Terrorism: Remember That?

[Security Update] Last night and this afternoon political junkie and Salt Lake City mayor alum and Ted Wilson*attended two events connected with the annual Rocco and Marion S. Siciliano Forum at the University of Utah. The endowed lecture series is sponsored by the U.'s College of Social and Behavioral Science. Its mission is to focus on the state of American society (a wide range of topics, obviously).

Following is Ted's account of the discussion:

Yes, Things are Bad, But They May be Worse.

Just as we thought things might be getting tense, when stock markets dive, jobs disappear, and the economy sucks, the Rocco and Marion S. Siciliano Forum at the University of Utah's College of Social and Behavioral Science gathered up some of the nation's leading experts on terrorism. The message is sobering. Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, and co-chairman of the 9-11 Commission kicked off the event with a speech at the Rice-Eccles Stadium tower.

He pointed out complacency toward another terrorist attack as the biggest problem; only 5 percent of the electorate this year listed terrorism as a major political issue. Hamilton did not mince words: "America is not as prepared as it should be to protect the country from terrorism. Another attack on the United States is a probability." During a panel today, Margaret Warner, senior correspondent for PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer asked three experts a final question: "How likely is it the United States will be hit with a major terrorist attack in the next five years?" The answer was, collectively, "probable." It makes one shudder they all used the same word. It's another reason to hope Barack Obama brings change to the national scene.

(Members of the panel: Bruce Hoffman; professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service; Amos N. Guiora; professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah and former terrorism expert in the Israel Defense Forces Judge Advocate General's Corps; Chibli Mallat; legal counsel for Amnesty International's Middle East office and current professor at the S.J. Quinney Law School.)

(Holly Mullen)

*Ted Wilson is my husband and an occasional blogger.

Brian the Quarterback

[Hardscrabble Utes] What a week. Barack Obama runs away with the presidential election on Tuesday, and the University of Utah Utes pull off a 13-10 squeaker against Texas Christian University last night at Rice-Eccles stadium.

It was a final two minutes of terror, watching the blue-collar built Utes pull this one from the brink. Unless you've been sleeping inside a haystack for the past several weeks, you know the TCU Horned Frogs have the second-best defensive squad in the country--and for much of the game their offensive strategy was nothing to sneeze at, either.

But the Utes have this energy down deep that has a way of bursting forth in the final minutes of play (remember two TDs in the last couple of minutes against powerhouse Oregon State). They did it again last night, with wonder-quarterback Brian Johnson nailing a pass straight to receiver Freddie Brown in the final 50 seconds of the game for the Utes' only touchdown and the win. This is a hardscrabble team, with simply no capacity for losing. Seriously. These guys are a lunch bucket-carrying group. They work for a living--like a whole squad of Joe the Plumbers, except with helmets and padding. In fact, had John McCain had Brian the QB on his side, he just might have pulled out a win. Johnson is just that good, just that calm in a storm and just that persistent on the drive downfield.

Ute fans are now this close to another BCS busting season. The team's #10 national ranking is sure to climb after this weekend and there's pure joy at the thought of beating the team down south.

Happy Days are here again. Anyone else out there want to crow and strut about this incredible team? Lemme hear it. (Holly Mullen)

EnergySolutions + U of U = BFF!

[Nukes and U] This just landed in my e-mail box: The University of Utah announced today a $1.5 million gift from the EnergySolutions Foundation to establish a Presidential Endowed Chair in Nuclear Engineering in its College of Engineering.

The gift will also help underwrite expanded curriculum and a new minor in nuclear engineering at the U.

Well, great. It's tough to turn down that kind of money--even from creepy and mendacious EnergySolutions CEO Steve Creamer. But perhaps, just maybe, some of that endowment money for the training of budding nuke engineers could go toward finding a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste. Because so far, no country in the world or any city in America has come up with a solution to that messy little problem. Oh, except for dumping it at Yucca Mountain, Nev. In our own little western back yard.

Meanwhile, in the middle of our growing energy crisis, it's full-speed ahead for nuclear power, because say its advocates, its clean and plentiful.

