Readers Write: Ethnic studies curriculum, public notice laws, student protests

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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James Brewer Stewart’s attempt to refute the arguments of Katherine Kersten against Minnesota’s new ethnic studies curriculum, to this reader, only confirmed them (”Into American history without fear,” Opinion Exchange, May 3). He begins with a self-congratulatory identification of himself as “a well-established American historian,” but his inflated rhetoric demonstrates clearly his lack of the needed balance and nuance necessary to address complex social and historical issues. He starts with ad hominem and moral self-righteousness, declaring it his “ethical duty” to counter Kersten’s “multiple atrocities.”

He then defends a curriculum focusing on concepts such as “decolonization,” “dispossession” and “resistance,” which Kersten had highlighted, by showing how these concepts are illustrated by America’s revolution against Britain’s settler colonialism. One has to be unusually naive to believe that particular event will be a focus of the ethnic studies curriculum Stewart favors.

If one wants an example of Stewart’s lack of balance and recognition of complexity, consider his characterization of the abortion debate. This issue divides America almost in half, is morally complex and has millions of intelligent, impassioned citizens on multiple sides. But this complexity is beyond our “well-established” historian, who says the contested curriculum will help students address “the assault on women’s right to bodily independence by right-wing Minnesota politicians.”

Stewart encourages us to accept his confident declaration, “There is only good that can result from asking Minnesota students to consider historical questions such as these.” “Only good”? That depends on the skill and fairness of the one leading the discussion. I believe our historian shows himself to lack the qualities needed to lead one himself and is unusually naive if he believes “only good” can come from the new ethnic studies curriculum.

Daniel Taylor, Arden Hills

In last Saturday’s issue, there was an opinion piece by the executive director of the Minnesota School Board Association, Kirk Schneidawind, advocating for no longer requiring schools’ legal notices to be printed in newspapers (”Embrace the shift in public notices,” Opinion Exchange, April 27).

That’s a terrific idea — if your goal is to kill all small-town newspapers.

I have edited our rural weekly, the Arlington Sun, for 20 years now. And the truth is that rural weekly newspapers are the kind of business familiar to a lot of small-town business owners — just barely in the black year after year, and hanging on by a thread.

The legal revenue that comes in is a vital part of that trickle of a revenue stream, and if you take that away, the business model simply collapses.

We are getting closer to that every passing year in the small-town newspaper business, as longtime subscribers finally die off, and their grandchildren do not subscribe. We have had many deeply loyal subscribers for decades on end, and we greatly appreciate their support — but nobody renews after they die.

But to get back to Schneidawind’s proposal, if we lose the legal revenue that comes in each week, then we simply won’t be able to do this anymore. And that’s not just in my town; I would predict that only a handful of rural weekly newspapers would survive anywhere, only those with backers willing to subsidize the annual losses.

Schneidawind, in his opinion piece, says, “We are sad to say that the era of newspapers is declining.”

But apparently he is not sad enough about that to refrain from pushing them off the cliff.

Frank Crisler, Arlington, S.D.

The writer is editor of the Arlington Sun.

I read the opinion piece by Kavita Kumar with interest (”Thoughts from the Star Tribune’s new community engagement director,” April 28). Delivery of news is so important to the functioning of a democracy, and we are fortunate in Minnesota to have a resource such as the Star Tribune.

With no valid solutions in mind, the concept of having “news” items just sent or delivered directly to me offers many problems to full-function knowledge and awareness. For most of my life, a newspaper or local television station was the major source of local and national news. International, too. We watched the whole news program or read the whole newspaper. It provided items of interest or new items that we may not have considered. It was not just my preferences; it had a little of everything, and I learned a lot by viewing the articles selected for inclusion by the staff of news professionals.

We did not skip right to our narrow interests; we were exposed to more of a full picture. Many of our friends and relatives who get specific articles sent to them appear to lack full knowledge of many other topics and current events, or they are very skewed to an ideology and lack important facts. Having a local news station and local newspaper put a full news source together is so important to building citizen’s broad knowledge. It is why we shake our heads and wonder how people we know and love can believe such harmful conspiracies in this day and age.

Thank you so much for providing an e-edition of the paper. It allows me to browse the full printed version online every morning. I still pick and choose articles online during the day, but I like to start off with a full picture.

Joe Fraser, Minnetonka

The problem is that chaos, like complacency or meticulous order, can breed violence and intolerance. To engage chaos constructively requires great discipline and attention to relationships. It is not a free-for-all.

Instead of condemning the chaos of protests, might we learn to make use of chaos creatively and without violence? To accept its invitation to question the way things are and to imagine the way things might be? To discipline ourselves in the midst of chaos and to encounter others in it with an openness to relationships and resolutions as yet unknown? That is where the true and beautiful power of chaos lies and why we would be wise to engage the chaos on our campuses today creatively.

I applaud the universities where regents and students have entered dialogue as a result of the protests. I only wish our national leaders would do the same.