The fact that a secret selection process was used to choose someone with no experience as an educator and a long history working in fields that are, at best, adversarial to the ethics and practices of the Academy, is deeply distressing. Colleagues have informed me that two of the other finalists for UC President were Colin Powell and Leon Panetta, both of whom are also entrenched in the security-intelligence-surveillance bureaucracies and supported and/or executed government policies, including the invasion of Iraq and more recently drone strikes and indefinite detentions, that are clear violations of international law. Napolitano also supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Shouldn’t that massive lack of judgement, which cost so much in American and Iraqi lives and treasure, be enough to disqualify her from being UC President? … At the very least, the Regents should have afforded a longer period for consideration of Secretary Napolitano’s nomination. Instead, in the very announcement of her nomination they actually forbade any discussion… What is truly frightening here is that the senior academic leadership, in the system-wide Academic Senate, seems to have completely supported not just her hiring, but this closed, secretive and completely undemocratic process through which it has proceeded.

Read full article [here].
by Mark LeVine, Aljazeera.

Posted: July 19th, 2013, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.