OPINION
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D AILY A STORIAN
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
SAMANTHA MCLAREN, Circulation Manager
Who will she be?
I
Will Gov. Kate Brown’s Portland
lens enlarge to include us?
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of swearing in the one we elected in November.
Because of John Kitzhaber’s
sudden resignation, Kate Brown is
something of an accidental governor.
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or Barbara Roberts, who won election
as governor while secretary of state,
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outside of Portland, where she was a
legislator and party leader.
As secretary of state, Brown has
not made a big impression. When she
ran for re-election, in 2012, Oregon
newspapers uniformly endorsed her
Republican rival, Knute Buehler.
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candidacy in a 2016 election. As part
of that, she must give evidence that
she can do what Kitzhaber failed at
so badly.
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enveloped Kitzhaber, we forget
his basic inadequacy as a chief
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Oregon debacle was astounding
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another expensive misadventure.
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hole in state government’s computer
systems. Departments of the state’s
multibillion dollar government
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Gov. Kitzhaber left a wound in
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gratuitous decision was emblematic
of Kitzhaber’s dysfunctional third
administration. It has already caused
needless economic dislocation. After
electing Kitzhaber in three elections,
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AP Photo/Don Ryan
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, right, is
hugged by former Oregon Gov. Bar-
bara Roberts after she is sworn in
as governor in Salem Wednesday.
Republican opponent in November
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such a long Democratic majority.
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has for Gov. Brown is whether she
will see our real needs.
When Brown came to Astoria
in 2008 as a candidate for Oregon
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she would connect with rural Oregon.
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She recounted her considerable
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For those of us who reside outside
the I-5 corridor. Brown is a Portland
politician.
Whether she will view the state
through a Portland lens or something
larger will largely be a function of
who serves her. As state Sen. Betsy
Johnson observed on numerous
occasions, Gov. Kitzhaber was badly
served during his third administration.
We wish our new governor well.
Oregon needs a success.
College, poetry, purpose have changed
By FRANK BRUNI
New York Times News Service
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four decades at two
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taught thousands of students,
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come to college for a variety
of reasons, with a variety of
attitudes.
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jobs.
Some are concerned chiefly
with beer.
All would
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too many get
them, she said,
even from her,
because a pro-
fessor standing
up to grade in-
flation is in a
lonely place.
But what, in
Frank
an overarching
Bruni
sense, should
students be af-
ter? What’s the highest calling of
higher education?
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to a smile. And I remembered that
smile from 30 years earlier, when
she would expound on Othello’s
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guilt’s insidious stamina and show
those of us in her class that with
careful examination and unhurried
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speare just about all of human life
and human wisdom: every warning
we needed to hear, every joy we
needed to cultivate.
She answered my question
about college’s purpose, but not
right away and not glibly, because
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precisely what she believes educa-
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She’s right.
I introduced her in a column last
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cently pressed to describe a trans-
formative educational experience,
what came to mind were her voice
and her animation as she read aloud
the wondrous words of King Lear.
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plays with her when I was an En-
glish major at the University of
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touch.
But after my column appeared,
P
olice shootings of civilians
in Portland and Seattle have
received a lot of attention, and yet such
violence is something we have almost
come to expect in an urban setting.
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man in a confrontation with three
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picture human relations outside big
cities as providing some degree of
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police shootings in the southeastern
Washington city since last July. Other
eye-catching statistics include only
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in a community that is 56 percent
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in this scenario of unbalanced power,
but an accidental cause célèbre
because a bystander happened
to video record the shooting and
events immediately leading up to it.
As with the August 2014 death of
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at cars in the street shortly before
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away when they confronted him. But
what he was doing did not merit a
spontaneous imposition of the death
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open-handed, arms partially raised as
bullets ripped his life away.
Pasco isn’t a continent away
from Astoria and surrounding
communities. Even if it were, we
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leaders there have called for the U.S.
