Law Professor Louis Seidman is at odds with University President John J. DeGioia over DeGioia’s decision to sign an advertisement speaking out against the British University and College Union’s proposed boycott of Israeli universities. Focusing on the Israel-Palestine issue, though, obscures a problem that is more immediately relevant to Georgetown’s faculty, students and staff. When DeGioia publicly attaches the University’s name to a statement, he speaks for the entire Georgetown community, and he should be required to solicit input from this community before he speaks on its behalf.
According to Seidman, when DeGioia attended a lunch gathering of Law Center faculty members last week, he admitted that he had not gone through the procedure for making a statement on behalf of the University. In response to an e-mail from the Voice, though, University spokesperson Julie Green Bataille wrote that she “[does] not know of any formal procedure that is followed before issuing a public statement.” She also said that DeGioia consults with other (unspecified) individuals before making statements but that he makes decisions at his own discretion.
The conflicting statements about whether there is a procedure for making statements is problematic. If there is an official protocol that DeGioia did not follow, then he should apologize to the campus community. If the official protocol is just informal discussions with select members of the University community, then a new procedure must be put in place to avoid another incident like this one.
Seidman now wants to use the Georgetown e-mail list and copy machines to respond to DeGioia. Instead of loading students’ and faculty members’ already full inboxes after the fact, Seidman should have been given an opportunity to voice his concerns before the advertisement was printed. An appropriate procedure would be to send a campus-wide e-mail before any statements are published, giving faculty, staff, and students an opportunity to respond directly to DeGioia. DeGioia must take the rest of the University’s opinions into account before he speaks for all of us.