U. President Michael K. Young apparently has no qualms about nuclear energy or its costs, choosing to all but hand over the keys to the university to Energy Solutions: “We are committed to improving the available supply of clean, efficient and environmentally responsible energy, "said Young in today's announcement. “The EnergySolutions Foundation Presidential Endowed Chair will enable us to bring to bear the University’s resources and talents in helping to solve the nation’s energy challenges and increase the supply of professionals for all nuclear industries.”

According to the U.'s news release:

The goal of the U’s program expansion is to help address the critical shortfall in qualified professionals for nuclear industries including, power generation, extraction and storage of nuclear materials, health care and related industries. The U.S. currently uses more than 780 billion kilowatt hours per year of electricity generated by nuclear power plants--about one fifth of the total amount (4 trillion kilowatt hours) consumed in the U.S.

And again, just sayin'--does anyone want to talk about practical and safe disposal of nuclear waste? Or will the U. treat that topic as everyone else does--as an unpleasant and nagging afterthought we'd just as soon pass on to our great-grandkids.

(Holly Mullen)

No, Not Techies

[Low-life criminality] Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder announced the arrest of three men today in connection with last month's theft of records pertaining to 1.5 million patients of the University of Utah's hospitals and clinics. Winder says there's little cause for concern that the suspects may have hacked into the computer records for Social Security numbers and other sensitive information. And mug shots of the guys, who look a little like meth-soaked pirates, would seem to back up the sheriff's premise.

Said Winder at a news conference earlier today:

"They definitely aren't techies. There's no question about that. I don't know that they could find their rear end with both hands." (Holly Mullen)

Let the Girls Play

[Sports Melodrama] The University of Utah men's basketball team meets Colorado State in just over an hour at the Huntsman Center on the U. campus.

CSU is in the basement of the Mountain West Conference standings. The Utes have lost their last two games. It's gotten so bad for Utah that peripatetic coach Jim Boylen still can't let go of his rage against Wyoming for a last-minute cheap play at the expense of his team last Saturday.

Meanwhile, I'm telling you people: All hope lies with the U. of U. women's team. Last Sunday, the Ute women handily beat the Wyoming Cowgirls, no slouch on the national women's roster. They've clinched the MWC title. Watch how far they go in The Big Dance.

Tickets to the women's game have been going for $1. Would you rather pay to watch winners for $1 or listen to winers who will be lucky to finish in the bottom three, but will still attract thousands in the stands simply because they are male? (Holly Mullen)

Utah Women All Over It

[Sports] Since so many of us are counting the days until NCAA March Madness, I feel compelled to make my annual pitch:

Go watch the University of Utah women's basketball team play. This Sunday. 3 p.m. Huntsman Center on the U. of U. campus. They're playing Wyoming.

Why should you go? Because these women are--simply put--awesome.

Need another reason? The men's team pretty much sucks this season (and I'm a season-ticket holder and dedicated fan, even in the bad years). Coach Jim Boylen is fun to watch, and he ends nearly every game sputtering out a plea for fans to never give up on his team. They're young, they're building a program, etc.

As for the women Utes, they're already built. They don't need any explanation--to anyone. Coach Elaine Elliott amazes fans every year with her skill in teaching her women teamwork and all the best moves. Watch 5-foot-5 point guard Leilani Mitchell (second in the country in assists) pivot and weave under and around players two heads taller and you'll see what I mean. (That's Mitchell in the photo, courtesy of the Mountain West Conference.)

Besides, admission is way cheap. They never come close to filling the Huntsman Center, and you can move up to better seats.

The Utah women are ranked 16th in the nation.They're quick, they're hot. Are you going? I'll see you there. (Holly Mullen)

Majerus and that Pie Hole Problem

[Loose Lips] Gotta say, it's tough knowing what side to come down on in the ongoing saga that is life for Rick Majerus, former (and most winning) Runnin' Utes coach. Majerus, current coach of the St. Louis University Billikens men's basketball team, has opened his big pie hole and created havoc...again. And again. (That's two St. Louis Catholic honchos, and Majerus on the far right in this St. Louis Post-Dispatch photo.)

Majerus is a Wisconsin native, son of a major labor organizer, and with his salty mouth and huge girth, could pass for your basic stereotype of a Hormel meat packer. His coaching style, at least at Utah, included making points at practice by whipping out his penis to scold Michael Doleac and routinely calling his college players by that classy slang word for female genitalia.

