In Canada, we have our own shameful (albeit different from the US) history with Indigenous people that we are still trying to work through. I can argue/understand either side on these types of decisions. But if SJU is going to turn away from Columbus Day, stand up and say so. Don't hide behind the "Mini-Fall Break" line.
The problem I have with the action by the university is that the decision is not so much based on values or morality as it is going along with a culture that cancels long held accomplishments of individuals based on contemporary values.
So we have founding fathers that are no longer revered despite their role in building our nation because of what we find universally reprehensible today but was such a contested issue that our nation engaged in civil war.
I'm actually okay with those determinations if they are done as a result of examination of the facts concluding based on deeply held moral convictions that those individuals no longer deserve our respect and honor.
However I do have a problem with those leaders who go with the flow because something is politically expedient. That doing something according to your convictions will bring disdain or heat upon you if you stand up in righteousness and hold firm.
Columbus, who it was just revealed, may not even been Italian by DNA. Curiously that exhuming of his bones 400 years later and declaring he was a Sephardic Jew quite possibly not born in Genoa Italy kind of fits in current plans that separate Columbus as a source of Italian American pride in our country. So now in addition to Columbus possibly not been the first explorer to discover the Americas, not having set foot in North America, and engaging in warfare with Indigenous tribes he encountered, guess what folks? He was a Jew, you know, those people who are somehow the violent aggressors despite being the victims of the most violent terrorist attack one year ago.
Universities owe it to their charters, to be great halls of public debate. To examine facts as we know them and use develop critical thinking skills in students by testing theorems as to whether what we hold to be true are actually valid.
Instead, in recent years even doctrines that are at the bedrock of our nation, such as "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" are challenged or distorted. I'm 100% okay with challenge. Social science as with physical science must continually subject itself to testing and re-testing as new evidence might reveal that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth.
In recent years we fired an adjunct professor not for suggesting their was an inherent good in slavery, as he was accused of by a group proclaiming themselves radicals, but terminatec because it was easier to fire an adjunct without standing in the university than to stand with him and defend him while possibly bringing the wrath of those who were burning cities.
When a Catholic University does these things, whether terminating faculty wrongly our canceling a long held holiday celebrating the discoverer of America, not because of alleged wrongs but simply because it is expedient to do so, we become less than who we say we are. Pontius Pilate questioned "what is truth?" before yielding to the mob. A university owes it to itself to at the very least do the same before yielding to the mob.
St. Patrick may have been Italian and not Irish. There were also no snakes to be driven out of Ireland, which is part of St. Patrick's myth. I wish we could say the same.
nypost.com
