Commencement Speakers
Should Have Shaped Events
I’m disappointed in your choice of the
opera singer as a Commencement
speaker. No matter how great she is, no
matter what her accomplishment is in rising to the top of her field, she is not an
“event-shaping person.” A speaker should
be someone who has shaped national
events. Frankly, I was also disappointed in
Ms. Albright’s selection; however, she at
least was an “event-shaping person.”
How about someone like Arnold
Schwarzenegger? Gen. David Petraeus?
Carl Rove? Clarence Thomas?
Frankly, I’ve been disappointed in the
direction my University is taking — the
assigned book on the Qur’an, the selection of Erskine Bowles ’ 67 as the head of
the University System. I still pay my dues
to the GAA but no longer make financial
contributions in the annual giving campaign.
convicted on repatriation of any
charge arising out of their detention in Guantanamo. The real
issue has been trying to find ways
to help ameliorate the impact of
their U.S.-sponsored torture and
abuse, something that we as
Americans should never have to
contemplate.
Unless we have reached the stage where
we toss out the rule of law and accept the
irrebuttable presumption that President Bush
is always right when he dubs someone a terrorist, then perhaps we should allow them
the chance to prove their innocence, aided by
volunteer lawyers, at no cost to the taxpayer.
That is more consistent with the America of
which I want to be a part. Some have now
been held without trial for longer than the
R. Jerry Martin ’ 56
Wilmington, Del.
Of Crime, Punishment
and Habeas Corpus
The article “In Defense of the Forgotten” (November/December) seems to
lionize Clive Stafford Smith. I wonder if
Mr. Smith has been as zealous in tracking
his clients to see if they have committed
other crimes after release.
And since when have enemy combatants been entitled to habeas corpus? Prisoners of war, who are covered by the
Geneva Conventions while enemy combatants, are not so entitled. POWs in
World War II were required to work long
hours in the fields and live in non-air-conditioned barracks. I know because
there was such an installation in the town
in Iowa where I grew up. I wonder what
Mr. Smith thinks of that kind of torture.
Since some of the terrorists released from
Gitmo have reappeared on the battlefield,
were any of them his clients?
Wayne Blankenship Jr. ’ 47
Kenner, La.
and after seven years of work,
we finally got a new trial. Clive
was just hoping to get the sen-
tence reduced to life, which had
never happened in Louisiana
history, and I had a feeling that
after all was said and done, he’d
be acquitted. I was so confident
I bet Clive that if he was acquit-
ted, Clive would have to feed me Hen-
nessey XO Cognac all evening in New
Orleans. When the trial was over, I am
proud to say, it cost Clive a few hundred
dollars, and the inmate was free.
My part in this whole thing was mini-
mal; it was the hard work of a dedicated
man, Clive Stafford Smith, that took an
innocent man off death row and back
into society to start a new life. The ironic
part is that I had no idea Clive
was a Carolina alumnus until
reading the article. Clive, Deb
and I will be looking you up
when we get to England in a
couple years. I still have a taste
for XO!
Thomas K. Lane ’ 91 (MSW)
Beaufort, S.C.
Clive Stafford Smith ’ 81 responded:
Certainly we have tried to follow up with all
our clients after their release. Committing
crimes has not been the problem. As best we
have been able to determine, fewer than 15
out of 500 released ( 3 percent) have been
IAN ROBINS
Academics, Athletics
and Aspirations
I am dismayed at the nar-
Clive Stafford Smith row-mindedness of some of
our alumni concerning Coach
entire duration of World War II. In the long Davis’ pay and recent raise (Letters
drawn-out meantime, however, the prisoners department, January/February Review).
in Guantanamo would dearly love to be Bill Friday’s comments are virtually iden-
allowed to work long days, rather than being tical to those of over 100 years ago by
held in isolation in a maximum security cell Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, who tried to
the size of your (smallest) bathroom. abolish football in the 1890s and again in
1905. Those arguments failed then for the
very reason that they did not and do not
comport with logic and common sense.
Does Carolina fielding a mediocre to
poor football team somehow raise our
academic profile? Put another way, do the
poor football teams fielded by Duke University somehow raise its academic profile? Of course not; it simply makes Duke
a laughingstock in that regard. Is that
what we aspire to?
Academics and athletics are in no wise
intrinsically antithetical, nor are they in
practice at institutions like Carolina and
Michigan and Virginia. I played football
for four years at Carolina and made Phi
Beta Kappa my junior year. I dare say that
Freedom From Death Row
Carries a Taste of Cognac
I just wanted to compliment you for
the wonderful article on an old “friend,”
Clive Stafford Smith ’ 81. I have wondered
for years what he was up to.
I met Clive while working for the
Department of Veterans Affairs as a psychotherapist specializing in post-traumatic
stress disorder. Through a patient, I was
introduced to Clive as he worked on a
death row case at Angola State Prison in
Louisiana. The inmate was a Vietnam veteran and was on death row basically
because he was a Vietnam veteran and
outlaw biker. I got involved in the case,
