Straight leadership

On Thursday, IU will take a powerful stance against the equality of gay people. It will make General Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of the Kelley School’s Poling Chairs.

Usually reserved for the likes of Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh and Randall Tobias, chairman emeritus of Eli Lilly, the Kelley School will now award the chair to a man who publicly stated, “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts.”

According to Pace, our military should continue barring gays from serving openly because he does not believe “the United States is well-served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.”

While Pace was correct to say in subsequent statements that he was out-of-line for making his personal views public, he has never apologized for deeply insulting the thousands of gay and lesbian individuals directly under his command at the time the comments were made.

On campus, Pace will give a number of talks about good leadership, both in private sessions with selected Kelley students and in public at the IU Auditorium.

Is this man really an effective model of the type of leadership we should encourage?

While making similar comments about race or gender would hopefully be a disqualifier for anyone seeking honorary positions, it seems that demeaning the gay community isn’t a concern. That’s why the Kelley School is sending a powerful message that IU’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender student body just isn’t important.

Doug Bauder, office coordinator of the GLBT Student Support Services, believes this trend has become commonplace in the University. “We continue to send mixed messages to gay students,” he said.

Officially, IU welcomes everyone regardless of sexual orientation. But then it effectively says it’s unconcerned about Pace’s homophobic statements.

It might be tempting to justify Pace’s visit as being an expression of free speech. Obviously, one of the goals of a university is to expose its students to a multiplicity of viewpoints. Perhaps showing students that people in the 21st century can be as small-minded and bigoted as Gen. Pace would be a useful lesson.

Last year, for example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared at Columbia University and claimed the Holocaust never occurred and suggested gays did not exist in Iran. But before the talk, the university’s president publicly demanded hard answers from Ahmadinejad and made clear to students that the university did not endorse the Iranian president’s statements.

But Pace isn’t coming to campus to answer tough questions or talk about his mistakes. He’s here to give talks about his career and serve as a role model for business students.

Since it now seems too late to withdraw the honor, we can only call on Dan Smith, dean of the Kelley School, to publicly distance his institution from the hatred his guest professes.

It falls to the rest of us, gay and straight alike, to make clear in no uncertain language that such hatred is not in fact one of our University’s values.