August 23,2000
Past ODE Perspectives
In the last decade, this country has
adopted a mentality that a lawsuit
will solve a problem or make some
money. Mediation is the perfect rem
edy to a growing problem.
(Aug. 21,1996, Law School Edition)
Wednesday
Editor in chief: Jack Clifford
Associate Editors: Rebecca Newell
and Jeff Smith
Newsroom: (541) 346-5511
Room 300, Erb Memorial Union
P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
ode@oregon.uoregon.edu
Holding court with the supreme campus voice
There’s an old song that says “two outta
three ain’t bad.” But six out of seven is a lot
better, so when it’s time to discuss the mod
ern Supreme Court it’s only responsible to
visit the man who accumulated that win-loss
record arguing before that judicial body —
“It’s the Super Bowl of American law,” he
said — in his previous capacity as Attorney
General of Oregon.
University Presi
I dent Dave Frohnmay
er had plenty of ideas
on the nature and di
rection of the Court,
along with the con
stant need to relearn
the importance of the
First Amendment and
1 the need for students
[• to be informed on the
top judiciary’s deci
sions.
“You start with the
obvious truth that it’s
the most powerful
court in the history ot recorded civilization,”
Frohnmayer said. “It’s also, ironically, one of
our most secretive institutions.”
But while there is not much debate on the
power of America’s top court or its reclusive
Bret
Jacobson
habits, there is a flurry of debate
on the type of the bias demon
strated by the court. Legendary
news man David Brinkley was
known to say that something is
only biased when you don’t
agree with it, and with the high
ly controversial decisions put
out by the Court in recent years
it is hard to give it a traditional
conservative or liberal spin.
However, there is one word I
that many use, including Frohn- ■
mayer, to label the current group
— activist.
“Although some people say
that it’s conservative, it has been
an extraordinarily activist court,”
he said. “First of all, it’s shown a
willingness to strike down both
federal and state legislation that
appeared to impinge on the
Court’s own authority.”
This can be a disturbing trend
to many. While Frohnmayer
pointed to the example of the
Religious Freedom and Restora
tion Act, there have been others
cases — such as the recent Dickerson v. Unit
ed States — which have steamrolled Con
Although
some people say
that it’s conserva
tive, it has been
an extraordinari
ly activist court.
Dave 4 4
Frohnmayer. * *
University president
gressional ability to make laws in
the areas where the court has
previously ruled.
In the Dickerson case, the
Court held that Congress could
not pass a law that affected the
Court’s previous ruling on police
use of Miranda rights. The prob
lem for some, however, is that
the Miranda rights were never
enacted by Congress but rather
instituted by the justices, mean
ing the Court is now striking
down laws by elected officials in
favor of their own rulings.
But there is another clear
trend, according to Frohnmayer.
“Over the last decade it’s
shown a real eagerness to rede
fine the concept of federalism in
terms of limitations on Congres
sional power, in particular,” he
said.
Whereas the previous notion
was of allowing the Congress to
exercise supreme power, Frohn
mayer said now that’s changed.
“So both in striking down
Congressional legislation and reasserting
federalism and reasserting its own role, I’d
call this an activist court,” he said.
With such a powerful and active body set
ting the legal tempo of the country, and the
odds against the average student knowing
the goings on of the Court, it’s important that
the subject is taken more seriously by a
greater number of students.
“It’s Civics 101,” the president said of the
need for education on the subject to exist in
all states of public school.
But the president did call the high levels
of awareness and debate around the recent
Southworth case “gratifying.” The case led
students from all points of view to research,
explore and argue about the role of student
fees to fund student groups on campus.
In the end, after all the analysis on the na
ture and biases of the Court, the final thought
must be a Frohnmayer quote warning that
the Court, while important, is not the end
all, be-all of jurisprudence because the Court
is still a body designed to interpret and up
hold the Constitution.
“Constitutional law is more than what the
Supreme Court says it is.”
