by Louis Black
One can only sympathize with the current predicament of University of Texas at
Austin President Robert Berdahl, who is, by all accounts, a good president and
a fine person. In what is an entirely symbolic battle, he is caught between a
rock and a hard place — several rocks and several hard places, in fact. The
fight over naming a building after Jim Bob Moffett could potentially place
Berdahl between two warring factions on campus, as well as between Trustees and
some of the faculty, and, perhaps, between his head and his heart. A major
cause of this dilemma is that Chancellor William Cunningham sits on the Board
of Freeport-McMoRan. (The issues I won’t address here are why the board
suspended its rules regarding the size of the donation and the naming of a
building, and if Cunningham’s dual roles indicate a total conflict of
interest.) But, so far, an all-out on-campus fight hasn’t materialized. The
faculty, even those who have spoken out, have still been remarkably courteous
toward Berdahl, largely out of respect for his position.
The power of money is brutal. A building is being named after Jim Bob Moffett
not because of any intellectual or social achievement, but because he gave a
certain amount of money to the University. But the object of the University is
to educate students, not name buildings. If we were going to pretend that every
named building on campus honored a worthy person, then we would all be
picketing the Jesse Jones Communications Building on a daily basis. You might
think that, if there were a morality content to the naming of buildings on
campus, such a building should honor the highest moral and ethical vision of
journalism. Naming the building after Jones, a prominent right-wing power
during the McCarthy era, would indicate exactly the opposite. In order to
function, the University needs money. The University’s purpose is to educate
students. I’m not being glib here, we’re not talking about a pastoral college
of a few hundred where every family’s bloodline is well known, we are talking
about the University of Texas.
Their insensitivity towards the planet (which seems to be a hallmark of how
Freeport-McMoRan does business) turns my stomach and offends some of my deepest
ideological beliefs, especially about the responsibilities of businesses in the
free enterprise system. If the University were naming a building after a
progressive liberal and the right wing attacked because they didn’t like her
pro-abortion stance, how would we feel about the integrity of the
building-naming process? Should we name buildings after people who offend no
one? Should we name buildings after people who simply don’t offend us?
Don’t get me wrong, I think morality and ethics should guide all
decision-making. But whose morality and whose ethics? I think it is simply
tragic that the UT campus will have a building named after Jim Bob Moffett, but
I wouldn’t spend a minute of my day trying to stop it. That would imply that
these named buildings indeed honor a person rather than simply record financial
contributions. In that vein, it would be assumed that UT and this Austin
community were in some way honoring Jones (and who knows who else has buildings
named after them on campus; I’m certainly not about to undertake this
research), and that we as a community had decided, by a lack of ongoing
protest, to acknowledge that honor.
Now, if I were a UT student or professor, having to live and work on the
campus, my visceral reaction to this naming would certainly be more militant.
Having to walk by a building every day that was simply a monument to one
person’s ability to donate to the University would, perhaps, question the core
value of the idea of the university. We should respect and honor the students
who have taken a stand because they still insist that the University is not
simply an institution of learning but a moral universe. Their sensibility
improves the campus. But let’s not lend dignity to a process completely without
it.
n
The Chronicle will be closed this Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.
The staff and extended family of the Chronicle offer you our most
heartfelt best wishes. In whatever shape or form you celebrate, and with
whatever or whomever makes up your larger family, may it be a great holiday.
We’ll reopen next Monday at 9am. n
This article appears in November 24 • 1995 and November 24 • 1995 (Cover).