The Record Newspaper 30 August 1990

Page 1

PERTH, WA: August 30, 1990

Registered by Australia Post P ublication No WAR 0202

Number 2703

POST ADDRESS: PO Box 50, Northbridge, 6000 W.A. LOCATION: 26 John St, Northbridge (east off Fitzgerald St). TELEPHONE: (09) 328 1388

FAX (09) 328 7307

PRICE 60C

A strong Link Professor Link (right) has had a distinguished career in both education and law. He is an Ohio, Illinois and Indiana lawyer and has chaired several c ommittees of the American Bar A ssociation. Earlier in his career he served as a trial attorney and administrator in the Department of the Treasury in Washington DC. Professor Link has served on two Human Rights Commissions, participated in civil rights litigation and is the author of model fair housing legislation.

He has an interest in and a strong commitment to legal ethics. The distinguishing characteristic of the Notre Dame Law School under his guidance has been a continuing orientation towards the value questions involved in law. He is involved in parish and community activities in South Bend and has taken up the responsibilities of serving on a wide range of c ommittees. Professor Link is married to Barbara Ann. They have four children, a son and three daughters.

Uni success is on the cards While the establishment of the University of Notre Dame Australia (NDA) may seem like a dream, it is a very dream, r ealistic according to the inaugural vice chancellor whose appointment was announced this week. "We don't go into this with any venture thoughts that it won't work. It is so badly needed that it is bound to work," said Professor David Link. currently dean of the law school at Notre Dame University Indiana. Professor Link. 54, has acted as a consultant to NDA over the past 12 months and will take up

full time appointment in mid 1991. The mission is important to the university's success, he said this week in a phone interview. "We have an outstanding mission already set for us by a board that has a clear vision of Catholic higher education." he said. Asked what he hoped history would say of his efforts. Professor Link said: "That I set the course well, that we were going the right way, that we knew where we were going and that people were able to pick up where we were going."

quality right from the start."! hope they will say that not only were we right but that we always had this idea of academic excellence as part of our mission statement. "It is important to make sure the Catholic character takes hold very early and has a lasting quality. "Ihope it will be said we saw what was important to Catholic tertiary education and put that in place and made it easy for others to follow." Professor Link said he kept returning to the adjective 'Catholic' "because we have a different mission".

He said it would be always a matter of

"I would not be as excited starting another

institution. I look at the separate mission that Catholic schools have been able to hold together throughout history." Asked if he was prepared to anticipate criticism of NDA he said he was prepared to listen to criticism but it would not worry him if the university was doing the right thing.

"You can easily live with the criticism when you know you are doing the right thing. "That we are in a delicate period makes it so urgent to have a Catholic tertiary school at this time. It is important to the Catholic

Church, to the country of

Australia. to the educational process." Looking at the historical part played by Catholic universities when there was a need. Professor Link said, it was now a case of a need for Australia. "It will make a contribution to the Church in Australia, to government in Australia and to education." Professor Link said that he at one time imagined that his move from a legal practice to university teaching was to be short term but students changed his mind. "They are what keeps me in education. I got

VENTURE IS BOUND TO WORK, HE SAYS caught up in it because of you are never going to get the spirit of students. the right kind of They are wonderful to graduates." work with and I am Professor Link said he optimistic about their would be very much views of the future. involved in the selection "I think they are cur- of students and helping ious, that they demand them explore their own much of their teachers, unique qualities not doing just the old He said NDA's students routines but looking at modern questions. They would be similar to demand more of their others but would have a teachers than teaching different outlook because and look to them as a role of the place of Australia on the Pacific rim. model. He said one of his aims "It is exciting having would be to make his people look at you in that become globally students sense. It's what the educational process is all aware. One of his concerns about some Amerabout. ican universities was that "If you don't start with they were parochial in the right kind of students thought and not really who have critical values "about the world".

Catholic backing for UN curbs Australian The Catholic Social Justice Council (ACSJC) supports the action of the United Nations Security Council in applying economic sanctions against Iraq to achieve a peaceful resolution of the Gulf crisis. It said it hopes that any military action .0.••••-

taken by the multinational forces will not go beyond the minimum necessary to secure effective implementation of the United Nations' sanctions. "We support continued Australian diplomatic initiatives for peace, such as the d iscussions being

with undertaken governments in the region by the foreign minister, Senator Gareth Evans. "President Hussein's decision to hold foreign civilians in Iraq and Kuwait and use them as human shields at key civilian and military violates targets

international law and human rights in that it is a breach of the 1979 Convention on the Taking of Hostages and Article 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. "It also breaches Article 12 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to

which Iraq is a signatory. "Iraq's treatment of foreign civilians as hostages comes on top of a longstanding history of human rights abuses by Iraq's ruling Ba'ath Party. "President Hussein's use of poison gas against the Kur-

dish minorities is well known. "Thousands of political prisoners have been detained without trial; torture and ill-treatment of prisoners are routine. "Last year Amnesty International published the names of nearly 400 children who had been

detained without trial, imprisoned and tortured. "The ACSJC calls on the Commonwealth Government to do its utmost to continue to explore every practical avenue for a just peace in the Persian Gulf and for the restoration of the legitimate government of Kuwait"


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