UNH leaders should speak out against Donald Trump
Dec. 19 — To the Editor:
This letter is shared with all readers and most especially with Mr. James Dean Jr., president of UNH, and Ms. Megan Davis, UNH chief of staff.
It was disheartening to learn that UNH was going to host a Trump campaign speech. Certainly, this person has the right of free speech, as do you and I and all Americans. It was therefore my hope that guiding minds in the UNH administration and faculty were willing to provide this forum for its potential as a "teaching moment."
But the total silence from the UNH authority in the aftermath of this event has been utterly heartbreaking to many of us in New Hampshire and across the
country. Surely UNH administrators are not blind and deaf to the toxicity and rising danger that is metastasizing with each successive speaking event made by this person?
It is a grave miscalculation when a worthy educational institution becomes a mouthpiece for speech that normalizes hatred and dehumanization and places our fragile democracy — and therefore all of us - at risk.
In a handful of years from today, one wonders how Mr. Dean, Ms. Davis and their colleagues will look back on their decision to host this speech and their total silence in its aftermath? It has never been more true that ... if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Those in charge of UNH not only allowed verbal poison to infect the fertile ground of the campus of thought they were hired to nurture and protect, but they also further contaminated the communal space that extends far beyond Durham, New Hampshire.
Mr. Dean, UNH has a voice. You used it when you hosted this speech. Why is the university's voice silent now when we need it most? Where are the able and potent words of historical perspective and human conscience − if not direct rebuttal and refutation?
Let UNH speak again now. And do so without further delay. You have powerful thinkers and writer around you. Together you can craft a meaningful antidote to the poison you abetted. Please speak up. If this person is re-elected, you will have tainted the University of
New Hampshire as an enabler. A second-term may well be the end of American democracy.
Stephanie Z. Voss
Dover