Hundreds of students filled the WSC ballroom and spilled over into the surrounding hallways and overflow areas to listen to a panel of faculty present their personal frameworks for opinion about an impending war with Iraq.
The panel ended their remarks by inviting student questions and began with Caleb Proulx and Barret Runyon, who they praised for their activism in creating dialogue about the war on campus.
Proulx and Runyon disagreed strongly in their reactions to the panel's remarks.
"The type of discussion we had today should have been held months ago. I cannot help but view this as too little, too late, and a failure on the part of the University community..." Proulx said.
Runyon was enthusiastic about the conference and commended the panel for what he believed were fair and comprehensive presentations of various views on the war.
Thomas Lee, a professor of law at BYU who moderated the discussion, said the panel's intent was to advance the cause of civil discourse and to educate students on the various issues involved in the current conflict.
Panelist Gerrit Gong, assistant to the president for planning and assessment and a professor of political science at BYU, cited heavily from his experience serving on the national Commission on Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States.
"Classified material presents a dilemma for proof in open societies," Gong said in the context of whether the Bush administration had presented compelling evidence against Iraq. "Protecting intelligence preserves intelligence, especially when people are putting their lives on the line."
Panelist Stan Taylor outlined 3 criteria for analyzing the war: legal, ethical, and prudential. Taylor is a professor of political science at BYU who has been affiliated with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and has published books and articles on national security and intelligence matters.
Taylor believes an offensive against Iraq would be nationally and internationally legal.
"This war may not meet all the Just War criteria. But peace in Iraq right now doesn't meet them either," Taylor said. "I worry a great deal about this war. I wish it had started differently. I wished we'd used better diplomacy to get a coalition together."
Other panelists included: Donna Bowen, a professor of political science at BYU who has consulted for The World Bank and the U.S. State Department and has published extensively on the Middle East, and Paul Hoskisson, an associate professor of ancient scripture at BYU.
Copyright Brigham Young University 12 Mar 2003
