CITIZEN or CIVILIAN? Make Your Choice.

There has been much said, even in the national press, concerning the presence of Iran's President at the CU World Leaders Forum. The controversy aside, when you see that it's called the "World Leaders Forum," I find it hard to understand what it is people expect... we invite world leaders, whoever they are... to speak.

I think the most significant element of what President Bollinger did sort of gets lost in the controversy surrounding Iran's silly leader. What is so much more impressive to me, and quite so much revolutionary, is that there have been many dictators, fools, and uneducated leaders of the world, from all its corners, in the past 4000 years, many of whom might have done well to have been called out and, yes, simply insulted by those in the academic community, directly challenged and directly accused. Indeed the power of our global leaders is rarely checked, even by each other, and their ability to dominate the conversation, by media or otherwise, is something I believe the world's citizenry has the right to challenge and disparage.

To my knowledge few world leaders in human history have been called a "dictator" in person, particularly by a civilian with no particular qualification, though the overwhelming number of leaders have certainly been despots, even in countries bandied about as "democracies," I'd say ours included.

The idea of a professor chastizing a national leader was at the same time refreshing and inspiring. People forget the tremendous hegemonic power posessed by those, elected or not, who run the machinery of the world. It is only by outrageous and often vehement attack from individual citizens that we might get the attention of those who command the fate of the world, our world.

We must never forget that despite any individual's power, no one commands any title of authority that should outrank the power of a citizen. What a world it would be, no, if the powerful stood trial by fire in the "courtroom of world opinion" that Adlai Stevenson so famously invoked in pursuit of peace with the USSR in 1962. And yet the realists have their say - Bollinger said in closing, that he was merely a Professor, without power or policy control, and so his speech, though free, would be powerless.

And yet the primary case for democratic speech does not ensure it is backed by power or by force. It can only be said, and the power of words to move nations and history is left to the will of the many. Still it seems that words are not powerless in the end. Perhaps it is our perception that a Professor's word carries less weight than a dictator, a prime minister, a religious leader, perhaps it is this refusal to attach an equal importance to the voice of the CITIZEN, and not the LEADER, that inevitably devalues the power of criticism and challenge from below.

Nevertheless, I love it when the powerful feel the least bit insulted or accused. Contrary to William Kristol's usually hot-headed criticism, I think President Bollinger did send a historically powerful message. At the world's centers of learning anyway, we abosolutely insist on challenging the empowered and criticizing their aims and their objectives, for they lead a world that we have not choice but to live in.

As a globe we demand that those with power be called to account, and that though often these trials return no enforceable verdict, the judgement of history rests upon them. Maybe that's not good enough for some, I personally think it's not, but it is something. And barring a major shift in the leadership of the world, the CITIZEN remains ever repressed, with little power or ability to challenge those who possess it.

The machinery of the state, as many political theorists have claimed, simply grinds on, regardless of the flowers it might tread, irresponsible of the individuals that might stand in the way of history, requesting a new direction. Power ultimately, does emanate from the violence of a gun, but at the same time, power and force are what we make of it. Power does end where we do not fear the consequence of force, where we care enough that no barrel of any weapon deters what we believe to be the rightful path.

And so the powerful stand trial before the citizenry. Ultimately powerless to stop them, but nevertheless eager to challenge them, we make our stand. For some, it might well be their last, but it is ultimately a requirement of participation in the human condition, a central element to Human Honor. And excolo mei, fas mei vita, if you believe that this human honor, is worth your life, that the stand you take against the powerful and the strong is worth everything for which you exist, then it is a duty, not an option, to stand against the weight of the world, even with no possibility of success.

The last stand is a feature of romantic ideology whereby an individual confronts their ultimate fears in the face of certain defeat. Overmatched and overpowered, they nonetheless refuse to surrender. I look upon the world's citizens as such a people. Ruled from above, and never from below, they choose to go quietly into the night of history.

It is for those who, however blithely, make a stand against the machinery of power that constitutes our human institutions of governance, that I reserve the most lofty praise. It is history, I believe, that judges them the most favorably. In that regard, our University President chose to become a CITIZEN, NOT a CIVILIAN, and to ensure that the powerless had their say.


If nothing else, at least an alien visitor to our humble world eons and eons hence, might one day in the post-human future have cause to believe that the citizens of this tiny spot found the honor and the courage as a race, to challenge the conditions of their existence, and though without power, they went down in history with the honor as having fought a war they could never win.

At least I'd like to have my name in that lexicon, that I might have the honor to become a CITIZEN and to be remembered as a champion of the oppressed, and as a proponent of a human progress that the powerful often restrained.

For now though, President Bollinger laid claim to the title of Citizen, and I was happy to watch history being made.