The Stroll: A Blues Requiem for Stateway Gardens

April 27, 2007 - 10:21am

"I first came to Stateway Gardens in the early 1990’s, following a set of moral intuitions where they led. As a citizen, I was moved to explore what it might mean to conduct oneself as a neighbor under conditions of urban apartheid. As a writer, I felt the need to earn the right to use certain words. I was, in short, deeply but actively confused."

The keynote speech given by Jamie Kalven at the Eight Square Blocks conference held in April, 2007.


"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” - Milan Kundera

My mission—with multimedia help from my colleagues David Eads, Patricia Evans, and Jason Reblando—is to place and ground the conversation that will unfold at this conference.


Ruth Young (1938-2007)

April 22, 2007 - 9:25pm
In interviews occasioned by the publication of his book Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, Ruth’s dear friend Studs Terkel described himself as “an agnostic.” In other words, he said, “a cowardly atheist.” I have a hunch that characterization may apply to a number of us here. But not to Ruth. In her gentle, quiet way, she was an uncompromising atheist. An atheist for all seasons.

In interviews occasioned by the publication of his book Will The Circle Be Unbroken?: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith, Ruth’s dear friend Studs Terkel described himself as “an agnostic.” In other words, he said, “a cowardly atheist.” I have a hunch that characterization may apply to a number of us here. But not to Ruth. In her gentle, quiet way, she was an uncompromising atheist. An atheist for all seasons.


The Unfinished Business of the Kalven Report

November 26, 2006 - 10:35pm
I was recently contacted by several University of Chicago students active in the campaign to persuade the university to divest from companies doing business in the Sudan. They sought me out because of my last name.

I was recently contacted by several University of Chicago students active in the campaign to persuade the university to divest from companies doing business in the Sudan. They sought me out because of my last name. My father, Harry Kalven, Jr., a professor of law, was chair of the faculty committee that in 1967 produced the “Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action.” Universally known on campus and beyond as the Kalven Report, this two-page document has for the last four decades been at the center of a succession of debates occasioned by student demands that the university take stands on public issues. Currently it provides the framework for discussion of the merits of divestment as a means of pressing the Sudanese government to cease the genocide in Darfur.