| U.S. allies since the late 1970s. Since the incident, UW officials have been holding discussions below the radar with representatives of the Hmong community to put some measures in place that may lessen the chances of a similar incident occurring again on the Madison campus. On July 28, UW Chancellor John Wiley formally met with members of the Hmong community at United Asian Services of Wisconsin to talk about the new initiatives that the UW-Madison was considering or had implemented to make the Madison campus more relevant to the needs of the Hmong community. However, while the event sought to look to the future, the Kaplan incident still loomed large in the minds of the over 50 members of the Hmong community in attendance. Wiley began the session -- with Mai Zhong Vue translating -- by giving the audience some background information on the University of Wisconsin-Madison. On some levels, Wiley's opening remarks served as a context for his answers to questions that he fielded later in the meeting. Basically, Wiley emphasized that the university was large with a student enrollment of 41,000 people and a staff of 16,000. He also emphasized that the UW is a premier research institution where the free-flow of ideas is essential to its work. "Our faculty is responsible for trying to answer questions that no one has an answer to, to push back the frontiers of human knowledge," Wiley said. After recapping the current initiatives like the PEOPLE Program that the university has implemented to promote the diversity of its student body, Wiley unveiled a new initiative that the university is planning. " Currently, we're in the process of hiring an instructor to teach Hmong language beginning this fall," Wiley said. "And a group of our faculty and staff has created a proposal for a full-blown Hmong Studies program in our curriculum for which we are considering a range of options. The likely first step will be the creation of a certificate in Hmong Studies and a separate Hmong Studies Center and attracting more faculty to campus to teach these subjects. Given the size and influence of the Hmong population in Wisconsin, it makes sense for the state's largest university to take a leading role in spreading knowledge about the Hmong culture." After his prepared remarks, Wileytook questions from the audience. Tong Wa Lo brought up the feeling that the Hmong and their contribution to the U.S.'s Vietnam war effort is being forgotten by the government. "There is less respect for our community," Lor said as much to the audience as to Wiley. "It is our time to make sure you hear this piece because all of the things that have happened that have really erased all of the contributions that the Hmong as a community have made for the United States." Wiley emphasized to Lor that he shouldn't generalize that the Hmong contribution is being forgotten by everyone. "Not everyone has forgotten or is unappreciative of the great contributions the Hmong people have made," Wiley replied. "We have a community of 16,000 people just within the university and more than 250,000 people in the Madison area. There's a great spectrum of views and attitudes among all of those people. Even within this room, there are many different views and attitudes. We should never forget that because one person thinks a certain way or says or does something that others agree with it. That's almost never the case." Henry Yang wanted to know more details about what the university is going to do to support Hmong students and to ensure that similar incidents do not occur in the future. "What is the plan to hire Hmong faculty who can be a resource to the students and can be a role model and a mentor for the Hmong students," Yang asked. Wiley responded that there are no guarantees the there will be no future incidents, no matter what is put in place. "I don't want to mislead you," Wiley emphasized. "I can't stand here today and say that if we hire one or two or five or 20 or 100 Hmong faculty that unpleasant incidents will never occur again. They may still happen sometimes. I can't control what other people say and do. We are moving to increase the presence of the Hmong on our faculty. Many of the Hmong students on campus do already have mentors. The ones in the Chancellor's Scholars program do. The ones in the PEOPLE Program do. I know there are some who do not. We're also looking to increase our resources in the advising area to help Hmong students. We are aware of those problems. And as resources allow, we are moving to address them." Johnny Lee's question focused on the issue of academic freedom. "I agree that the university must preserve academic freedom," Lee said. "But if this is academic freedom what the university practices on the Hmong, why doesn't the university practice its academic freedom like what Mr. Kaplan labeled the Hmong to other minority groups. If the university only practices academic freedom on one group of people, then it isn't academic freedom. It's racism." Wiley replied by emphasizing that it wasn't the university's policy to disrespect the Hmong. That academic freedom does not mean agreement to what is expressed or done. "The university did not, as a matter of policy, decide to practice academic freedom by disrespecting the Hmong," Wiley said. "That is not what happened. One individual said something that appeared to be disrespectful to the Hmong. I imagine that every identifiable group of any sort at sometime in our history as been similarly disrespected by someone. You shouldn't feel singled out and you shouldn't feel that it was somehow a university policy. It was a single incident. And as I said earlier, we have a lot of people and millions of words are said on the campus every day, many of them offensive to some people at some time. And let me say that by saying that, I am not asking you to ignore what happened. I'm not trying to minimize it or deny it. And I'm not excusing it. I'm simply saying that these things do happen and we have to learn to use them as a learning experience. And we tried to do that in the wake of this incident. We tried to use it as an example of how people need to be careful and respectful in their communications with each other." Lee responded to Wiley's remarks by saying "My comment is that if this is an incident, it seems like the university is prolonging it because the university doesn't do anything to Mr. Kaplan, basically that he doesn't follow any policy," Lee said. Next issue: More questions about academic freedom and the role of the university in promoting diversity. |
| UW Chancellor John Wiley meets with Hmong Community Healing and moving on By Jonathan Gramling Part 1 of 2 |
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| (Above l-r) UASW Director Koua Vang, MaiZong Vue, UW Chancellor Wiley, Peng Her, and FouChou Thao |
| The impact of the February incident at the UW-Madison Law School involving Professor Leonard Kaplan and some remarks he allegedly made about Hmong people in an example he was making in his class is still having an effect in Madison's Hmong community and among Hmong students on campus. In some ways, this incident exacerbated the vulnerability especially elder Hmong people have been feeling since the federal government began to with draw the economic supports they had been receiving since entering this country as refugees -- and |