200 protest professor's lecture on problems created by Mexican immigration

Craig Kapitan:

Roughly 200 people stood in front of the Bush Presidential Conference Center on Monday evening, hoisting pickets and chanting in a mixture of English and Spanish for Harvard professor Samuel Huntington to go home.

Despite the chilly reception outside, the professor was greeted inside the auditorium with polite applause and a capacity crowd of 600 as he warned of a possible future America split into two dominant cultures, caused in large part by the current flood of Mexican immigrants.

"We've seen a decline in stability in many aspects of American life," he said in a soft voice as he delivered the speech for Texas A&M University's Distinguished Lecture Series. "Americans have become very seriously divided over what are called the culture issues."

Huntington, who has been the subject of controversy since penning Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity last year, said Monday that America was settled by people who were white, British and Protestant.

Those people set the tone for America's dominant race, ethnicity, culture and ideology, he told the crowd. Eventually, Germans, Irish and Scandinavians, then later Southern and Eastern Europeans were able to assimilate into this American culture, he said.

But the current wave of immigration, which has been going on since 1965 and has been dominated by Mexican immigrants, has been different, Huntington contended. Because there have been so many such immigrants - legal and illegal - and they are so near the country they were born in, they have been able to resist assimilation and instead create pockets of the country where their culture dominates, he argued.

"To the Mexicans, the Southwest is their turf, after all," he said, reminding the audience that at one point the land he was standing on Monday belonged to Mexico. "They feel they have a particular right to be there."

The splitting of America from one strong national identity into two already is starting to show the signs of a developing backlash, he said

In fact, California's rise in its Hispanic population is similar to the change of power from the Serbs to the Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s, which eventually led to extermination camps, he argued. While there's probably almost no chance that would happen in California, there's also little chance there won't be any backlash at all, he said.

During the hour-long speech Huntington also described a growing backlash to America's reputation around the world as an empire. However, all questions at the end of the lecture were in regard to his views on immigration. Many pointedly challenged his notions.

Outside the building in the minutes before the speech, Father Raymond Chavez of Santa Teresa Catholic Church in Bryan stood among dozens of members of his flock as he wore a T-shirt stating "Mexican!" underneath his black jacket. He was joined by various other groups from the A&M campus and surrounding communities, including Conroe.

The Mexico native said it wasn't difficult to rally his parishioners - many of whom are immigrants themselves - to attend the protest.

"We don't agree with him, of course," he said. "We have to defend our Mexican rights, our human rights."

Nearby, professor Armando Alonzo, a founding member of the Mexican American Latino Faculty Association and a researcher of Southwest history, took a similar stance. His organization could not support such defamatory views, he said.

Hispanics have been coming to America since 1848 and have constantly assimilated, he explained. The current process might end up being slower than in the past, but it is occurring, he said.

"I think if he was to look at the newer research, it would show that Mexican immigrants are in the process of making those adjustments," he said. "These immigrants make valuable contributions in their own ways."

Alonzo said he found Huntington's paid appearance - near the end of Hispanic Heritage Month - insulting not only to the area's Hispanic population but to all students at A&M. It seems inconsistent, he said, given President Robert Gates' emphasis on making "diversity, globalization and internationalization a major pillar of his program."

During a short introduction of Huntington, Executive Vice President and Provost David Prior emphasized that Distinguished Lecture Series speakers do not necessarily reflect the views of the university or its administrators.

According to professor Edward Harris, who serves as chairman of the committee that decided to invite Huntington to the school, the group primarily looks at a candidate's scholarship and academic credentials.

Huntington has been teaching at Harvard on and off since 1950 and has authored several books. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, which was published in 1996, has been translated into 37 languages.

He has served as chairman of Harvard's department of government, associate director for its Center for International Affairs and chairman of the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He also served as coordinator of security planning at the White House during the Carter administration.

"In this case, we had quite an outstanding person with outstanding credentials," Harris said Monday morning. "Unfortunately, we did have the controversy that was sort of in the background that surfaced as we came closer to the meeting date."

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