Now that wiser heads have prevailed, and 6-year-old Elián Gonzalez is likely to soon be back where he belongs, with his father, there will be a tendency to conclude that the matter is resolved. While living with his father will go a long way toward removing the boy from the game of political football in which he has been embroiled, there remains the serious issue of the emotional bond he has formed with his Miami relatives and their fellow Cuban exiles. They are the ones, after all, who took him in and became his support system immediately after his mother’s tragic death, replacing the maternal bond with their familial affection. As such, they are now a crucial component to his emotional well-being. To completely sever this connection so abruptly would be a harmful blow to Elián, a re-traumatizing of an already traumatized little boy. Having lost his mother, he would then lose the very people whose love and support helped him get through the shock and grief.
The only humane solution is for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to set up a mechanism that would permit regular, perhaps monthly, visits between Elián and his Miami support system. The I.N.S. could grant special visas to some members of Elián’s extended Miami family, and also to his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This would allow the Miami relatives to visit the boy in Cuba, or Elián and his father could travel to the U.S. The most important thing is that such visits happen soon, so that Elián does not lose the connection that at the moment is a deeply meaningful part of his emotional and psychological world.
To leave the matter where it stands would be emotionally reckless, putting Elián adrift once again.
Hillary the Divider
Is Hillary Clinton running for Mayor of New York? Given her recent habit of weighing in on every single issue that pertains to the city’s residents, with polarizing statements that show little intelligence and a lot of arrogance, one could be forgiven for concluding that the First Lady was measuring the curtains in Gracie Mansion instead of running for the U.S. Senate.
In March she lent her voice to Al Sharpton’s crusade against Rudolph Giuliani. Most recently, when economics forced interim schools chancellor Harold Levy to cut back the summer schools program, Mrs. Clinton unleashed another attack, saying she was “disappointed … by the Mayor’s failure of leadership on the issue of summer schools for the children of this city.” She then attacked Mr. Giuliani for his suggestion of merit pay for teachers, taking her cue from the teachers’ union, which, by the way, can rest assured that Mrs. Clinton will do its bidding if elected.
Without a record of her own, Mrs. Clinton has fallen back on a strategy of swoop in, attack, polarize-then run away. But what else can she do? She has no accomplishments to which she can point as evidence that New York residents should hand her a Senate seat, unless of course one counts working for a shady Arkansas law firm a decade ago as a qualification to become a Senator from New York. Now Rudy Giuliani is not everyone’s cup of tea, and his record is fair game for any opponent. But he does have a job, one of the world’s most difficult, and like anyone with a job, he messes up occasionally, sometimes in a big way. Mrs. Clinton has no job and no portfolio, and thus has been reduced to stirring up trouble in New York City.
It would be interesting if Mrs. Clinton used her time between now and November to speak about her own vision and her own achievements, instead of ganging up with the Mayor’s local enemies. But to do so, of course, she would have to be someone else.
Unions Invade Universities
Is higher education about to go the way of shoddy, U.S.-made cars?
Thanks to a bizarre ruling by President Bill Clinton’s National Labor Relations Board, the United Auto Workers-that’s right, the group that made Japanese and German imports look good-will soon have a branch at New York University.
Graduate students who work as teaching and research assistants at N.Y.U. have been granted the right to unionize. These bright young men and women now will have the chance to affiliate with the U.A.W., whose attitude toward craftsmanship and excellence drove American consumers into the arms of foreign carmakers.
So N.Y.U. will become the first private university in which teaching assistants are union members. The university’s vice president for academic development, Robert Berne, summed up the new situation. “To me, it is a chilling message that faculty members may not be able to talk to their graduate assistants about their assistantships without going through a union representative,” he said. “If that is the case, it can’t help but detract from the significant relationship that faculty members develop with their graduate assistants.”
With the U.A.W. on campus, university administrators like Mr. Berne can expect the kind of havoc that unions have inflicted on the auto, steel and garment industries, to mention just a few. Productivity will decrease, wages will be forced up, creativity and spontaneity will be nonexistent and universities will be unable to dismiss poor performers.
Why do the grad students even want to unionize? It’s simple: There is a lack of jobs out there in the humanities. Rather than brave the marketplace, the students want the union to take care of them, coddling them in eternal grad-student status. If the graduate assistants are looking for union-protected jobs, they should remove themselves from the fantasy world of the university campus and teach in urban public schools, where they can do some good.
If the federal government continues to force private universities to open their gates to unions, will anyone be surprised if the best education of the future can only be bought overseas?
