Priest, prof debate blame for Kosova

An Eastern Orthodox priest and a Haverford College religion professor went head-to-head Thursday night on the topic of "Who's to Blame in Bosnia and Kosovo?" About 15 students, faculty and community members attended the debate, which was sponsored by the Penn Orthodox Christian Fellowship and held in the Newman Center library. Only a handful among them, however, were Penn students. Haverford College Religion Professor Michael Sells placed most of the responsibility for the violence and unrest in Bosnia and Kosovo on the "radicalization of Serbian society." He maintained that allegations of genocide on the part of Kosovar Albanians against Serbs were false but that the Serbs did practice ethnic cleansing against the Kosovar Albanians. Father Alexander Webster, the University's Eastern Orthodox Chaplain, on the other hand, blamed many different groups for the strife in the Balkans, claiming that "nobody's hands are unbloodied." He named as guilty parties Albanian nationalists, the Kosovo Liberation Army, the media, large groups of Serbs and the United States and Great Britain, which he called "NATO's prime movers." Despite their differences, though, both men agreed that it is extremely dangerous to place the blame on any one group. Doing so can lead the public to mistakenly view the group as "age-old hating subhumans," Sells said. While several members of the audience supported Sells' argument, Penn Transportation Professor Vukan Vuchic disagreed vehemently. The professor of Transportation Engineering called Sells' words "very biased and very damaging." Vuchic said that the bombings in the Balkans were "against United States traditions of liberty and freedom." Although the turnout among Penn students was meager, College junior Kristen Webster, former president of the OCF and Alexander Webster's daughter, said she thought the discussion was nevertheless worthwhile for the community. "It's very important to establish dialogues of this sort that allow for a variety of viewpoints but that hopefully allow the truth to shine through," she said. Others, however, thought the degree of discourse was insufficient. "There definitely wasn't enough time to discuss everything," current OCF President and Wharton senior Peter Margetis said. "Really, the University should be able to open up a much larger forum for such discussion." The discussion was the first of several in the "Distinguished Guest Lecture Series" that the OCF has planned for this year. Future topics include "The Problem with Hate Crimes Legislation" and "Can a Christian Be a Journalist?"