Profs defend Clinton in forum

President Clinton's fate may be in the hands of the House of Representatives for the time being, but last Thursday, a group of Penn professors and students acted as his jury in a discussion about the future of Clinton's presidency. "Villain or Victim: a Panel Discussion on Impeachment" provided a mixture of viewpoints on the president's future, as students and faculty voiced their opinions both loudly and vehemently. The discussion, held in a large lecture room in Logan Hall and moderated by College Dean and History Professor Richard Beeman, drew a sizable mix of more than 45 students and University staff members. Beeman opened the discourse with a discussion about the ambiguous nature of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors," noting that not even the "founding fathers" had a clear understanding of what that phrase entailed. He then turned the discussion over to the panelists. Panelist and Political Science Professor Marie Gottschalk discussed the fact that the country is distracted by the current crisis in the White House while the rest of the world is struggling with a global financial crisis. When looking back on the time spent on the Clinton scandal, Gottschalk noted the American people may say, "What were we thinking?" History Professor Barbara Savage then remarked that if she "had to guess" based on public opinion, she would wager that Clinton will not be impeached. She noted that "people's expectations of Clinton were low to begin with, so his actions did not come as a huge surprise." Political consultant and 1982 College alumnus Kenneth Smukler also brought to light several "myths surrounding impeachment in the last nine months." One myth, he said, involved something that many Republican politicians have been saying -- that the Clinton investigation is "not about sex." He compared this to claiming that "the Titanic is not about an iceberg." Panelists and students alike also discussed our nation's and the media's fixation with the President's private sex life. College freshman Evangelos Gatzogiannis stood up and declared that "there is no private life of the President of the United States," lambasting Clinton for "disgracing the office of the presidency" and stressing the public's right to know about the moral character of its leadership. Most panelists, however, were more concerned about the increasing trend toward ignoring the lines separating public and private spheres of discussion. Gottschalk and Undergraduate History Department Chairperson Bruce Kuklick both expressed concern about the increasing amounts of attention devoted to the private lives of politicians, adding that privacy of sexual matters overrides the public's right to know. "I am enormously disturbed that we can't preserve a distinction between personal and public lives," Kuklick noted, adding that, "there's not an adult in this room who could withstand the public scrutiny of their personal life that Clinton has withstood." Kuklick disputed that the president's actions were grounds for impeachment. "If this were grounds for being fired, I can name you eight people in the History Department who would lose their jobs." Gatzogiannis said that he wished a wider variety of views had been expressed. "I think the panel was weighted too much on the left. No one actually criticized Clinton." Others, however, had more positive opinions. Beeman voiced his approval of the discussion. "I really do think that the panelists were able to open up a number of unexpected areas of discussion," he said.