“Happy as a Hangman” in a Nation of Bystanders

Innocence, as defined by law, makes us complicit with the crimes of the state. To do nothing, to be judged by the state as an innocent, is to be guilty. ... It is to sanction, through passivity and obedience, the array of crimes carried out by the state.

By Chris Hedges in TruthDig

To be innocent in America means we passively permit offshore penal colonies where we torture human beings, some of whom are children. To be innocent in America is to acquiesce to the relentless corporate destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species. To be innocent in America is to permit the continued theft of hundreds of billions of dollars from the state by Wall Street swindlers and speculators. To be innocent in America is to stand by as insurance and pharmaceutical companies, in the name of profit, condemn ill people, including children, to die. To be innocent in America is refusing to resist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are not only illegal under international law but responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. This is the odd age we live in. Innocence is complicity.

The steady impoverishment and misery inflicted by the corporate state on the working class and increasingly the middle class has a terrible logic. It consolidates corporate centers of power. It weakens us morally and politically. The fraud and violence committed by the corporate state become secondary as we scramble to feed our families, find a job and pay our bills and mortgages. Those who cling to insecure, poorly paid jobs and who struggle with crippling credit card debt, those who are mired in long-term unemployment and who know that huge medical bills would bankrupt them, those who owe more on their houses than they are worth and who fear the future, become frightened and timid. They seek only to survive. They accept the pathetic scraps tossed to them by the corporate elite. The internal and external corporate abuse accelerates as we become every day more pliant.

All the NAZIs required of the population is a “mood of passive compliance” as Hitler’s Holocaust coursed through Europe as he promised a return to “traditional values” and security for good German families.
- Cited by Noam Chomsky’s The Culture of Terrorism (1988), quoting Norman Rufus Colin Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957)

Our corrupt legal system, perverting the concept that “all men are created equal,” has radically redefined civic society. Citizens, regardless of their status or misfortune, are now treated with the same studied indifference by the state. They have been transformed from citizens to commodities whose worth is determined solely by the market and whose value is measured by their social and economic functions. The rich, therefore, are rewarded by the state with tax cuts because they are rich. It is their function to monopolize wealth and invest. The poor are supposed to be poor. The poor should not be a drain on the resources of the state or the oligarchic elite. Equality, in this new legal paradigm, means we are all treated alike, no matter what our circumstances. This new interpretation of equality, under which the poor are abandoned and the powerful are unchecked, has demolished the system of regulations, legal restraints and services that once protected the underclass from wealthy and corporate predators.

The creation of a permanent, insecure and frightened underclass is the most effective weapon to thwart rebellion and resistance as our economy worsens. Huge pools of unemployed and underemployed blunt labor organizing, since any job, no matter how menial, is zealously coveted. As state and federal social welfare programs, especially in education, are gutted, we create a wider and wider gulf between the resources available to the tiny elite and the deprivation and suffering visited on our permanent underclass. Access to education, for example, is now largely defined by class. The middle class, taking on huge debt, desperately flees to private institutions to make sure their children have a chance to enter the managerial ranks of the corporate elite. And this is the idea. Public education, which, when it functions, gives opportunities to all citizens, hinders a system of corporate neofeudalism. Corporations are advancing, with Barack Obama’s assistance, charter schools and educational services that are stripped down and designed to train classes for their appropriate vocations, which, if you’re poor means a future in the service sector. The eradication of teachers’ unions, under way in states such as New Jersey, is a vital component in the dismantling of public education. Corporations know that good systems of public education are a hindrance to a rigid caste system. In corporate America everyone will be kept in his or her place.

The beating down of workers, exacerbated by the prospect that unemployment benefits will not be renewed for millions of Americans and that public sector unions will soon be broken, has transformed those in the working class from full members of society, able to participate in its debates, the economy and governance, into terrified people in fragmented pools preoccupied with the struggle of private existence. Those who are economically broken usually cease to be concerned with civic virtues. They will, history has demonstrated, serve any system, no matter how evil, and do anything for a salary, job security and the protection of their families.

There will be sectors of the society that, as the situation worsens, attempt to rebel. But the state can rely on a huge number of people who, for work and meager benefits, will transform themselves into willing executioners. The reconfiguration of American society into a corporate oligarchy is conditioning tens of millions not only to passively accept state and corporate crimes, but to actively participate in the mechanisms that ensure their own enslavement. “Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1945 essay “Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility,” “it trains him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any function, even that of hangman.”

