By March 7, 2006
Martin Luther King III, former chair of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and the eldest son of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., will deliver this year’s convocation address.
Jon Bellante ’06, chair of the convocation selection committee, made the official announcement in a press release yesterday.
“We are very thrilled with the type of message that [King] will be giving,” Bellante said. “We wanted to be delivering a message that would inspire our class towards the future. [King is] all about inclusiveness, equality and tolerance of all people.”
The speaker received unanimous approval from the convocation selection committee, according to Bellante. That committee, which has been meeting to discuss convocation speakers since April 2005, is comprised of graduating senior members of the Student Assembly, the class council, graduating members of the Cornell University Programming Board executive committee and a few other students selected by Susan Murphy ’73, vice president of student and academic services and Kent Hubbell, dean of students.
Bellante said the committee that chose King was representative of the entire student body. “We got as much of a cross-campus group as we could,” he said.
King, who attended Morehouse College, has spent the last 20 years continuing to preach his parents’ message of attaining justice and equality for all citizens through nonviolent conflict resolution.
Currently the president and chief executive officer of the King Center in Atlanta, King has focused on the eradication of racial profiling and violence and improving education and social opportunities for children across the country.
In 1986, King was elected to be an at-large representative of over 700,000 residents in Fulton County, Ga. He worked as a member of the Board of Commissioners to regulate minority business participation in public contracting, create ethics legislation and improve the county’s natural water resources.
In 1997, King was unanimously voted into office as president of the SCLC, an organization his father helped found in 1957. He took office on the anniversary of his father’s birth, Jan. 15, 1998, and served until Dec. 1, 2003.
While leading the SCLC, King helped organize a march on Washington in August 2000 to protest police brutality and racial profiling. King also oversaw the “Stop the Killing – End the Violence” campaign, which included a hugely successful gun buy-back program. King worked with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to advise housing authorities on how to conduct buy-backs; the SCLC has collected over 10,000 guns to date.
King also works on a number of youth programs aimed at education and personal development of underprivileged and African-American children. His “King Summer Intern Program” provides employment for high school students and “Hoops for Health” is a charity basketball game that raises awareness about newborns who suffer from the effects of substance abuse. King’s other major youth program is “A Call to Manhood,” an annual event that unites young African-American males with positive adult role models.
King also recently led the charge to remove the offensive “Stars and Bars” flag from his home state of Georgia. This came after his successful campaign to move the SCLC annual convention from South Carolina because of that state’s continued use of the Confederate flag.
Although King has spoken at numerous colleges and has given baccalaureate addresses before, this will be his first commencement address at a major university.
Recent convocation speakers have included actor Danny Glover, former President William Jefferson Clinton and Gen. Wesley Clark.
King will speak in front of graduates and their families on May 27 in Barton Hall. Tickets will be available beginning April 3 on a first-come-first-serve basis; each graduate is allowed to invite up to two guests. The University commencement ceremony will take place the following day in Schoellkopf Field.
By March 7, 2006
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled yesterday that colleges and universities which accept federal funding must allow military recruiters “equal access” on campus. The 8-0 ruling in the case of Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights overturned a 2004 appellate court decision, which had initially claimed that the Solomon Amendment – legislation passed in 1995 which states that law schools that ban military recruiting risk losing their federal funding – was “unconstitutional.” The amendment has since been reinterpreted and revised by Congress to mean that if such recruiting is barred, the entire university will lose its federal funding.
“The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything,” wrote Chief Justice John J. Roberts in the decision. “Law schools remain free under the statute to express whatever views they may have on the military’s congressionally mandated employment policy, all the while retaining eligibility for federal funds … It affects what law schools must do – afford equal access to military recruiters – not what they may or may not say.”
FAIR is a group of American law professors and administrators who believe the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is at odds with institutional anti-discrimination policies, and that the Solomon Amendment places an unfair condition on federal money. In Sept. 2005, Cornell joined Yale, Columbia, Harvard, New York University, University of Pennsylvania and University of Chicago in filing amicus curiae, or “friends of the court” brief, which called the amendment “an unconstitutional condition on federal funding,” in support of FAIR.
When the ruling was handed down yesterday morning, however, Cornellians who closely followed the case were not surprised by its outcome.
“We’re dealing with the military and the Supreme Court is often deferential to the military,” said Prof. Stewart Schwab, law, the Allan R. Tessler Dean.
Prof. Gary Simson, law, who worked to help file two amicus briefs in support of FAIR, agreed with Schwab.
“Historically, the court has been extremely deferential to Congress in military matters,” Simson said. “Whether it involved free speech or equal protection, they simply don’t apply the same way when the military is involved. The [court] bent over too far in this case