Hewitt Blog

Inspired by my program's discussion of the morality --or not-- of the bringing into the country from abroad of a Cuban cigar or two, Doug TenNapal gives us the insight of one the 19th century's greatest Christian voices.

University of North Dakota President Charles Kupchella was my guest on the radio today. I will try and get a transcript of the conversation up later, but if you haven't done so already, be sure to read his "Open Letter to the NCAA." It is a masterpiece.

You can e-mail President Kupchella at c_kupchella@mail.und.nodak.edu.

Here is the transcript of the interview:

HH: President Kupchella, welcome to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

CK: Well thanks, Hugh. I'm please to be on.

HH: Tell me a little bit about the University of North Dakota first, how big it is, what your mascot is, and how you came to be its president, and how long you've been there.

CK: Well, the University of North Dakota is a medium-sized university, a complete one. We have medicine, law, engineering, hundreds of degree programs, fifty masters programs, more than twenty doctoral programs. I've been president since 1999, so this is my seventh year. UND is a wonderful place. We have four hundred American-Indian students, probably six hundred international students, students from all fifty states, probably seventy foreign countries.

HH: How many undergraduates, President Kupchella?

CK: Undergraduates would be about eleven thousand.

HH: And your mascot is?

CK: We don't have a mascot. We have a nickname...

HH: Which is?

CK: It's called the Fighting Sioux.

HH: The Fighting Sioux.

CK: And we do have a logo that's just a great piece of art. It was designed by Ben Brien, an American-Indian artist, a very respected one here in North Dakota, and I think beyond. His sculptures and work appear all over the state, and he did a masterpiece for us in this logo.

HH: Now explain to our audience what the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled on August the 5th.

CK: Well, they basically said, I think, that we were among a group of schools, eighteen I think total, that were being abusive and hostile to American-Indians somehow, and without ever giving any definition to that. And presumably, it's simply because use the nickname Fighting Sioux. Apparently, everything is derived from that. No matter how much respect we give to that, apparently this wasn't enough for them. So what they ruled is those in this group of eighteen will not be permitted to host an NCAA-sponsored championship sporting event, and if we do host one before after February 6th, I think it is, then they want us to cover up all the symbols, all of the indications that this is in fact our name, even though they're not really ruling that we have to change the name to something else.

HH: Now did you have forewarning that such a process was underway?

CK: Well, we knew that they were doing...they had asked us to do a self-study, which we did. And like others we've done before, we went through that. And of course on our campus, we have gone through a very extensive process of studying this issue, making sure we understood just what percentages of what groups were in favor of this, which ones didn't care. We actually did a scientific study. So mostly what we did in response to their request, was tell them about what we've done in the last few years, and if there were any changes, or any events that happened since that study, and we sent that report in about two months ago. I had no idea though, that there would be a group that...you know, what they're asking us to do here is basically, since we happen to have a championship event scheduled already, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs, maybe millions, to change...to somehow obliterate or cover up this logo, and the reference to Fighting Sioux, because some of those things are actually built in. They're actually part of the architecture of some of our buildings. And by the way, we compete at a very high level nationally. We have won seven national titles in hockey since I've been president. I think we've played for seven national titles in three different sports. So we're a significant player in NCAA.

HH: Now President Kupchella, I'm a law professor in addition to doing this over at Chapman University down in Orange County, California. And I am stunned that an entity that is close to the state would attempt to dicate speech without consultation and due process, and you've got contract issues. How have your alumni and students reacted to your rather bold letter, telling them, in essence, you better reconsider, or we'll see you in court?

CK: Well, I've had, I suppose, a hundred and fifty e-mails. I'm actually on the road, and have been for the last couple of days, and did not bring my computer with me. But before I left, I think I've already received about a hundred and twenty, and my office said there have been another several dozen that have come in since. I know our alumni affairs, our alumni association has received hundreds of responses, nearly all of them positive. I didn't...I think of all my hundred and twenty, I think one was negative. And you know what? It's people not so...and many of them were not associated with UND as alumni. In my case, they were people from all over the world, who...this has resonated with them as a just kind of a final straw in political correctness run amok. And where the heck does this go next?

HH: Yup.

CK: That was the kind of response I've been getting from all over the world.

HH: You know, I would think you would have thousands, but it is not easy to find your e-mail address on the website. In fact, I couldn't find it. I don't know if you want to give it out, but I think you would have thousands...

