Readers Write: Student diversity, Middle East, political rhetoric, Tim Walz, health care

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

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I read with interest the statements of higher education leaders in Monday’s “State colleges rethink student diversity” and wondered why the largest higher education provider in the state — Minnesota State Colleges and Universities — wasn’t included. Minnesota State serves 270,000 students per year, has an open admissions policy and is committed to the success of all students.

While most colleges in the article saw their numbers of students of color drop by several percentage points or stay steady, the changes amounted to a dozen or so students either way. The colleges and universities of Minnesota State serve 63,390 Black and Indigenous students and students of color — more than those served by all other higher education providers in Minnesota combined. Furthermore, at Minnesota State, preliminary data shows a fall enrollment increase of 1% among these traditionally underserved students, meaning more than 6,000 more students are receiving a high-quality, affordable education, funded, in part, by the taxpayers of Minnesota. Minnesota State ensures our increasingly diverse workforce is well-prepared and strengthens families and communities across Minnesota.

Dawn Erlandson, Tonka Bay

The writer is vice chair of the board of trustees of Minnesota State Colleges and Universities.

I must take issue with an Oct. 4 letter writer’s castigation of President Joe Biden’s actions as Israel defends itself against Iranian proxies determined to wipe Israel off the map. Biden has been steadfast in his support, both strategic and material for Israel’s defense, and while he continues to hope against hope for a diplomatic solution to what Israel’s enemies are playing as a zero-sum game (meaning that Israel must too, lest it be destroyed), he has not held back this support, even in the face of his personal differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

What can we hope for from an “America first” Trump administration that has isolationism as the centerpiece of its foreign policy? Well, House Speaker Mike Johnson has already given us a preview when, after introducing and passing a nonbinding, symbolic resolution supporting Israel, he showed an unwillingness to put his money where his mouth was by tabling the funding request that Biden had made to provide actual (not merely symbolic) support to Israel’s defense for seven months!

And so it goes. While I suspect that Trump will be happy to root for Netanyahu from the sidelines, we could kiss the very real support the Biden administration has been providing goodbye.

And that is why my lawn sports an “I Stand With Israel” sign together with a Harris-Walz sign.

Richard Furman, St. Paul

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There has been much mourning about “what Israel has wrought” in recent opinion submissions. Israel’s actions elicit concerns that the military response has not been “proportional” to the Oct. 7 and related attacks.

“Never again” represents the pledge by citizens of the world to watch for signs of genocide so that the Holocaust’s mass killing of 6 million Jews would never be repeated. Wasn’t Oct. 7 one such warning?

Radical Arab leadership, including Hamas and Hezbollah, won’t agree to any solution that includes Israel’s survival. Going back decades, Palestinian and Arab leaders have repeatedly turned down Israeli offers of Gaza, and often most of the West Bank, for developing a Palestinian nation. All the while innocent Palestinians have known only wartime exploitation and suffering.

Referring to Oct. 7, Hamas promised, “We will do this again and again.” And the world debates the legitimacy of Israel’s military action. What Israeli body count on Oct. 7 would justify Israel’s military response?

Frame Israel’s challenge by imagining a proportionate attack on America: years of cross-border rocket and mortar attacks, over 40,000 dead Americans, 9,000 hostages. Would America fully engage the attacker in order to eliminate future threats?

What would a “proportional response” accomplish? Any fight will have unintended consequences, as would inaction. Inevitably, any alternative will display genius and heroism along with excesses and regret.

America can’t ignore the spirit of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when evaluating Israel’s battle for existence. Israel’s response is “Never again!” How should America respond? Tough choices abound.

Steve Bakke, Edina

I have been surprised to see so little published reaction to a letter criticizing the rhetoric used by liberals/Democrats in describing former President Donald Trump (“Everyone needs to tone it down,” Readers Write, Sept. 27).

The comparisons the writer is so upset about are legitimate comparisons of the rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in their rise to power to the rhetoric of Trump. The former president has called his political opponents “vermin” and “thugs.” He and Sen. JD Vance have called Kamala Harris and Democrats in general “Communists.” Trump has tried dubbing Harris “Comrade Kamala.” In 2020, he called her a “monster.” Trump has called immigrants invaders and claimed they are “attacking villages and cities” in the Midwest. He and Vance have promoted a lie about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. The list could go on and on, but space is limited. It’s clearly Republicans who need to tone down the rhetoric.

Promoting racism and ethnic and religious prejudice and repeating lies were fascist/Nazi techniques used to gain power. So was raising the specter of communism in Germany. Trump has promised to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, politicians and media alike. He also has declared he will be a dictator on Day One. Nazis eliminated opposing political parties and established a party dictatorship once they were in power. And this is why we should be very careful of Trump and the political party willing to support him.

I’d love to experience a calm, respectful political campaign season again. Trump makes that impossible.

Diane Ring, Edina

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On the afternoon of the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump was informed that Vice President Mike Pence had been rushed to a safe place for security reasons. Trump’s terse response, according to prosecutors’ new filing, is stunning: “So, what?” Hard to imagine such callous indifference. Then again, this is the Trump we’ve come to expect.

Can there be any doubt that Trump’s self-serving attitude would be on display over and over again if he were re-elected president? The world could go to hell in a hand basket and he wouldn’t lift a finger — unless it were to his own personal benefit to do so.

In the face of such a grim prospect, it is crucial that we cast our ballots on Nov. 5. We dare not sit back and mutter to ourselves, “So, what?” We must vote!

Alan Bray, St. Peter, Minn.

Reader viewpoints vary about who prevailed in the vice presidential debate on Tuesday, Sen. JD Vance or Gov. Tim Walz.

However, for the first time since our governor was elected, I found myself in complete concurrence with one of his opinions: “I’m a knucklehead at times.”

Laurie Eibensteiner, Edina

Friday’s front-page article announced “More Medicare turmoil for seniors.” Two clarifications are needed.

One is that the turmoil is not that of Medicare but of Medicare Advantage. The latter was invented by the private insurance industry to get a piece of the Medicare action. It helps itself to Medicare’s name and to overly generous funding from our Medicare trust fund but is not Medicare.

Which leads to the second clarification. Medicare Advantage struggles with unsustainable structural defects, which lead to today’s outcome. Medicare itself will eventually need attention to its funding stream but is built on a solid financial basis.

Medical Advantage assumes that multiple private companies will deliver a universally needed product to the entire population more economically than a tax-based entity. Ain’t so.

The product in this case is health care financing. That is not the clinical services of your doctors but the insurance that pays for them. A collection of insurance companies, each with their own bureaucracies and rules, is, overall, more expensive to support and inevitably leaves some people out.

Health insurance is best delivered by a fund based on the entire tax base and covering our whole population. That, after all, is the basis of the real Medicare.

Joel Clemmer, St. Paul

The writer is a member of Healthcare For All - Minnesota.