22 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 3.16
JUST
SAYIN'
Hard on
Softness
By Jack Welch
Illustration by Carrie Neumayer
"Compassion," believe it or not,
is an offensive word to some.
It seemed like a good-hearted, if not
necessarily consequential, gesture
when Mayor Fischer signed Louisville up as a
"compassionate city" through the international
Charter for Compassion fve years ago.
Since then, we've annually been named the
organization's Model Compassionate City —
bent on, Fischer has said, "making sure that
no one is left behind or goes wanting" in the
community. Dozens of businesses, schools and
public agencies have gone on record saying
they'll help out in any way they can.
After all, said the philosopher Arthur
Schopenhauer, "Compassion is the basis of
morality."
So it came as a bit of a surprise back in
January when objections were raised about
a proposal for the University of Louisville's
Brandeis School of Law to join the Partnership
for a Compassionate Louisville. (It eventually
passed by a faculty vote of 26-2.) In a
Courier-Journal guest column, Brandeis law
professor Luke Milligan accused "progressive"
faculty members of attempting to establish
an "ideological brand" for the school by
committing it to "liberal orthodoxy," employing
code words such as "social justice" and
"compassion." Really? Those are politically
loaded, strictly liberal concepts?
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