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aS CAM'S EDITOR AND PUBLISHER, I GO TO REUNION
Weekend every year. In my official capacity, I help to staff
the magazine's booth at the All-Alumni Affair in Barton
Hall and report on key events such as the president's State of
the
University address. But once every five years, I also attend as a
returning member of my class. This was one of those years.
 Like my classmates--170 of whom came to campus this summer--
I enjoyed the social aspects of our 35th Reunion, including
a couple of convivial dinners and a soggy Saturday lunch,
where President David Skorton and his wife, Robin Davisson,
joined us in taking refuge from the rain under a tent on the Ag
Quad.We also had a great presentation by astronomy professor
Jim Bell. Five years ago, he had told us about the upcoming Mars
rover project and what scientists hoped to accomplish with these
marvelous devices. Since then, of course, the rovers have proven
to be one of the great success stories of space exploration--so
Bell
returned to show us spectacular shots of the Red Planet's surface,
some of which had been taken only hours before.
There were some thought-provoking moments, too, including
a panel discussion on student activism moderated by our
classmate Donald Downs, a political science professor at the University
of Wisconsin and the author of Cornell '69. The panel
included the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a member of Cornell United
Religious Work in the late Sixties and a famous anti-war activist,
and three professors: Richard Polenberg, Paul Sawyer, and Fredrik
Logevall. The discussion evoked memories of the difficult days
we had spent on campus, with semesters disrupted by the Straight
takeover and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Some
classmates had expressed reservations about this event, fearing
that it might re-open old wounds. But in the end, I think, those
of us who attended were glad to have an opportunity to reflect on
this aspect of our undergraduate days and the way it had affected
our lives.
The most thought-provoking--and unsettling--event of the
weekend, though, was the Olin Lecture. It featured Sheryl
WuDunn '81--a Cornell trustee and former member of the CAM
committee--and her husband, Nicholas Kristof (a Harvard grad,
of all things).WuDunn and Kristof are journalists at the New York
Times, and they won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for their coverage
of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. This year, their joint
address focused on the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan,
in northeastern Africa. After WuDunn provided a global context
for the internecine warfare in Darfur, Kristof gave a chilling
account of the genocide he has personally witnessed there, a subject
he has written about repeatedly in his Times columns.He estimated that
more than a half-million people, many of them
women and children, have been killed in Darfur, with little
response from the world community. The U.S. government, he
noted, has provided humanitarian aid, but "has not been as good
at standing up to the Sudanese government to get them to stop."
World events, especially the violence raging in the Middle
East, have since pushed the Darfur conflict even farther into the
background.We see few headlines these days about the situation
there--but it has not improved. In fact, it seems to be getting
worse. Kristof--who was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his
commentary about Darfur--wrote in his July 6 column that "violence
is rippling from Sudan ever wider into both Chad and the
Central African Republic." He quoted Jan Egeland, the United
Nations undersecretary monitoring the situation, as saying, "I
think we're headed into total chaos."
For those of us who believed in the importance of protesting
war and injustice when we were students, it was a powerful
reminder of our youthful passion. Our views may (or may not)
have changed since then, but there is no "red" or "blue" position
on what is happening in Darfur. It's simply wrong--and, as
Nicholas Kristof told us, "we are obliged to assert our humanity."
-- Jim Roberts '71 |
