The Campaign to Uninvite General Pace
Students at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business have launched a campaign to convince the school to disinvite General Peter Pace as keynote speaker of the 55th Annual Management Conference.
You may remember that General Pace found himself in a wee bit of trouble last month after making remarks referring to homosexuality as "immoral."
From the Campaign's website:
The first phase of the Campaign to Uninvite General Peter Pace is a petition calling upon the U of C and its Graduate School of Business to cancel the scheduled keynote address by General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the GSB's 55th Annual Management Conference on May 18th, 2007, sponsored by Harris Bank, to be held downtown at the Gleacher Center and Hyatt Regency.
In the first three days following the petition's launch, more than 750 community members signed it. The signers, nearly all of them are members of the University of Chicago community, include GSB students, staff, faculty, and at least 20 GSB alumni. The overwhelming response to the petition drive demonstrates the profound shock and outrage of many members of University's GLBT community, and its allies, about the GSB's plan to go ahead with Pace's scheduled address under its auspices. The University of Chicago student organization Queers & Associates is planning a demonstration in front of the Hyatt on May 18th, as are several citywide community groups.
On April 21, the Deans of the GSB issued a statement confirming their plans to go ahead with Pace's talk. The statement makes no mention of any plans for programming, in a forum comparable to that being afforded to Pace in prestige, scale, or cost, that would address the status of GLBT people in management or business, or any other step that might ameliorate the immediate, concrete, and profound effects of Pace's talk on the climate for GLBT community members, both in and out of the closet. Instead, the statement suggests that a conference on the topic of "inclusion" will be held sometime next year. In addition, the GSB has not responded to requests to make public several facts about the Management Conference, including the dollar amount of any compensation or other consideration being furnished to Pace.
The GSB's statement claims that the idea of retracting Gen. Pace's invitation to speak "goes against principles of free speech, which we value greatly." While we, too, highly value freedom of speech, and we are deeply concerned about the way that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy directly interferes with the free speech rights of Americans in uniform, we believe a distinction must be made between speech, on the one hand, and the extension of a platform for speech, on the other.
For more information, click here.
- Steve RallsLabels: Pace
-----04-24-07
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