CK: Well, it is on the web. It is und.com, and there's a like there to communicate with the president. And it gives my e-mail address right there on the website.

HH: Oh, www.und.edu...

CK: und.edu.

HH: Now my question is, will you sue the NCAA if they persist in breaching their contract with you?

CK: Well, you know, I've long ago learned not to really tip your hand an, d talk about hypothetical situations. We're going to play it by the book here, see what they say in response to my letter. We will file an appeal, once we know what it is that we're going to be basing this appeal on. I mean, the main thing I've tried to communicate in this letter, is that we don't get it. I don't understand what they used as a standard, so it's pretty hard to know how to appeal, since you don't know what it is they used to decide. So once we get that result, then of course, we'll decide, and there's several phases that one would be...because the deadline is imminent, of course. We'll have to do something before this championship game, or do nothing at all and see what they do.

HH: Have you consulted with your colleagues, for example, the president of Florida State University, also under the gun from the NCAA?

CK: I haven't had a chance, really, to talk with any of them yet, but our folks have talked to their folks. I did send them a copy of my letter, and we will be talking with them. I just haven't had an opportunity to do that just yet.

HH: Well, President Kupchella, you have a friend here, and I'm sure many other places across the United States that favor free speech and the right to conduct your own affairs, free of meddling educrats. So, we look forward to having you back as this progresses. Good luck up there with the Fighting Sioux.

End of interview.

Will they like it? The National Assn. of REALTORS® annual meeting will be blogged. Seems there are realtors who think the Association is not the most open of groups.

But realtors should love blogging. For a Twin Cities example of blogging on realty, visit here.

That's the headline on this morning's Washington Post story about another old Roberts' memo from his White House days. Proclaiming that "[t]he words of the Supreme Court nominee, contained in a 1985 memo in which he approved a telegram from Reagan supporting the service, provide the clearest insight to date into Roberts's personal views on abortion at a time when both proponents and opponents of Roe have a keen interest in whether he would tip the court's balance on one of the nation's most volatile social issues," the Post rushes news of this memo to page 1.

Earlier this year Hillary Clinton proclaimed that "[w]e can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women. The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place." Andrew Sullivan concurred with the senator's premise that "abortion is always and everywhere a moral tragedy." I assume, then, that the junior senator from New York and the blogger will both be endorsing Judge Roberts' assessment in this instance?

There are 5,393 documents in the latest dump from the Roberts' years in the White House Counsel's Office. How many more breathless leded will they inspire? Dana Milbank gets the ball rolling with this piece on young Justice-to-be Roberts' views on Michael Jackson.

While still in Europe I pointed you to Dean Barnett's "The New Litmus Test," which details the enormous stresses that the rise of the hard left has created within the Democrtaic Party.

Now over at "Call for a Summer of Truth," contributor RaginBlue6 gives voice to the left's disdain for their Washington leadership:

The prominence of party leaders like Biden and Clinton, and of a slew of other potential pro-war candidates who support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, presents the Democrats with an odd dilemma: At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War and favor a withdrawal of US troops, and British and American leaders are publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want US troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal "insiders poll" found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's military presence in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of "sophisticated" debate.

The continued high standing of the hawks has been made possible by their enablers in the strategic class--the foreign policy advisers, think-tank specialists and pundits. Their presumed expertise gives the strategic class a unique license to speak for the party on national security issues. This group has always been quietly influential, but since 9/11 it has risen in prominence, egging on and underpinning elected officials, crowding out dissenters within its own ranks and becoming increasingly ideologically monolithic. So far its members remain unchallenged. It's more than a little ironic that the people who got Iraq so wrong continue to tell the Democrats how to get it right.

The acceleration of the party's base towards the left is gaining speed, even though a lot more pundits on the right than on the left are noticing it.

Online advertising is surging. (HT: Glenn).

Wait until the ad buyers figure out that the most powerful combination in the world is a radio buy sending listeners to easy to recall websites where their blog ads are displayed. Roger Schlesinger has been advertsiing on my radio program for five years, and he will gladly tell you that those ads, while substantially less than 50% of his advertising budget have brought in more than 50% of his business. Now he has added a web site, wwww.mortgageminuteguy.com to the radio copy which brings people directly to his site, and that info is also part of his blog ad which you see opposite of this text in the blog-ad column. Business is booming. Expect more radio hosts to try and run blogs with blog ads so that they can increase the value to their advertisers seeking to turn scattered impressions into lock solid front-of-mind awareness.