Bret Jacobson is a columnist for the Oregon Daily
Emerald. His views do not necessarily represent those
of the Emerald. He can be reached via e-mail at bja
cobso@gladstone.uoregon.edu.
It’s not always
what you know, but why you should know it
“I don’t even know what street Canada is on.”
—Al Capone
Here we go again, yet another article —
this one in The New York Times last month
— telling us how incredibly ignorant we
Americans are. Like its predecessors, it in
tended to shock, and shock it did. College
seniors from leading universities, among
them Harvard, Princeton and Brown, took a
high school-level history exam. Most
missed half the answers. They didn’t have
the foggiest idea when the Civil War was,
what the Scopes trial was about, or who
said “Give me liberty or give me death” —
not even with multiple-choice answers.
(Most did, however, correctly identify Beav
is and Butt-head and Snoop Doggy Dog,
among the exam’s sops to popular culture.)
If there’s one thing Americans do excel at,
it’s self-flagellation. We seem to take perverse
pleasure in putting ourselves down before
the world, demonstrating once more how
woefully illiterate we are, how bankrupt are
our schools, how unworthy is our citizenry.
Perhaps I, as a journalist for 25 years and
also a professor of journalism, should be
particularly disturbed. But at the risk of in
curring the wrath of my peers, I find these
studies to be largely empty exercises whose
conclusions are misleading and whose con
sequences are downright dangerous.
I do not defend ignorance, but I do like a lit
tle perspective. The studies suggest we are
hopelessly ignorant, the laughingstock of the
rest of the world. Such lamentations have
spawned a cottage industry of academic Hen
ny Pennys warning that those who are igno
rant of the past are doomed to repeat it.
Such dire conclusions make headlines.
But the hysteria is largely unfounded, the
implicit suggestions as hyperbolic as they
are destructive. They contribute to a nation
al inferiority complex that is unwarranted,
unfair to our youth and our teachers, and a
distortion of both our place in the world
and that of other nations.
Let’s begin with the notion that Ameri
cans are know-nothings. Granted, Ameri
cans have a slippery grasp of history and
current events. Not long ago, Richard Craig,
now a professor at San Jose State, found that
nearly 75 percent of his otherwise bright
students at the University of Michigan did
n’t know who Stalin was. Another study re
ported that only 2 percent of Americans
could name Canada’s
prime minister and
Mexico’s president.
Unsettling? Of
course. I can hardly
celebrate such find
ings, but it would be hypocritical of me to ex
press despair or impugn the citizenship of
those tested. “Everybody is ignorant, only on
different subjects,” observed humorist Will
Rogers. He was right. Who among us would
not be red-faced if the true depths of his igno
rance and illiteracy were to be exposed? The
truth is that there is more and more to know,
and less and less consensus about what we
need to know.
I need look no further than myself. If I keep
my mouth shut and nod knowingly, 1 can
sometimes pass for an educated man. I’ve
been a Fulbright scholar, a Pulitzer Prize fi
nalist, the holder of an endowed chair and
the author of a bestseller. My journalism ca
reer has been spent with such organizations
as Time magazine and The Washington Post.
Surely I must be a master of current events,
able to rattle off the names of foreign leaders,
draw flawless world maps and cite the dates
of every major crisis.
Wrong. I find myself routinely drawing
blanks in subject areas far too countless and
embarrassing to admit. Though I have done
reporting in four continents — and covered
Congress, the environment, national securi
ty and a host of other issues — I cannot
name all the Cabinet secretaries, or even a
fraction of the leaders of countries in South
America, Africa or Asia.
I’m not proud of these glaring gaps, but
neither do I wish to see students slandered
en masse for the same shortcomings. My
hunch is I’m not alone in this, that what
separates those who judge and those who
are judged is often no more than an absence
of candor or humility. “Knowledge is proud
that he has learned so much,” wrote the
British poet William Cowper. “Wisdom is
humble that he knows no more.”