Justice Department to investigate,
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and thorough professionalism are
essential to begin healing the massive
distrust that has blown up in the
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current investigation by a special
investigative unit comprised of
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is nowhere near credible, particularly
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all blame in the three previous fatal
shootings.
Beyond advocating for justice,
police reform and political
empowerment in a small city in our
region, this case should interest all
of us because it suggests a general
need to do a much better job bringing
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structures. It is important for that
community to assert itself.
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with immigrant and low-income
communities to build understanding
before shootings occur — not as
some dismal and half-hearted reaction
afterward.
AP Photo/Nick Ut
Student Jennifer Alvarez poses for a photo at the University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles campus, Feb. 3. College classes are more geared
toward fashionable than traditional topics.
she sent me an email. It included piece, master, perspective or even
a lament about changes in the hu- manner of speech above others.
manities that made me want to hear
Not long ago, she said, she
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the professor who was the high- entire class without letting the
light of my time in college thought ZRUG ³OLNH´ GURS QHHGOHVVO\ ²
of college today.
part conjunction, part stutter —
So I visited her in Philadelphia, into their speech. One of them re-
where she has been a lecturer at the VSRQGHG WKDW +DOO ZDV D ³FXOWXUDO
University of Pennsylvania since capitalist” defending her particular
“cultural capital.”
1998. She’s 69.
She has qualms about the way
She expressed regret about how
little an English department’s of- D XQLYHUVLW\ QRZ PDUNHWV FDPSXV
ferings today resemble those from amenities to students and mar-
vels at “how many sites there are
the past.
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on what is fashionable,” she said. weight given to the evaluations
Survey courses have fallen out of that they fill out can be a disincen-
favor, as have courses devoted to tive for professors to be rigorous.
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any one of the “dead white men,”
tomer who’s always right,” she
she said.
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And yet, she said, there are
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DQG :RPHQ LQ WKH 0LGGOH $JHV still many earnest young men and
&KDXFHU DQG$QLPDOV LQ WKH 0LG- women who come before her want-
GOH$JHV6KDNHVSHDUHKDVEHFRPH ing nothing more or less than to be
6KDNHVSHDUH DQG )LOP ZKLFK LQ bigger, better. She praised an un-
P\ FUDQN\ RSLQLRQ EHFRPHV )LOP dergraduate business major in the
class that she is cur-
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rently teaching, “Po-
She didn’t want to
etry and Politics in
single out any particu- College is for
Ancient Greece.”
lar course for derision developing
“She said that go-
but encouraged me
ing to college devel-
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ops something in you
is offering this se-
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in the same way that
Fictions: Popular Ro-
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$OVR ³6H[ DQG WKH &LW\ :RPHQ or whatever sport, you develop
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)HPLQLVPV´ ³&RPLF %RRNV DQG adding that she agreed with the
Graphic Novels.” “Psychoanalysis, student.
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answer about college’s mission:
of Psychoanalysis.”
And while she applauds the at- “It is for developing the muscle of
tempt to engage students and diver- thoughtfulness, the use of which
sify instruction, she worries about will be the greatest pleasure in life
an intellectual vogue and academic and will also show what it means to
sensibility that place no one master- be fully human.”
Islam and the West are at war
decade after another movie
by a gunman in a possible
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hate crime denounced by
was slain in Amsterdam for
Obama as “brutal and out-
rageous.” A tide of retalia-
fter a Danish movie PDNLQJD¿OPFULWLFDORI,V-
lam’s
treatment
of
women.
tory menace rises.
director at a seminar on
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Who or what is to blame?
“Art, Blasphemy and Freedom freedom of expression, free-
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of Expression” and a Danish dom of conscience, freedom
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of
the
press,
freedom
of
is to blame through its sup-
Jew guarding a synagogue were
blasphemy,
sexual
freedom
port for Israel (seen as the
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— in short, core character-
latest iteration of Western
Roger
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Cohen
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(Guantánamo, Abu Ghra-
familiar trope: “We are not in the
Western debasement.