He left the University of Utah in 2004, following a very public account in the daily newspapers of the way he singled out one of his players, hearing-impaired center Lance Allred, as a "cripple" and a "disgrace to cripples." The official U. account was that he left for medical reasons. But the truth is, big donors and lifelong fans were getting rather fed up with his inhumanity.

It took the U. far too long to address the problem of Rick Majerus, mostly because he won games. Bunches of 'em. And he took the Utes to a 1998 Final Four appearance. Glory Days. But the man was/is vulgar, loud and frequently bigoted. And a liberal iconoclast, to boot.

So now, he's on the wrong side of official Catholic-dom for speaking openly, in public, on his own time as an American citizen at a political rally, in support of abortion rights. I must say, a guy who counts "c--t" as one of his favorite insults while supporting Roe v. Wade is a study in contrasts. My feminist sensibilities are on a roller coaster ride.

What do you think? Should Majerus, who coaches at a private Catholic university, have the right to not only hold an anti-church position on abortion but to speak out about it? Does anyone in a similar position have that right? Could a coach at Salt Lake's Judge Memorial Catholic High School march in a pro-choice rally? What about BYU football coach Bronco Mendenhall? Not that it would ever happen, but I'm just sayin'.

Any thoughts? (Holly Mullen)

Martin Luther King Jr. is Not Santa Claus

[Speech] Dr. Cornel West delivered a thundering speech today at the University of Utah's Martin Luther King day commemoration. West, a renegade scholar and social philosopher, owned the crowd after his first opening line "Utah, the sky, the mountains...traveling from New Jersey to Utah requires a paradigm shift."

A newcomer to the talk may very well have been blown away by the speech West delivered, at times hilarious, thrilling, calling to mind the memory of Martin Luther King Jr, in the same breath deconstructing the Latin roots of the word "human" and drawing forth a lesson about the blues in the process.

The lesson overall was about resurrecting King's memory and not subjecting it to as he called "Santa Claus-ification." West exhorted the packed house not to just drag out the memory of King as a sanitized holiday for expressing trite platitudes about civil rights.

In a speech that exemplified how West has come to be a rock star of modern philosophy, West invoked the ghost of Socrates to advance a painful dialogue about what American democracy is built upon. He even called forth the Socratic meditation on death as a call for Americans to meditate on death in America. Death of civic, spiritual and psychic life for people of color and society's marginalized.

To meditate on death in the Socratic spirit is to help reinvest dedication to life, and for this call of arms West wondered "how will you examine yourself as a human being, in time you will only be a culinary delight to the worms of this terrestrial earth, but who you are in between the womb and the tomb is what matters now."

West even commented on the nation's current grappling with terrorism in the middle east, arguing that people of color have struggled with terror for the last 400 years, and their response as a people has been to resist terror on principles of peace and nonviolence.

"Why after 400 years of racist terrorism has there been no black Al-Qaeda?" west asked adding "because as a people we have said 'I'm not getting into the gutter with the gangsters, I will take a higher, moral, spiritual ground."

The passion and revivalist electricity West brought to the crowd was amazing, and the sheer amount of name dropping of philosophers and novelists, blues artists and civil rights activists was enough to stun most of the crowd.

And I suspect the name dropping was enough to cause critics to scoff. In the past West has been a lightning rod for conservative critics who paint him as affirmative actions Frankenstein monster. A lightweight scholar using PC political clout to give him free rein to publish less and do more speaking engagements and cut hip-hop albums.

But I disagree. People forget West got into Harvard at 17, finished a degree in near eastern languages and civilization and went on to finish a degree in theology from Princeton where he now teaches. Theology ain't a field of study for lightweights, and as a student of philosophy myself I'm encouraged by the rambling scholar/activist approach West takes, which while might mean he writes fewer books to prop up the ivory tower as compared to some in academia, I'm encouraged that his activism- from political campaigning for candidates like Bill Bradley in 2000 (and soon Obama in South Carolina) to appearing on the Daily Show- is one founded in a unique philosophy of Rorty-esque neo-pragmatism, that bucks conventional and historical approaches to philosophy and scholarship.

