In a weekend letter to the University of Virginia community, “Mother” Teresa Sullivan, President of the University of Virginia, has stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy.
Her email missive to faculty and others titled, The Paris Terrorist Attacks, begins by conflating the Islamist mass murder in Paris with alleged “bigotry” at Missouri State University and “elsewhere”:
I write this morning following a week marred by distressing events, from the horrific acts of terror in Paris last night to recent acts of bigotry, whether they were committed in Missouri or elsewhere. We begin this weekend as many members of our community here in Charlottesville and around the world are angry, fearful, and confused in reaction to these acts that have shaken confidence in our most fundamental value of human respect. [emphasis added]
Mother Teresa continues by expressing sadness over the “violent acts of terrorism that occurred in France”; however, Madame President fails to mention the fundamental Islamic underpinnings of the Paris massacre, nor does she reference the Islamic State, the group that has taken credit for the attacks.
And to dispel any thought that her first paragraph was not the talking main point, Sullivan doubled-down in the forth paragraph, again commingling the Islamist Paris murders with distinct, unrelated events in the United States:
Today and in the difficult days ahead, we will hold our French students and their families and friends in our thoughts and prayers. We are aware that terrorist attacks have occurred recently in other parts of the world, along with other forms of violence, bigotry, and suffering in our own nation. [emphasis added]
Mother Teresa Sullivan, in an effort to be all things to all people, has insulted the Paris victims’ memories by amalgamating their deaths with what appear to be relatively trivial events.
While her intentions may have been pure, Sullivan’s inclusion of Mizzou’s racial unrest—in a letter that should have focused strictly on the Paris attacks—displays a fundamental deficiency in her ability to discern.