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middle of a battle between Islam
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and the West.
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,W¶VQRWDEDWWOHEHWZHHQ0XVOLPV some say, show respect for Islam, the
For the second, it is rather the
peaceful faith of some 1.6 billion peo- abject failure of the Arab world, its
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ple. But what, pray, was the “provo- EORFNHG VRFLHWLHV ZKHUH GLFWDWRUV
It’s a battle between values based cation” of Dan Uzan, the Jewish se- face off against political Islam, its
on the freedom of the individual and FXULW\JXDUGRXWVLGHWKH&RSHQKDJHQ repression, its feeble institutions, its
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synagogue?
sectarianism precluding the practice
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Islam is a religion that has of participatory citizenship, its wild
RI 3UHVLGHQW %DUDFN 2EDPD¶V YDJXH spawned multifaceted political move- conspiracy theories, its inability to
references to “violent extremists” ments whose goal is power. Islam, as provide jobs or hope for its youth,
uncoupled from the funda-
such, is fair game for com- that gives the Islamic State its appeal.
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mentalist Islam to which
mentators, caricaturists and
said throat-cutting extremists This is
cartoonists, whose inclina- VXDVLYH7KHULVHRIWKH,VODPLF6WDWH
pledge allegiance — scarce- not the
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ly stands up to scrutiny. It is
tions of theocracy and polit- sult of the failure of the Arab Spring,
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work of ical Islam’s cynical uses of which had seemed to offer a path out
Across a wide swath of
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societies of the Arab world.
territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in a ‘dark
by fear.
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Over the more than 13
Yemen, the West has been or ideology’ years since al-Qaida at- this crisis. But history, I suspect, will
is at war, or near-war, with but of
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have seen trains blown up in failed to foster the great liberation
bid to eradicate a metasta- jihadi
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sizing Islamist movement
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of murderous hatred toward terror.
journalists beheaded, the staff Inaction is also a policy: Noninter-
Western civilization.
RI &KDUOLH +HEGR VODXJK- vention produced Syria today.
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most potent recent manifestation is JLXP DQG QRZ 'HQPDUN 7KLV LV QRW WKHEUDYH7XQLVLDQODZ\HUVKRUWO\EH-
WKH,VODPLF6WDWHD³GDUNLGHRORJ\´LV WKHZRUNRID³GDUNLGHRORJ\´EXWRI fore he was gunned down by Islamist
fanatics on Feb. 6, 2013: “We can dis-
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man humiliation in World War I: true
On the right of Europe’s politi- agree in our diversity but within a ci-
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point in Western politicians rehears- ,VODP DJDLQVW PDUJLQDOL]HG 0XVOLP ZRUN'LVDJUHHLQRXUGLYHUVLW\\HV´
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ing lines about there being no battle communities, who in turn feel discrim-
between Islam and the West, when inated against and misrepresented, ideology,” to dismiss the reality of
in all the above-mentioned countries with cause. Several thousand young FRQÀLFWEHWZHHQWKH:HVWDQG,VODP
WHQV RI PLOOLRQV RI 0XVOLPV ZLWK (XURSHDQ 0XVOLPV WURRS RII WR MRLQ is also to undermine the anti-Islamist
much carnage as evidence, believe the Islamic State. Europe’s Jews are VWUXJJOHRIEUDYH0XVOLPVOLNH%HODLG
the contrary.
on edge, with cause. Israel calls them ² DQG WKHVH 0XVOLPV DUH WKH RQO\
7KH 'DQLVK ¿OPPDNHU )LQQ 1RU- KRPH,QWKH8QLWHG6WDWHVWKUHH0XV- people, ultimately, who can defeat the
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By ROGER COHEN
New York Times News Service
3DVFRNLOOLQJLVD A
familiar refrain
Build better intercultural connections
now to avoid violence
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015