BY MARINA DUNDJERSKI
UCLA Today Staff
In a special session April 14, the Academic
Senate adopted a controversial resolution against the war in
Iraq and called for international oversight in the country’s
rebuilding.
Approved by a 180-to-7 vote, the resolution
states, in part, that the assembled faculty “deplore the
doctrine of preventive war espoused by the President of which
the invasion of Iraq is the first application.” It further
states opposition to “the establishment of an American
protectorate in Iraq.”
As faculty members waited more than an hour
in Korn Convocation Hall for a quorum of 200 to show up, speakers
on both sides took to the microphones to debate whether the
resolution on the war was an appropriate issue for the Senate
to take up.
“We offer exactly what is needed —
careful, considered reflection based on reason, detached from
the world of emotions that inevitably still the critical debate
that our nation so badly needs,” said Roger Waldinger,
chair of the sociology department and one of the antiwar organizers
who called for the meeting. “Moreover, our meeting is
entirely consistent with our educational mission. Today, we
affirm our deepest commitments that it is always time, and always
right to ask questions ... that law and reason should prevail
over force.”
However, several faculty said the action went
beyond the Senate’s purview.
“It seems to me that this is something
that all of us may engage in and debate in our living rooms,
or on e-mail lists or on op-ed pages, but it is not something
that the faculty Senate should be doing,” said Eugene
Volokh, law professor. “It is a misuse of the very substantial
cachet, the title of professor at UCLA.”
Originally, several members approached Academic
Senate Chair Duncan Lindsey to call for a special session. But
Lindsey declined to do so because he believed the matter belonged
outside the Senate. However, bylaws state that a special meeting
must be held if at least 200 members request it; a petition
with more than 200 names was submitted.
In a probable next step, mail balloting of
all 3,300 members will be done if 35 signatures are collected.
Faculty at UC Santa Barbara passed a similar
resolution Feb. 24.
