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1. Rev. Kevin T. FitzGerald, S.J., Ph.D., will deliver the annual Dr. Edward D. Simmons Lecture at Marquette University at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 17, in the Tony and Lucille Weasler Auditorium. Titled “Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research: Prometheus or Pandora?,” this free, public lecture will explore how biomedical research raises philosophical and theological issues regarding human nature, health and the human good.

Father FitzGerald holds the Dr. David Lauler Chair in Catholic Health Care Ethics and is a research associate professor in the Georgetown University Medical Center’s Department of Oncology. His research efforts focus on the investigation of abnormal gene regulation in cancer and on ethical issues in human genetics.

This is going to be a great event. Kudoes to Marquette for bringing in Fr. FitzGerald. A member of Physicians for Life, he has testified before the US Senate on stem cell research, spoken against it at colleges, spoke out against MO’s cloning referendum, and, interestingly, he’s on board with ANT-OAR.

2. The Law School has returned to the second tier of institutions according to U.S. News and World Report, with a ranking of 97. That’s great news, and I think the progress will continue in years ahead.

3. Marquette will be awarding an honorary doctorate of laws to Vel Phillips, described by the release as “a pioneer in the women’s and civil rights movements in Milwaukee.” She is also very active in liberal and Democratic causes in Wisconsin. We’ll see if the Cardinal Newman Society digs up anything for their annual commencement review.

4. According to NewsBriefs: “Three women from Israel/Palestine will share their stories, fears and hopes for peace at ‘Three Women, Three Faiths, One Shared Vision,’ at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 12, in Olin Engineering, room 202.” The event is sponsored by the Marquette Arab Students Association and the Manresa Project.

The constant anti-Israel drumbeat continues. Partners for Peace is an outgrowth of The American Alliance for Palestinian Human Rights. According to the Partners for Peace announcement of the Three Women tour,

A Muslim Palestinian, Ms. Abu Arqoub approaches political issues from a grassroots perspective and is motivated by the hardships her people endure on a daily basis. A resident of Dura in the occupied West Bank, she works as an Educational Consultant with the Ministry of Education of the Palestinian National Authority.
Ms. Abu Arqoub’s work takes her to schools throughout the district of Hebron where she documents the unique situation students and teachers face as they endure Israeli military and settler violence. She sees overcoming these daily injustices as a key component to peacebuilding and conflict transformation in Israel/Palestine. …
The land Ms. Abu Arqoub calls home is saturated with Jewish Israeli settlements built illegally on Palestinian territory. As a result, Ms. Abu Arqoub works in areas that endure harsh Israeli military and settlement policies that privilege Israeli Jewish settlers over the indigenous Palestinian population. Her commitment to peace between Israelis and Palestinians necessitates her opposition to these Israeli policies, which she describes as apartheid.

Classic. You get the drift.

5. I think I may crash Session 2 (3:00 – 4:30 in AMU 227)) on Friday, April 13th, of the (Samuel) Johnson Society of the Central Region. Reading THE CONSERVATIVE MIND, I’m on a Burke kick at the moment.
Frans De Bruyn (University of Ottawa), “William Shakespeare and Edmund Burke: Literary Allusion in Eighteenth-Century British Political Rhetoric”

6. The Marquette Tribune informs us that Rosalind Hinton, as assistant professor of religious studies at DePaul University (the Vincentians renamed it from “Theology”) will be a panelist on the Vagina Monologues forum.

From an article that Professor Hinton wrote in Cross Currents (The same journal in which Professor Maguire talked sex and blamed America for 9-11):

What better time to explore models of liberating pedagogy than in the midst of war? The man in the White House is now asserting his right to dominate the world in the name of God, goodness, and American freedom. What better time to think about transgressive teaching. While our eyes are trained on a far away nation broken by war and twelve years of sanctions, a man who lost the popular vote is dismantling affirmative action in the name of diversity, public education in order to “leave no child behind,” and Head Start in the name of literacy.

What better time to hold up teachers who have devoted their lives to developing pedagogies that expose arrogance and privilege. I have studied with three great teachers who fit this model, Daniel Berrigan, Alvaro Alcazar, and Rosemary Ruether. What makes these people special in my mind is their steadfast witness to justice, their clarity of thinking on a wide range of issues, but most of all, their ability to create a space that allows for personal awakenings and deepened commitments to a larger world.

We are not in a time when we can throw up our hands and write a disclaimer regarding our government’s actions. For many of us, distancing ourselves from U.S. foreign and domestic policy is something akin to sitting in our rocking chairs on our North American plantations while the poor of the world do our bidding. We simply cannot deny the advantages that we experience as citizens of the most powerful country in the world. This president and his administration have rubbed our noses in our own privilege like piddle on the porch. Anything short of dismantling our own comfort zones is complicity in, perhaps, the most arrogant display of military and economic might the world has ever encountered.

Bravo Marquette.

• An Ecclesiastical Interlude - August 29th, 2008
• DNC Scorecard Day 3 - August 28th, 2008
• Thoughts on DNC Day 2 - August 28th, 2008
• DNC Convention Scorecard, Day 1 - August 26th, 2008
• Random Thoughts and Notes - August 26th, 2008