Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1988 [PAGE 20]

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10

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[July 10

OLD AND NEW BUSINESS Resolution Regarding Recent Events in South Africa

(5) President Shepherd announced that a resolution has been prepared, in consultation with the president of the University, and asked the secretary to read it. The text is as follows: I

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees endorses the recent statement made by 17 prestigious higher education leaders: "The events of the past week in South Africa are profoundly disturbing. We deplore the renewal of the state of emergency, the mass arbitrary arrests, and the detention of over a thousand South Africans, many of whom are known and respected in the United States. "We also deplore the fostering of violence by the government at Crossroads and the neglect of the homeless casualties. Moreover, the assault upon academic freedom signified by violent police intrusions into university life gives grave concern. "We strongly urge the government of South Africa to change its course before the nation is engulfed in mass violence and irreconcilable hatreds. The path of reason is to substitute serious negotiation for violence." The signers: Derek C. Bok, president, Harvard University William G. Bowen, president, Princeton University John Brademas, president, New York University H. Keith H. Brodie, president, Duke University A. Bartlett Giamatti, president, Yale University Hanna H. Gray, president, University of Chicago Paul E. Gray, president, Massachusetts Institute of Technology David A. Hamburg, president, Carnegie Corporation of New York The Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, president, University of Notre Dame A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., trustee, University of Pennsylvania Donald Kennedy, president, Stanford University Richard W. Lyman, president, Rockefeller Foundation Frank H. T. Rhodes, president, Cornell University Harold T. Shapiro, president, University of Michigan Michael I. Sovem, president, Columbia University Cyrus R. Vance, partner, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., chancellor, State University of New York System In addition, we wish to reiterate that, as stewards of one of the United States' great universities, we have a particular concern where there have been violent police intrusions into university life. We believe that the basic tenet of academic freedom is to protect all points of view at all times. The assault upon academic freedom, the implication of the "State of Emergency" for all education and learning, including teaching, research, student activities, and the free interchange of ideas for all individuals engaged in those activities, will have profoundly adverse effects on all of the people of South Africa for generations to come. Therefore, we call upon the president of the United States and the Congress to begin at once to provide the leadership to expedite a reasonable solution to end the evils of apartheid in South Africa.