Organs of state repression do not rely so much on fanatics and sadists as ordinary citizens who are desperate, who need a job, who are willing to obey. Arendt relates a story of a Jew who is released from Buchenwald. The freed Jew encountered, among the SS men who gave him certificates of release, a former schoolmate, whom he did not address but stared at. The SS guard spontaneously explained to his former friend: “You must understand, I have five years of unemployment behind me. They can do anything they want with me.” Arendt also quotes an interview with a camp official at Majdanek. The camp official concedes that he has assisted in the gassing and burying of people alive. But when he is asked, “Do you know the Russians will hang you?” he bursts into tears. “Why should they? What have I done?” he says.

Norman Finkelstein, a child of concentration camp survivors [mother of the Majdanek concentration camp and two slave labor camps; father of the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz] and a furious critic of violence, writes of Raul Hilberg after his death:

"Hilberg famously used the triad' Perpetrators-Victims-Bystanders' to catalogue the main protagonists in the Nazi holocaust. It is notable that he didn't include a category for givers of succor, presumably because they were so few in number. Judging by the life he lived, my guess is that, had the tables been turned, Hilberg would have been among those few."

I can imagine, should the rule of law ever one day be applied to the insurance companies responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans denied medical care, that there will be the same confused response from insurance executives. What is frightening in collapsing societies is not only the killers, sadists, murderers and psychopaths who rise up out of the moral swamp to take power, but the huge numbers of ordinary people who become complicit in state crimes. I saw this during the war in El Salvador and the war in Bosnia. It is easy to understand a demented enemy. It is puzzling to understand a rational and normal one. True evil, as Goethe understood, is not always palpable. It is “to render invisible another human consciousness.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his book “The Gulag Archipelago” writes about a close friend who served with him in World War II. Solzhenitsyn’s defiance of the Communist regime after the war saw him sent to the Soviet gulags. His friend, loyal to the state, was sent there as an interrogator. Solzhenitsyn was forced to articulate a painful truth. The mass of those who serve systems of terrible oppression and state crime are not evil. They are weak. “If only there were vile people ... committing evil deeds, and if it were only necessary to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them,” Solzhenitsyn wrote. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The expansions of public and private organs of state security, from Homeland Security to the mercenary forces we are building in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the burgeoning internal intelligence organizations, exist because these “ordinary” citizens, many of whom are caring fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, have confused conformity to the state with innocence. Family values are used, especially by the Christian right, as the exclusive definition of public morality. Politicians, including President Obama, who betray the working class, wage doomed imperial wars, abandon families to home foreclosures and bank repossessions, and refuse to restore habeas corpus, are morally “good” because they are loyal husbands and fathers. Infidelity, instead of corporate murder, becomes in this absurd moral reasoning the highest and most unforgivable offense.

The bureaucrats who maintain these repressive state organs, who prosecute the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or who maintain corporate structures that perpetuate human suffering, can define themselves as good—as innocent—as long as they are seen as traditional family men and women who are compliant to the laws of the state. And this redefinition of civic engagement permits us to suspend moral judgment and finally common sense. Do your job. Do not ask questions. Do not think. If these bureaucrats were challenged for the crimes they are complicit in committing, including the steady dismantling of the democratic state, they would react with the same disbelief as the camp guard at Majdanek.

Those who serve as functionaries within corporations such as Goldman Sachs or ExxonMobil and carry out crimes ask of their masters that they be exempted from personal responsibility for the acts they commit. They serve corporate structures that kill, but, as Arendt notes, the corporate employee “does not regard himself as a murderer because he has not done it out of inclination but in his professional capacity.” At home the corporate man or woman is meek. He or she has no proclivity to violence, although the corporate systems they serve by day pollute, impoverish, maim and kill. Those who do not carry out acts of rebellion, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, are guilty of solidifying and perpetuating these crimes. Those who do not act delude themselves into believing they are innocent. They are not.
- http://www.truthdig.com/
•••
Chris Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute and a weekly columnist for Truthdig. His newest book is “Death of the Liberal Class.” On Dec. 16 he, Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern, Dr. Margaret Flowers and several others will hold a rally across from the White House to protest the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempt to chain themselves to the White House fence. More information on the Dec. 16 protest can be found at http://www.stopthesewars.org/.

Israeli Oppression—’It Isn’t Nice,’ by Barbara Dane

"No other offense has ever been visited with such severe penalties as seeking to help the oppressed."

