4/20/2004

My mind is open on the possibility of the historic "guilt" of those immortal entities we call corporations. Their charters can be revoked and certainly, Mercedes and Nobel, among many others, employed slave labor in World War II - something that informs my purchases today. We have friends who barely survived working for Nobel, which gives me a little chill whenever the fabulously self-aggrandizing Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.

Any correction would probably come through legislative action rather than a court case. The corporation exists at the whim of its charterer, the state. It's obviously a complex matter, especially in cases where the corporate entity's crimes are assigned ahistorically or on the basis of interpretations that must be argued.

All that I give as background to the story that UA faculty considers apologizing for campus slavery.

What has the faculty got to do with this? They are not shareholders in the University, they are not chartered by the state, they have not personally benefited by having slaves as servants, they don't even have the standing of donors. Will they apologize for the holocaust? For the Armenian massacres? For Nathan Bedford Forrest killing unarmed combatants? For Andersonville?

You would expect professors to clarify issues of present responsibility in the long-past doings of corporate entities. To sort things out. To organize concepts. Perhaps some talented undergraduates could teach them the basics in approaching this issue. Lesson One: If any instructor has a share of guilt in slavery at UA, resign or be fired. Now.