Besides, life is an essay, not multiple
choice. Reasoning and problem-solving are
at least as valuable as encyclopedic knowl
edge, and citizens who fail these tests ought
not to be dismissed like “Jeopardy!” contest
ants. An educated man need not be a walk
ing almanac. Facts are sacred, but no more so
than the ability to synthesize and extrapo
Commentary
Ted
Gup
late. During political
cycles, the news me
dia are eager to
pounce on one candi
date or another for fail
ing to know the name
of some obscure foreign leader, as if the qual
ity of leadership could be so easily divined.
Such litmus tests are no less misleading
when applied to students. Nothing I’ve seen
in 20 years of teaching has me the least.wor
ried for the body politic. Far from it. I con
tinue to see students who are voracious
learners, innovative and reflective.
Now let’s look at that other presumption,
that our citizens are somehow uniquely ill
informed. In China, a country whose offi
cials delight in citing America’s ignorance, I
visited a well-spoken woman in her sixties
who lived just outside Beijing. I asked her
to name the U.S. president. She had no
idea. Nor did her neighbors. So what con
clusion could be drawn about the national
character of China? None. The woman was
bright and witty, with no need to apologize
to me or anyone else. My observations were
merely anecdotal, but they are the sort of
thing often used to discredit Americans.
In Britain, a 1997 survey by Gallup and
the Daily Telegraph found that only 40 per
cent of those polled knew Britain had lost
the American War of Independence, and 53
percent thought the 13 American colonies
were never under British rule!
In Canada, just 23 percent of those polled
in the Globe and Mail newspaper on July 1
— Canada’s national day — passed an ele
mentary test of that country’s history.
In Hiroshima, a modern city in a country
with a well-educated populace, I met a re
cent high school graduate. I asked her what
year the A-bomb was dropped there. She
guessed 1935 — off by a decade. Was she ig
norant? No. She knew her grandparents had
been incinerated in the blast, and she under
stood the significance of that cataclysmic
event in a way that made the date seem utter
ly beside the point. Comprehension is not a
mere accumulation of facts, and facts are not
to be mistaken for understanding.
We are not educational dwarfs in a world
of giants. As educators, we owe our stu
dents and ourselves something more than a
simplistic vision of Americans based on a
fill-in-the-blank mentality. Conventional
wisdom is often wrong, and sometimes haz
ardous. If we repeat to ourselves often
enough that our educational system is infe
rior and our students are dunces, we will, in
fact, become less than we are and be seen
accordingly by others. Self-perception is a
powerful force. Why do we allow such su
perficial tests to shape our self-esteem and
blind us to our true accomplishments?
The list of U.S. Nobel laureates, the
patents in technologies and medicines, the
position American scholars enjoy in inter
national scholarship — all are testament to
a country that has no need to hang its head
in shame.
I don’t question that we must do much
more to educate ourselves about the past and
the present. But I suspect that each generation
is aghast that the reality of the succeeding gen
eration doesn't revolve around precisely the
same axis. The invasion of Normandy yields
to the conquest of cyberspace.
“History depends on memory, to be sure,”
writes historian David A. Bell, “but if given
too much scope, memory suffocates history.”
Professor Craig, who routinely quizzed
his students and despaired over their inade
quacies, a few years ago posed this ques
tion: “If our most promising young people
have no appreciation for why democracy is
worth preserving, how will they know
when it is threatened?”
Allow me to respond on behalf of all of us
who could readily be embarrassed by what
we do not know: Just because we may fail to
recognize the name of a dead tyrant doesn’t
mean we would be any slower in recogniz
ing his successor.
Ted Gup is the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journal
ism at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
This commentary is courtesy of the Los Angeles
Times-Washington Post News Service.
Emerald goes on a short
break—again
This special Law School edition is our last one
until the Back to the Books tome, which hits
the stands with a thud Sept. 18.
That issue will be a comprehensive look at how
to succeed during the 2000-01 school year.
If you fail anyway, don’t blame us.