- Clarence Darrow

Via Norman Finkelstein

Finkelstein on Gaza

Norman Finkelstein in Austin: “Gaza and Peace, April 28, 2009.”

Does Iran Have Right to Self-Defense

Update: Robert Dreyfuss: We aren't going to war with Tehran.

Iran is an authoritarian nightmare, like many of America's other allies in the region. But is a country developing weapons to protect itself against aggressors really that outrageous?

The neocons used to believe that is was not so outrageous.

From Norman Finkelstein:

In 2000, leading neoconservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol edited a volume of foreign policy analyses titled Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (Encounter Books). The chapter on Iran was written by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA analyst on the Middle East. Here’s what he said:

"Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran’s ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran’s most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominions I the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians belie that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won’t do something stupid.

"A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States’ maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf. We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs…agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the “left” and the “right,” this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran’s defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power. (pp. 138-39)"

Israel Losing Its Soul

Israel won't let nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu leave Israel or talk to the press, because he is a perceived threat to national security, who would criticize Israel in the world press.

Now, Israel won't let American anti-militarist critic, Norman Finkelstein, into Israel because he is a perceived threat to national security, who would criticize Israel in the Israeli and Palestinian press.

As Israel continues its obscene violence in Gaza that has killed, wounded and starved 10,000s of innocents, the world watches a country relying on militarism and collective punishment lose its soul.

In Defense of Academic Freedom, Audio Links

As academic freedom comes under increasing attack in America during the Bush/authoritarians' reign, a conference was held last week addressing this problem endemic to all authoritarian societies.

Chicago IndyMedia recorded the In Defense of Academic Freedom conference held in Chicago on Oct. 12, 2007 at the Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago.

Conference speakers and links to speakers' comments made at the conference are below.

- Tariq Ali, Editor of the New Left Review and Verso Books - Listen now to Tariq Ali.

- Dr. Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Listen now to Noam Chomsky.

- Dr. Akeel Bilgrami, Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy and Director of The Heyman Center, Columbia University - Listen now to Akeel Bilgrami.

- Dr. Tony Judt, University Professor and Director of the Remarque Institute, New York University - Listen now to Tony Judt.

- Dr. John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago - Listen now to John Mearsheimer.

- Question and Answer period - Listen now to Q & A.

- Mr. Evan Lorendo, Academic Freedom Committee, DePaul University - Listen now to Evan Lorendo.

- Dr. Mehrene Larudee, International Studies Program, DePaul University- Listen now to Mehrene Larudee.

- Dr. Neve Gordon, Professor, Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University - Listen now to Neve Gordon.

- Dr. Norman Finkelstein, author of Image and Reality of the Israel Palestine Conflict, The Holocaust Industry and Beyond Chutzpah - Listen now to Norman Finkelstein.

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Anti-Militarist Giants Cohn and Hilberg Die Within a Week

Norman Rufus Colin Cohn (January 12, 1915 – July 31, 2007) and Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007) died within a week of each other this summer.

I intend no meaning in noting the proximity of their deaths, other than to state that these men shared a common disdain for the power of the state aligned with the indifference of its citizens to inflict genocidal catastrophes upon humanity.

And their lives and work ought to live on as a furious reproach to contemporary Americans who passively watch the destruction of over one million Iraqis as demagogic figures in American popular culture vilify anyone (achieving a certain level of celebrity) daring to point out the crimes against humanity that war inflicts.

Cohn’s most influential works are The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957) and Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1970).

Hilberg wrote The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), regarded as the seminal study of the Holocaust killing of millions of Jews, and millions of other victims.

Both men were historians believing in precision free of ideology in depicting the facts of past occurrence without apology to contemporary political motivations.

Cohn and Hilberg’s eloquence and precision inspired generations of humanists.

Reading Noam Chomsky’s The Culture of Terrorism (1988), Cohn’s words ring out.

All the NAZIs required of the population is a “mood of passive compliance” as Hitler’s Holocaust coursed through Europe as he promised a return to “traditional values” and security for good German families, cites Chomsky.

Passive compliance; that phrase should become an imprecation, a curse reserved for the most despicable of acts.

Norman Finkelstein, a child of concentration camp survivors and a furious critic of violence, writes of Hilberg after his death:

Hilberg famously used the triad Perpetrators-Victims-Bystanders to catalogue the main protagonists in the Nazi holocaust. It is notable that he didn't include a category for givers of succor, presumably because they were so few in number. Judging by the life he lived, my guess is that, had the tables been turned, Hilberg would have been among those few.

