MY OPED PIECE
Voice of the People
P.O.Box 610
Halifax, N.S.
B3J 2T2
Fax 426-2810
or E-mail letters@herald.ns.ca.
Published, December 13th, Halifax Mail Star
Where are the voices of the "intellectual class"?
For anyone who cares about what is going on in the world, in case you didn’t notice war with Iraq is imminent if people don’t "take to the streets" in numbers. Canadians will have even more Iraqi blood on their hands then they already do. But I hear little outrage coming from the Canadian academic community. Have we become cut off from our compassion from years of having our noses in books and papers? Have we become so paralyzed by the publish and perish game? Have we become so individualistic that all we can focus on is our research? Have we become simply cogs in the consumption machine? Have we become so afraid to speak out fearing for our job security? Have we become so complacent from our places in the "ivory towers"? Where is our conscience?
There are no excuses when it comes to death and dying and violence. As members of educational institutions which champion rational thought and discussion, war is anathema to this. As academics and citizens it is our duty and responsibility to speak out from our privileged positions. So where is your voice? We should be ashamed of our silence. Silence is condoning the death of thousands and agreeing to a war waged in our names. A war that is about imperialistic power of a nation claiming to be a champion of democracy, a war that is about controlling much of world oil resources for its own selfish purposes, a war that benefits the wealthy and condones a life of misery to the powerless (women, children, the poor, non-whites).
If our administrations and colleagues do not support the freedom to express our opinions, the freedom to challenge the foundations of society and those who seek to control the global economic and political stage, then what does that tell us of our supposed civilized nation? It shows us we are failing in our responsibility to foster debate about issues that affect us all directly.
Canada is known throughout the world as a peacekeeping nation, rightly or wrongly. By supporting an illegal military action of repression against a sovereign nation, we risk having the wrath of desperate peoples used against our citizens. We must end this culture of fear, and stop buying into the fear mongering of the US political, military and corporate machine. We are one of the few groups of workers in a society that can live well with autonomy and freedom of hours of work and areas of work. We must loudly voice our concerns and contribute our knowledge to this situation, knowledge that corporate media fails to include or outright falsifies. We must not be fooled in thinking corporate media speaks of the truth, nor our politicians who have their agendas. We in our positions of seekers of knowledge, must speak out. We must reintroduce issues of morality into this US fabricated crisis. We must question the sanity of certain US leadership. We must also question our complicity in this situation – do we drive SUVs, do we waste resources?
Academics have the power of prestige that is bestowed upon us by our profession. We need to use this to make this world more socially just and safe. I call upon all academics to speak out NOW using all means available to us. With our positions, those means are many: in the classroom, in committee meetings, over the internet through all our academic networks, at the innumerable conferences we attend, in our local communities, churches, associations in which we are members. How heavy will the deaths of Iraqi civilians weigh on your conscience all in the name of US world domination?
Dr. E. Wilma van der Veen Dept. of Sociology and Criminology St. Mary’s University Halifax, NS B3H 3C3 Home address: Site 11 Mod 5 Comp 6, RR #2, Hubbards, NS B0J 1T0 Work phone: 902-420-5872, home phone: 902-857-1152 Email: wwolfvan@yahoo.com
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