The most influential economist of the last half of the 20th century once said, "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." With the failed history of centrally planned economies as our guide, we tend to agree with Dr. Milton Friedman's assessment of the tensions between economic freedom and economic equality. Nevertheless, we welcome the debate fostered by the University of Dayton's Human Rights Week. As alumni, however, we are concerned about several aspects of the Human Rights Week program.

First, on Wednesday, Feb. 4, Doug Dirks, a board member of the Fair Trade Federation, will deliver the keynote address of UD's Human Rights Week. We support free trade and the goals of the World Trade Organization's Doha Development Round - including lowering agriculture subsidies and reducing agriculture tariffs all over the world. To be sure, the goals of free and fair trade overlap, yet substantial differences remain.

What we find troubling, though, is not that Mr. Dirks was given a prominent forum to share his views, but that the planners of Human Rights Week failed to find someone to present a counter argument about the benefits of free trade. By not including an unequivocal defender of free trade, those in charge of Human Rights Week sought to take sides in a legitimate debate over trade liberalization.

Yet it is a tremendous disservice to the spirit upon which universities are founded to exclude one side of the debate to the benefit of the other. With that in mind, then, we wish those in charge of Human Rights Week had resisted the temptation to give tacit approval to one side of the debate.

To solve this apparent oversight on their part, we have a suggestion: the planners of UD's Human Rights Week should ask former United States trade representative and Cincinnati resident, Rob Portman, to deliver a prominent campus address about the benefits of free trade. UD would be hard pressed to find a better free trade advocate in the entire country than Mr. Portman. Indeed, inviting Mr. Portman to address the student body would be the least the planners of Human Rights Week could do.

Next, we find it disturbing, though hardly surprising, that UD's Human Rights Week does not include a day devoted exclusively to arguably the greatest human rights issue our world faces - abortion. Those in charge of Human Rights Week used the United Nations rubric for defining human rights. Yet the unanswered question is why the organizers of Human Rights Week eschewed the basic human rights framework established by the Catholic Church? Certainly a Catholic university devoted to the cause of protecting the most vulnerable among us should consider abortion during Human Rights Week. Not all of us agree over the issue of abortion; all of us agree, however, that abortion and the various interests involved are an indispensible part of the human rights calculus and ought to be debated in a fair and intellectually honest manner.

Official tacit approval of certain ideas is what alienated most of us from participating fully in Human Rights Week while we were enrolled at UD. While we regret this development, we hope those in charge will heed our suggestions so that a more honest debate can take place in the future.



Erik Elam, Class of 2007

Bethany Hunt, Class of 2008

Wade Luckett, Class of 2007

Clark Packard, Class of 2007