United Nations and Stanford

     In the old days, Stanford's commencement speaker was always a distinguished academic. Stanford was proud of its academic integrity, and it still does not give honorary degrees. Then, about ten years ago, to avoid the charge of elitism and to fill he stadium to which the ceremony had been moved, Stanford began choosing pop speakers. I protested, and made a survey of the reception of previous speakers since the foundation days and found out that, with one exception, all the speeches had been judged excellent.
     Recently, the tendency has been pay special attention to the opinions of students. I would have thought that the opinion of the faculty would be equally important. This year the choice is U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. We should be better informed about the United Nations, although I am suspicious of the General Assembly, which represents largely countries which have little responsibility and in many cases a built-in anti-Western bias.
     I receive from the United Nations two copies of many publications which Green Library does not. I give one copy to Green Library, and the other I have been giving to the International Center. I thought it more appropriate to give the latter to the instructor of a course on the United Nations, but there are none. I called around, trying to give them to interested faculty, but got no takers. In other words, there is at Stanford no serious interest in the U.N.
     The United Nations is not a balanced organization. Not only is Kofi Annan black, it has been celebrating Africa month, and it is staging a series of "world conferences against racism" to mark the end of he third decade of the struggle against racism, culminating in a major conference in South Africa. "Racism" is usually a code-word for the West.
     Kofi Annan will give his speech, be applauded, and depart. Any criticism of his statements will get little publicity. There should be, as after the President's State of the Union Address, a reply. I disagree sharply with Pat Buchanan, but he is intelligent, well-informed, and articulate. He should be invited too, so that we may hear the pros and the cons. That it what a university is supposed to promote.

Ronald Hilton - 3/1/00