This was posted as a comment to my blog article on Reverend Bruce
Chilton, the Bard College chaplain who defended the attack on Gaza on
WABC talk radio. The author is a music professor who ran as a Green
Party candidate in Connecticut some years ago.
John Halle:
As a denizen of the groves of academe, I am a believer in the necessity
for civil discourse and in Voltaire's maxim to "defend to the death" the
rights of those whose views one finds truly repulsive.
This includes those who, like Dr. Chilton, justify the massacre of
innocent women and children and the perpetuation of war crimes.
What I am uncomfortable with is finding the chaplain of the college
where I work adopting an extreme position on the matter under
consideration. Dr. Chilton's apologetics for the IDF flies in the face
of a 14 to 0 vote by the U.N. security council, and indeed the position
of Secretary of State Rice who joined in support of the resolution
calling for an immediate cease fire.
The role of the chaplain is, after all, to provide moral instruction and
ethical guidance to the community and also to represent these values to
outside world.
It should be apparent that Dr. Chilton's views do not in any way
represent my views, nor, as I think will become increasingly clear to
him, those of a significant fraction of the Bard community.
This does not, I stress, imply that he should be denied a forum for his
advocacy of state terrorism as a member of the faculty or that any
retaliation against him can be countenanced.
What Dr. Chilton should be aware of is that his defense of
indiscriminate violence consigns him to he margins of civilized
discourse. And given this fact, he has no grounds on which to speak for
the moral consensus of the Bard community in his capacity of chaplain.
He should, therefore, resign his position as chaplain immediately.
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