I can’t help but think that Hilberg and Cohn went to their deaths disappointed and saddened as the idiocies of the Bushes, Cheneys, Powells, and Rices go unchallenged by far too many Americans.

However, millions of Americans have come to the conclusion that halting and reversing the obscenity that we as a country inflict upon the people of Iraq ought to become the deciding factor in whom we elect as the next president.

And that conclusion owes nothing to Hilberg and Cohn, but rather is the result of independent, free thinking.

Hilberg and Cohn, as great intellects, would have smiled and saluted that.

Finkelstein Resigns, Settles with DePaul.

Breaking - DePaul U. ends its disgrace in part; admitting no guilt.

Finkelstein resigns, settles with DePaul.

Well, Alan Dershowitz's campaign to prevent the publication of Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History failed, but his campaign to deny Finkelstein tenure succeeded.

No matter it's a big world, and the lies and militarism of Dershowitz and company are more clear than ever thanks to Finkelstein's work.

Smearing, the time-honored tactic of militarists, censors, and torture advocates ultimately dissipates in the light of truth.

Details coming at Norman Finkelstein.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors, was denied tenure in June after spending six years on DePaul's faculty.

His remaining class was cut by DePaul last month.

His most recent book, "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," is largely an attack on Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz's "The Case for Israel."

In his book, Finkelstein argues that Israel uses perceived anti-Semitism as a weapon to stifle criticism.Dershowitz, who threatened to sue Finkelstein's publisher for libel, urged DePaul officials to reject Finkelstein's tenure bid.

Finkelstein said in the statement that he believes the tenure decision was "tainted" by external pressures, but praised the university's "honorable role of providing a scholarly haven for me the past six years."

Joint statement of Norman Finkelstein and DePaul University

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Finkelstein Fights on for Academic Freedom

Update: Finkelstein resigns, settles with DePaul.

Details coming at Norman Finkelstein.

DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein’s fight for academic freedom is far from over, though he was denied tenure this spring for his vociferous objections to Israeli and American militarism, among other published work.

A man dedicated to peace and precision in scholarship, who took on Israeli and American militarism met a Karl-Rovesque slime machine.

Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul this spring after Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz and supporters of Israeli militarism organized a campaign against Finkelstein's tenure appointment, supported in part by Madison’s The Progressive magazine’s editors, Matt Rothschild and Ruth Conniff, who ludicrously called Finkestein a Holocaust minimizer, though both of Finkelstein's parents are concentration camp survivors.

Dershowitz, a long-time supporter of Israeli militarism, maintains a special enmity with Finkelstein, not helped after Finkelstein exposed Dershowitz’ plagiarism.

Finkelstein’s supporters are legion, including Noam Chomsky and the late Raul Hilberg, respected as the dean of Holocaust historians and author of the classic The Destruction of the European Jews.

The Chicagotribune.com reports that Finkelstein and supporting students may “engage in civil disobedience at the start of the fall term Wednesday … “

"I am morally, mentally and emotionally depleted right now. But I will find the resources to fight this next battle. … It is rather regrettable that DePaul is carrying on the spirit of Chicago's Al Capone rather than St. Vincent de Paul," Finkelstein said in an interview with the Trib. "One of my heroes is Paul Robeson, who said, 'I will not retreat one-thousandth part of one inch. And I won't either."

As reported in Chicago Indymedia, DePaul took the unprecedented step of canceling Finkelstein's last year of classes and locking him out of his office. Professors who are denied tenure are traditionally given one more year to teach while they seek other employment.

Hilberg, before he passed away in early August, said in the Logos journal, “Well Finkelstein is now maligned all over the place. There were obviously lobbies who tried to dislodge him from his position.”

And Hilberg had expressed dismay about the ad hominem attacks against Finkelstein as a blow to academic freedom.

First-rate scholar, popular teacher, and prolific author, I doubt a man of Finkelstein’s contributions to humanity will have much problem finding a position befitting his stature, though his case illustrates perfectly how difficult it is for critics of Israeli militarism to survive in the American academy.

Such is the ideology in America, but were he working in Israel or England; Finkelstein would still be a controversial figure, but would also be widely perceived as heroic and righteous, provoking a needed debate of the ethics of American-Israeli militarism.

