Queer at Notre Dame? Welcome to the battleground

We all know that one of the key targests of the religious rights War on Freedom in this country is the university campus. Professors are being watched from Los Angeles to New York; conservative students are snitching on their liberal teachers and, increasingly confident, are hijacking classroom discussion; liberal professors are made nervous, because once the huge rightist netroot cyber-culture out there gets ahold of a story, they are bombarded with hatemail from across the nation. University administrators and department heads who sponsor events that are considered anathema by the christian right get the same treatment. So: does a university cave? Or stand up and fight?

In the case of Notre Dame, which has, until recently, had a long history of standing up to the crazies, whether it be McCarthyism or the Ku Klux Klan, we appear to have just witnessed the opening salvo in a new battle in the ongoing fight between academic freedom and the religious right.

On Monday afternoon - and the significance of the date for a catholic institution should be apparent to all - Fr John Jenkins, Notre Dame's new president, addressed the entire university faculty on the issue of 'Academic Freedom and the Catholic Character of the University'. The event was meant to open disussion within the academic community and the students body, to whom Jenkins spoke the following day. At issue in this initial testing of the water were the upcoming Queer Film Festival, and the planned student production of The Vagina Monologues on V-Day. Pretty tame stuff, I hear you say. And you are right. But on the campus of Notre Dame, according to 'official' lists, the least most inhospitable campus in the country to its gay and lesbian students, it is more of a big deal.

The distinction that he makes is one between 'sponsorship' and 'censorship'. Subtle, huh? If we allow something called a 'Festival' to take place on campus, then the 'values' of Notre Dame are seen to be somehow endorsing homosexuality. And in the couple of years since this little festival has been running - it shows films, and has panels of invited guest speakers come to campus - the conservatives have been going nuts : 'Moral chaos at Notre Dame!' their bloglines scream; 'This formerly Catholic university' they (to use chimpspeak) limply opine...

And the university is beginning to cave to the emails, the letters, the threats from alumni to withdraw money. This is only the start.

Here's what I'm asking you kossacks to help do. And this will become, because of the nature of the university and the idea of 'Notre Dame' that Americans have, a very public battle. I'm asking you to mount a counter-campaign to the religious right and their pressure to close out free speech and academic freedom at Notre Dame. I am asking you to focus your beam for a concerted moment on this issue. Remember, the first commencement address that Bush gave as president was at Notre Dame; Cheney was here in the last campaign, despite huge protests. The right is trying to use Notre Dame, probably the premier religious university in the country, as a platform. Please help us to take it back. If it can be scared to the right, let us try to help the administration re-grow its spine, as of old, and move it back to where it should be.

Register your fears over the new homophobic dispensation that Jenkins is beginning. Demand that academic freedom be protected at all costs, both for students and faculty.Bombard him.

Here is a link to Fr John Jenkins:

http://president.nd.edu/...

Thanks. My first diary.