 Abe Baggen, Leader and Friend
Abe Baggen (pictured), USF’s chief information officer for the last four years, died Feb. 23 after a two-year battle with melanoma.
Tracy Schroeder, who was acting CIO during Baggen’s illness, said Baggen was a colleague of integrity and warmth who even during his illness managed to maintain a positive and energetic sense of self.
“As a leader and manager, he was concerned with people and outcomes; he wanted to do not only the right things, he wanted to do them the right way,” Schroeder said.
Baggen spearheaded the university’s three-year computer replacement policy, the creation of the ITS Help Desk, the incorporation of software to track computer help requests, the adoption of the USF Connect Web portal, and the technological upgrade of 14 classrooms around campus. Baggen also launched an ambitious overhaul of the campus’s telecommunications and networking infrastructure, which will eventually upgrade the campus phone system and modernize and expand network security.
“Abe brought incredible enthusiasm and expertise to his role,” wrote USF President Stephen A. Privett, S.J. in a university-wide message. “Though he was with us for only four years, he left an impressive legacy.”
A university memorial service was held March 3 at 3:00 p.m. in Xavier Chapel.
SOA Panel Argues Human Rights
Human rights lawyers and United States Army personnel argued the involvement of the formerly named School of the Americas (SOA) in human rights abuses abroad at a Feb. 19 panel discussion at USF.
“We know that the bad apples are a lot of bad apples. The evidence that says no military officer trained at the SOA has ever been charged is no evidence because no one is charged,” said Terry Karl, a professor of political science at Stanford University and a legal expert on human rights abuses in Latin America.
Karl, along with Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University School of Law and defense counsel for SOA protesters, argued that training provided to military personnel from repressive regimes results in more repressive violence. Army representatives said students can take a number of courses at the school, including leadership and engineering, and that later behavior on the part of graduates is not an effect of their education.
“The connection between SOA and its students and human rights abuses is neither direct nor indirect,” said Lt. Col. Linda Gould, current chief of the Latin America branch of U.S. Army headquarters.
The School of the Americas, located at Ft. Benning, Ga., trains counter-insurgency paramilitaries in Latin and South America supported by the U.S. It was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security and Cooperation in 2000. Some of the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in Central America, including the murderers of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her daughter in El Salvador in 1989, are alleged to have been trained at the SOA.
Panel Illuminates Reasons for Worldwide Corruption
A Feb. 18 USF panel including an attorney for former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow discussed the reasons for worldwide corruption in business and government.
Jan Nielsen Little, a partner in San Francisco litigation firm Keker & Van Nest, said Fastow’s guilt is not clear given that the collective behavior of Enron’s employees helped create an environment of dishonesty. Little appeared in the McLaren Center as part of a panel titled “The Scourge of Worldwide Corruption” sponsored by the McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good.
Roberta Ann Johnson, politics professor and author of the forthcoming book The Struggle Against Corruption: A Comparative Study, spoke on the differences in corruption between relatively stable democratic countries that can pay their civil servants a proper salary (such as the United States and Israel) and non-stable, poorer countries that are more vulnerable to bribery and a black market economy (Russia and India).
In doing foreign business, USF Business Professor Karl Boedecker said American companies are checked from bribing clients abroad by federal oversight. He said recent corporate scandals at home involving misreported assets arose from changes in regulatory laws that no longer made auditors or financial analysts liable for fraud.
Women’s History Month
USF’s third annual Global Women’s Rights Forum will be held March 8-11 in commemoration of Women’s History Month. Presentations include “African Women and AIDS Activism” March 8 in McLaren 252, “Black Women Challenge Criminal Injustice” March 9 in Lone Mountain 148, “Sexuality Within Immigrant Communities” March 10 in McLaren 252, and “The Tragedy of Women Along the U.S.-Mexico Border” March 11 in University Center 222.
Other events scheduled to celebrate women’s achievements include a talk on “Women in Leadership, Science & Technology” with Moira Gunn, host of Public Radio’s Tech Nation and an art show depicting contemporary women by four California artists in Thacher Gallery through March 28.
Lecture on Plight of Persecuted Jews
Beginning in 1948, thousands of Egyptian Jews were forced out of their homes in another chapter of Middle East tension between Israelis and Arabs.
On March 31, at 4 p.m. in Lone Mountain 141, the Swig Judaic Studies Program will host speaker Joseph Abdel Wahed, an economist and business expert for the Bay Area organization Jews Indigenous to the Middle East (JIMENA). Wahed will discuss the plight of Middle Eastern Jews forced to leave their native, predominantly Arab, countries.
Wahed was one of nearly 80,000 Jews who fled their homes between 1947 and 1969 during the Israeli-Arab conflicts that occurred after Egypt and other Arab nations gained independence from European powers. Wahed will also discuss current events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For more information, call (415) 422-6302, email silver@usfca.edu, or visit JIMENA’s website at www.jimena-justice.org.
Art and Social Activism in Davies Forum
The spring Davies Forum, titled “Artists for a Just World: Seeking Justice Through the Evocative Power of Art,” showcases the work and ethos of artists who use their art to promote social justice. Approximately 10 artists will visit during the semester, including local artist Claudia Bernardi, who works as a forensic anthropologist at mass gravesites and helps survivors tell their stories through art.
Other artists include media artist John Killacky, who presented his films responding to HIV and AIDS. Nora de Cortinias, whose group, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo, uses art in its demonstrations against repression in Argentina, will visit April 5.
“We wanted to give students a broad understanding of the possibilities so they can see for themselves how art changes the world,” said Peter Novak, coordinator of the forum.
Bill Cartwright at USF March 24
Bill Cartwright, USF’s all-time leading scorer, former Chicago Bulls player and coach, will appear at USF March 24 for a conversation with Oliver Chin, author of The Tao of Yao: Insights from Basketball’s Brightest Big Man. The two will discuss “Basketball Across the Pacific: Sports as a Source of Wisdom.”
Chin writes about the spiritual perspective of his subject, Chinese native and Houston Rockets player Yao Ming, who is a Taoist.
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