Three Speakers

Even though I graduated from Boise State back in May, I've been on campus a fair bit in the last ten days or so, because there's been a concentrated influx of guest speakers I've wanted to see. Boise State actually does a good job of bringing in interesting guest speakers, and during my years at the school I got to hear some notable people speak, ranging from Feminist Gloria Steinem, to Polish Solidarity leader Lech Wałęsa.

On Monday the 24th of September Fmr. New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, now a radio personality and legal analyst for Fox News, as well as an author on Constitutional issues, came to speak. Judge Napolitano was brought in as part of the Brandt Foundation Lectures, a libertarian leaning organization that has endowed Boise State with its lone named professorship, that of Brandt Professor of Free Enterprise Capitalism, currently occupied by Dr. Charlotte Twight. Judge Napolitano offered a few amusing anecdotes about his days as a judge, followed by a lecture on how the vast majority of elected officials have little or no respect for the limitations placed upon them by the Constitution. However the Judge pointed out that one notable exception to that rule is Idaho's own philosophically libertarian governor C. L. "Butch" Otter, who in fact showed up to introduce him. The Brandt Foundation brought reporter John Stossel in to speak as there featured lecturer last year.

Factoid: BSU President Robert Kustra is himself a former Lt. Governor of Illinois.

On Saturday the 29th of September, Boise State and the Idaho Human Rights Educational Center sponsored a visit by John Bul Dau, one of the "lost boys" who survived Sudan's decades long civil war (this was a separate conflict from the current Genocide going on in Darfur), and whose story has been told in his book "God Grew Tired of Us" and a National Geographic documentary of the same name. At 14 John fled the killing in his home country and walked for three months to Ethiopia, where he lived in a refuge camp for four years. At the end of that period a cue had brought a new regime to power in Ethiopia and he was forced to flee again, ending up in the car of a humanitarian organizations that arranged his transfer to a home in upstate New York. John is now a United States citizen and I believe is finishing up a Master's degree, he's also founded several charitable organizations and was here in the west helping to organize the visit of a group of Utah doctors to perform vital surgery's in his native land.

Yesterday was the 24th Annual Frank Church Conference on Public Affairs at BSU. The conference is named for the late Idaho Senator Frank Church, whose famed "Church Committee" helped rain in the intelligence abuses that where brought to such prominence during the Nixon years. Being that the Senator was from Idaho its perhaps surprising that he ever got a chance to be such a liberal icon (Idaho hasn't cast its electoral votes for a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964), but such left-of center figures as Ralph Nader and George McGovern have been known to sing his praises.

Anyway the key note speaker was Fmr. Colorado Senator Gary Hart. Hart almost won his party's presidential nomination in 1984, and seemed a potential front runner in 88' until he was brought low by a sex scandal involving pictures of the Senator with a young blond on a boat. Hart resigned from the Senate and has sense been a teacher and author of 17 books. One of these books I actually bought a copy of last night, it's called "God and Caesar in America" and addresses issues of the appropriate boundaries between Church and State in American Politics. At first thought one might not think that Hart would be the best candidate to address such issues, but I was surprised to learn that the Senator has a Doctorate of Divinity from Yale, and his family has been involved with the Nazarene Church since its beginnings.

Senator Hart's lecture its self was about national security and he had some good points, however I won't spend time going over them. Perhaps the highlight of all Church conference is the keynote speakers introduction by Frank's widow Bethine Church. Wheelchair bound but still feisty, Bethine is herself the daughter of a fmr. Idaho Governor, and has enough accumulated respect and pull that she can pretty much get any Democratic Senate veteran to come and speak, she was even responsible for Al Gore's visit to campus earlier this year, an event that broke previous records for attendance at a speaking event. Frank and Bethine's son Forrest is a prominent minister and theologian in the Unitarian Universalist Church.