Disney is said to be fretting about the opening for "The Great Raid." I think they should calm down. The only movie I heard about while abroad was The Great Raid, and yesterday I heard its praises sung by a very discriminating film-goer. I'll see it this weekend, and I expect tens of millions more will as well.

The Times of London reports of the spread from the east of of Russia towards its west end of the Avian bird flu. No human deaths have been connected to the virus in Russia, but if you are saying "So what, I don't each chicken anyway," you will want to read --very slowly, with a pen-- then go immediately to Laurie Garrett's "The Next Pandemic," from the new special issue of Foreign Affairs. The magazine generously made much of the crucial information available free of charge. Key excerpts from the Garrett piece mentioned (she has another in the package):

Scientists have long forecast the appearance of an influenza virus capable of infecting 40 percent of the world's human population and killing unimaginable numbers. Recently, a new strain, H5N1 avian influenza, has shown all the earmarks of becoming that disease. Until now, it has largely been confined to certain bird species, but that may be changing.

The havoc such a disease could wreak is commonly compared to the devastation of the 1918-19 Spanish flu, which killed 50 million people in 18 months. But avian flu is far more dangerous. It kills 100 percent of the domesticated chickens it infects, and among humans the disease is also lethal: as of May 1, about 109 people were known to have contracted it, and it killed 54 percent (although this statistic does not include any milder cases that may have gone unreported). Since it first appeared in southern China in 1997, the virus has mutated, becoming heartier and deadlier and killing a wider range of species. According to the March 2005 National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine flu report, the "current ongoing epidemic of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia is unprecedented in its scale, in its spread, and in the economic losses it has caused."

In short, doom may loom.

"[D]oom may loom," is not somtething one expects tolead off the lead article in staid old and usually ponderous Foreign Affairs.

More:

The scarcity of flu vaccine, although a serious problem, is actually of little relevance to most of the world. Even if pharmaceutical companies managed to produce enough effective vaccine in time to save some privileged lives in Europe, North America, Japan, and a few other wealthy nations, more than six billion people in developing countries would go unvaccinated. Stockpiles of Tamiflu and other anti-influenza drugs would also do nothing for those six billion, at least 30 percent of whom -- and possibly half -- would likely get infected in such a pandemic.

And more:

In the event of a modern pandemic, the U.S. Department of Defense, with the lessons of World War I in mind, would undoubtedly insist that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan be given top access to vaccines and antiflu drugs. About 170,000 U.S. forces are currently stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, while 200,000 more are permanently based elsewhere overseas. All of them would potentially be in danger: in late March, for example, North Korea conceded it was suffering a large-scale H7N1 outbreak -- taking place within miles of some 41,000 U.S. military forces. It is impossible to predict how such a pandemic influenza would affect U.S. operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, or any other place.

Armed forces throughout the world would face similar issues. Most would no doubt pressure their governments for preferential access to vaccine and medications. In addition, more than a quarter of some African armies and police forces are HIV positive, perhaps making them especially vulnerable to influenza's lethal impact. Social instability resulting from troop and police losses there would likely be particularly acute.

Such a devastating disease would clearly have profound implications for international relations and the global economy. With death tolls rising, vaccines and drugs in short supply, and the potential for the virus to spread further, governments would feel obliged to take drastic measures that could inhibit travel, limit worldwide trade, and alienate their neighbors. In fact, the Z+ virus has already demonstrated its disruptive potential on a limited scale. In July 2004, for example, when the Z+ strain reemerged in Vietnam after a three-month hiatus, officials in the northern province of Bac Giang charged that Chinese smugglers were selling old and sickly birds in Vietnamese markets -- where more than ten tons of chickens are smuggled daily. Chinese authorities in charge of policing their side of the porous border, more than 1,000 kilometers long, countered that it was impossible to inspect all the shipments. Such conflicts are now limited to the movement of livestock, but if a pandemic develops they could well escalate to a ban on trade and human movement.

Read the whole thing. And then the other articles.

Thanks to the scores of would-be web-masters who offered to do the grunt work of making the post-makeover corrections to the software. Turns out that my pal Joshua Sharf of View From a Height is in the business, so I will be handing the backroom fixes to him. If he is an abject failure, I will return to the hunt again. Please send to Hugh@HughHewitt.com any of the glitches you have been experience, and I will pass them on the JS.

And you were a skeptic.