Columbia U. Conservatives Condemn Slavery Reparations Conference to be Held by Columbia Institute

The Columbia College Conservative Club criticizes "Forty Acres and a Mule," a national conference on reparations for slavery to be hosted on Nov. 7th and 8th by the Columbia University Institute on Research in African-American Studies (CU IRAAS).

NEW YORK, NY -- November 5, 2002

On November 7th and 8th, Columbia University Institute for Research in African-American Studies (CU IRAAS) will hold a research conference on reparations entitled "Forty Acres and a Mule."

"Reparations for Slavery" is a divisive political campaign, one designed to inflame racial tensions in this country. At best the rhetoric and proposals of a conference on this subject would create tensions between African-Americans and the other 88% of Americans. At worst, the implementation of such proposals may lead to violence, racial seperatism; likewise, such implementation would surely undermine the basis of civil rights in this country: the belief in the fundamental equality of all citizens. Such an explosive campaign is not in the interests of the nation, community, and the University.

We call upon President Bollinger, whose history of racial equality is well established, to distance himself and the University from the IRAAS conference.

Reparations are a fundamentally flawed idea. Political activists wish to extort money from all citizens, the majority of whose ancestors had nothing to do with slavery. They wish to dispense some of the money to the descendants of victims of an institution, which ended 137 years ago. While African-Americans did suffer greatly over the past four centuries, they have made remarkable progress. The sad truth is that the roughly 36 millions of African-Americans own wealth comparable to all of Sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of Africans and blacks from the Caribbean try to immigrate legally and illegally to this country each year and tens of thousands do, because of the unparalleled opportunities and freedoms of America.

Those radicals pursuing a new racial spoils system do so for personal gain and risk of alienating all other groups. The resulting backlash will turn back many of the advances of the last 50 years, at a time when America is more tolerant and diverse than it has ever been.

Columbia University has built up a reputation as one of America's pre-eminent institutions of higher learning over the last two and half centuries. The alumni of this great university give donations for the education of students, not the political and financial aspirations of professors affiliated with Columbia. It is a betrayal of a 230-year trust for the university to put its imprimatur behind a racial extortion scheme.

The Columbia College Conservative Club (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/conservative) was founded to promote the ideas of liberty and individual responsibility, which formed the basis of the United States and of our continued freedom and prosperity. For all too many years these ideas have been ignored or attacked on this campus. Our goal at CCCC is to provide the necessary ideological balance to Columbia and to end the 40 years of leftist decline at the university.

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