viewed as an investment that will repay the investors many times in productive tax-paying citizens...
...In higher education we seem to ignore the warning of James Thurber's young friend, "We can't bury our head in the sand like kangaroos, you know...
...Inclusivity, a concept that can operate at many levels, becomes a...self-contradiction when it impugns any efforts to make distinctions or set defining limits...
...for others it was about everything...
...Pricing higher education Dennis O'Brien's observations on the cost of higher education raise disturbing questions, especially about public colleges and universities...
...When a student applied simultaneously to the University of Rochester (private) and to the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Rochester offered substantial financial aid if the family had limited means, but no aid if the family income was high enough...
...New York state is a case in point...
...I do like some of the computer instruction, but I am no more enthusiastic about adjuncts and outsourcing than he...
...A state senator several years ago claimed that the discrepancy in average family income between SUNY and the private colleges (many of them Catholic) was $60,000 (SUNY), $40,000 (private...
...Universities seem to be adopting the corporate model where high salaries and perquisites go to administrators and a few star professors, and the average salary of the teaching faculty has remained flat for at least fifteen years...
...Teaching these skills is most important for the least well-prepared students but is crucial at every level of instruction...
...Petulance...
...Will Mr...
...The author replies: Professor Wolbert seems to mistake prediction for advocacy...
...Thus the higher income family could save significant (Continued on page 30) (Continued from page 4) dollars by choosing Stony Brook...
...Even if the Catholic church is absolutely right that abortion is always and in all circumstances evil and sinful, what right does the church have to force its belief, by law, on many Protestants, Jews, agnostics, and some Catholics and others who do not share that belief...
...I often find their responses more fascinating than the original articles...
...In our pluralistic society, the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade was and remains a prudent one...
...Fundamentalist on abortion Your publication has a reputation as a "progressive" Catholic magazine, but your editorials dealing with abortion consistently sound fundamentalist...
...Why the demonizing and dehumanizing...
...all the students not eligible for aid because of high family income went to SUNY...
...Godfrey Stony Brook, N.Y...
...FRANCES KISSLING Washington, D.C...
Vol. 124 • April 1997 • No. 8
