A recent guest columnist, George Beres, made the unfounded suggestion that the Wayne Morse Center does not honor the legacy of Senator Morse in its programming decisions (“Morse Center should focus on the Constitution,” ODE April 1). As a Resident Scholar at the Morse Center for this academic year, and a scholar of the Constitution and of individual rights under it, I can say firsthand that this claim is based on nothing more than the writer’s imagination.
At the Morse Center this year, we have tackled one of the biggest constitutional issues facing the United States – the growth of a permanent underclass of non-citizens who are accorded few or no rights under American law. This inquiry has stretched from the situation of “illegal” workers in Oregon’s agricultural industry to the severe treatment of non-citizen detainees in the prison camps of Guantanamo Bay. Programs planned for the next academic year will continue to explore both wartime conditions and the government’s assertions of extraordinary power – subjects Beres pretended to see as having been slighted.
Our programs have maintained a high level of academic rigor, but they have earned us criticism from both the right and the left. Those intolerant of dissent and of opposing points of view, however much they may claim the Morse mantle, are not true stewards of his legacy. Our willingness to tackle controversial issues represents the best honor we can pay to the memory of Oregon’s brilliant, maverick Senator.
When reading intemperate and unfounded attacks on the Center, readers should consider the source. The writer in question has associated himself with anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial here on campus. On one occasion, this writer publicly dismissed the words of a UO faculty member with the false and offensive claim that the professor is Jewish; the implication was that a Jew’s views should be discounted in public debate. That such a figure would pretend to be the keeper of Sen. Morse’s flame is beneath contempt.
Garrett Epps
Garrett Epps is the Orlando John & Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law, and Resident Scholar at the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics for the 2007-08 academic year.