Social criticism not anti-American
During our weekly Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance meeting, discussion turned to David Lazar’s column (“Your money funds terror,” Feb. 27) accusing the Social Justice Speaker Series of misspending the Undergraduate Students Association Council’s funding on “people who hate America.”
We all agreed that while the speakers of the Social Justice Speaker Series freely express their criticisms of the United States, they should not be branded as “anti-American.”
After all, it would be nearly impossible to find a well-informed person without any criticism of some aspect of the American system.
Furthermore, we would like to note that it was in fact outspoken activists not unlike these speakers who incited the American Revolution, ended slavery, and fought to expand the idea that “all men are created equal.”
Inviting people such as Cindy Sheehan and Sherman Austin to speak at our university does not “cheapen” any debate.
These speakers are representatives not of each and every student at UCLA, but of their own individual movements for social justice.
Whatever they may believe or say, the speakers ignite discourse, the vital foundation of a university.
For example, while many members of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance do not personally agree with what Sheehan believes, we all benefit from knowing and being exposed to what that is.
Lazar’s writing epitomizes the result of the blind belief in American exceptionalism, a belief that has been used as constant justification for both terror and oppression.
Such finger-pointing accusations replace labels such as “communist” with that of “terrorist” and propagate the fallacious dichotomy of the “with us or against America” variety.
In short, the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance fully supports the choices of our democratically elected student representatives in regard to the Social Justice Speaker Series.
A packed room (as was the case with Sheehan) represents only one “small sliver” of the campus community to some.
However, we would point out that when USAC represents those “slivers” of students, the benefits are not concentrated there, but are dispersed across the intellectual life of the university as a whole.
The Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance at UCLA