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Scott Horton: ADL in the Wilderness

Abraham Foxman has often veered into the irrational:

- Smearing prominent critics of American and Israeli militarism as self-hating Jews or anti-Semites

- Joining with the likes of Alan Dershowitz in campaigns of hate and Rovian character assassination against political opponents like Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky

But Foxman seems lately to be, for lack of a better expression, flipping out.

Scott Horton at Harper's has a post:

For the second time in two weeks the name of Abraham Foxman, the long-serving director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has surfaced in the news in a way that discredits the organization. The first appearance was in connection with an effort to block Professors Mearsheimer and Walt from speaking at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs; the second and still more grim appearance is in connection with ADL’s firing of its New England director over his support for recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1914-15. Foxman issued a statement last week in which he essentially said that the Armenians and Turks have a historical problem, and that Jews should keep out in order to preserve Turkish-Israeli relations. In response to a storm of indignant reaction within the Jewish and Armenian communities. Foxman has changed course. His change looks every bit as opportunistic and insincere as his initial stance.

The ADL has a very long and noble tradition, starting with the traumatic case of Leo Frank in Atlanta between 1913-15—a case which ended with Frank being lynched. ADL’s involvement in the civil rights movement in the United States was a glorious moment, and ADL’s battle against anti-semitism, especially abroad, has been important.

I frankly have difficulty understanding what has happened to this organization and to Mr. Foxman. (Instead) of standing for principle, ADL seems now beholden to an increasingly crass political calculus. The fact that Foxman would compromise on a matter as important as the twentieth century’s first genocide because he feels raising his and his organization’s voice might interfere with Turkish-Israeli relations speaks volumes, and not to his or his organization’s credit. The only solution would appear to be a complete restructuring of the ADL’s leadership, introducing new voices with moral stature and credibility.
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Finkelstein Draws Flood of Support in Wake of Tenure Denial

Madison, Wisconsin—In the wake of the rejection of tenure at DePaul University (Chicago) for Norman Finkelstein who teaches political theory, Finkelstein has drawn a flood of support.

Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, drew praise from his academic department and a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences tenure committee, but his tenure was denied as the result of political pressure, mostly from Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz—a rightwing scholar who infamously supported legalizing torture, is working with Robert Bork on overturning the conviction of Lewis Scooter Libby, and tried unsuccessfully to block publication of Finkelstein’s Beyond Chutzpah (University of California Press, 2005) which exposed substantial plagiarism committed by Dershowitz.

Writes Finkelstein: “An appendix to Beyond Chutzpah irrefutably demonstrates that Dershowitz not only massively lifted information and ideas from another author, Joan Peters, without attribution, but that he did so from a book, Peters' From Time Immemorial, universally dismissed as a fraud.”

The tenure was vetoed by DePaul president, President Dennis Holtschneider, who is facing a vote of no confidence from the DePaul faculty for a nakedly political decision.

Finkelstein has drawn condemnation for his razor-sharp criticism of American and Israeli militarism and what he contends are the misuses by some of the Holocaust that almost killed his parents.

But the sheer political nature of the tenure denial has enraged many. As reported in the Chicago Sun Times:

Clutching blankets, pop bottles and signs saying "Just Grant It,'' two dozen students protesting the tenure denial of a popular but controversial professor were forced to leave a 22nd-floor conference room outside DePaul President Dennis Holtschneider's office Wednesday.

The students were threatened with penalties including expulsion if they didn't leave after they spent nearly three days in the room.

"This is going to be a long battle,'' said student Evan Lorendo, 22. "DePaul will be embarrassed by this activity.''

Finkelstein has drawn praise from Raul Hilberg, considered the dean of Holocaust studies, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and Sara Roy.

Writes Finkelstein in his website:

I am currently being inundated with letters of support. Please be certain that I have read everyone of them. Because it's simply impossible to answer each of them personally, I have decided instead to post the letters because many are so intelligent, witty, incisive and heartfelt. I am deeply in your debt and will do my best to continue to earn the praise and support I have received. To avoid any retaliation, I have taken the liberty of removing the names.

A student studying at DePaul e-mailed that Finkelstein is "all packed up and ready to go... if you call his office, his voicemail says: 'you have reached the office of Norman Finkelstein... I will be leaving DePaul on June 16 ... '"

What a tragedy in the cause for justice and unwavering commitment to truth, and what a loss for DePaul University.
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