But the greatest endorsement I thought was when at the beginning of his speech West thanked a former Harvard admissions director Chase Peterson, and former President of the University of Utah, "for a Mormon brother to take a chance on a 17 year old black brother like me from Sacramento California, I thank you again."

While West may be an academic diva, he's earned it in my book. (Eric S. Peterson)

Rethinking Dope

[Drugs] A rag-tag band of University of Utah professors from every discipline from Philosophy, Political Science to Law and Pharmacotherapy are trying to shake things up with a new book on society's contradictory views and policies on drugs.

The question they ask is why doesn't society approach all controlled substances from some form of uniform policy?

The interdisciplinary tack these scholars take doesn't pull any punches, whether it's questioning what role political lobbying has in keeping alcohol legal and marijuana illegal, or positing whether or not there are stiffer penalties for possession of crack vs. cocaine because of racist implications of crack abuse by certain poor African American populations.

Certainly drug contradictions here in Zion abound where so many Utahns have witnessed the cultural norms about the harmlessness of prescription drugs. Such naive beliefs have pushed many casual pill poppers from a party drug to the hard realities of heroin, as was written this month in City Weekly. (Eric S. Peterson)

Clinton's Cerebellum

[Clinton Speech] What a difference a brain makes.

That was the feeling I walked away with Sunday afternoon after hearing Bill Clinton on the stump for Hillary at the University of Utah Union Ballroom. Read the standard quote-paraphrase-quote-paraphrase daily newspaper coverage of the event here and here.

Unlike the current occupant of the White House, Clinton can form a full sentence without tripping over his tongue. But it gets better. The man can then form another sentence. And then another. Before you know it, you are actually hearing an entire stream of cogent, rational thought. One idea tracks to the next. And the next. Clinton even has the talent for outlining a speech, tossing out his main themes (by number, even! One, two and three!) and by then returning to each point, one at a time.

It's called oratory skill. The best presidents (think Lincoln, both of the Roosevelts, Kennedy and Clinton) have it. We've been tortured for seven straight years in listening to a president who sweats just trying to follow a noun with a verb.

Listening to Clinton was a day of auditory liberation. It was like V-J Day for the ears.

Beyond that, he left the crowd with this sobering thought: Whomever wins the race for president, in any era, "the only thing that matters is: Are things better when you left than when you started?' "

We still have 14 months to suffer under Bush and I think we have the answer, right? (Holly Mullen)

Younge Love

[Truth to Power] Gary Younge started writing for The Guardian in London in 1994 and is now the liberal tabloid's U.S. correspondent, based in New York City. He's also a frequent contributor here in the U.S. to The Nation.

Younge stopped at the University of Utah today at an event sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists. He also promoted his latest book: Stranger in a Strange Land: Encounters in the Disunited States. Before that he wrote No Place Like Home: A Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South.

Because he's been steeped in the beauty of alternative reporting and writing, Younge told the audience he long ago gave up on any notion of true objectivity. Bingo. Beyond that, he said, a journalist's main responsibility is to be fair, thorough and professional. You make the calls, you run the traps. You bring your own truth and experiences to the story and write it.

I was sort of entranced. I took notes. That's because I consider myself a thorough and fair journalist, right out of Younge's blueprint. But as I sat down to write this post, I suddenly could not find my notebook. Seriously. I think I left it behind, sitting on an auditorium chair.

Hope Younge won't mind then, that I paraphrase what struck me as a memorable riff of his discussion. He said he often runs into critics of the U.S. press who say reporters are too bent on "gotcha stories" that embarrass public officials for no good reason (uh, I think those critics must watch Fox News exclusively). It isn't that Younge endorses all gotcha stories, either. Far from it. Reporters, he said, shouldn't go about constantly trying to find ways to "get" people they cover -- though the practice has its place and keeps those whose salaries we pay on their toes.

However, he said, it might have been nice if more American reporters had practiced a little gotcha journalism in the run-up to the god-awful war we're now entrenched in. What we might have learned had the national press pushed harder for the truth on weapons of mass destruction and needled and nagged harder for the Bush Administration to actually find Osama bin Laden before he sent soldiers off to dig Saddam out of a spider hole.

We had the chance to do our jobs, and we fell flat. (Holly Mullen)