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KAREN BARTA: From the FM News Station, I'm Karen Barta. The State Board of higher education meets today to select a new chancellor for the Minnesota State colleges and universities, which officially comes into being July 1. The system combines the state university, community college, and technical college systems. The board has adopted a 32-point restructuring plan for the next two years, including merging 20 colleges into 10 and cutting administrative staff by 20%.

Candidate Judith Eaton of New York says she's attracted to the job because the state is confronting the major issues facing higher education, providing quality education and access to it more cost-effectively.

JUDITH EATON: In a lot of other places around the country, people haven't gotten to where you are, they're still complaining about the issue. They're still saying we don't want any budget cuts, or next year, there'll be money. We don't have to take any really significant action yet. And you've gone beyond that and said, there is a problem here, and we have to solve it. Now what's going to work? And that's a major thing that makes this very, very attractive to me.

KAREN BARTA: Eaton is president of the Council for Aid to Education in New York. Three male residents of a juvenile detention group home are in Becker County Jail this morning after briefly taking three group home employees hostage at knife point. No one was injured.

The state forecast today-- mostly sunny and a little warmer, highs ranging from the middle 70s in the east to the lower 80s in the west. Tonight and Tuesday, mostly clear and still warmer, lows from the upper 40s in the southeast to middle 50s in the northwest. Highs in the 80s. For the Twin Cities today, sunny and warm with a high near 80 degrees.

Around the region this hour, it's sunny. In St. Cloud, the current temperature is 69 degrees. Rochester is reporting 66. It's 68 in Duluth and 70 in the Twin Cities. That's news. I'm Karen Barta on the FM News Station.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's 6 minutes past 10 o'clock. You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News Station. I'm Paula Schroeder. Today's programming is made possible in part by the advocates of Minnesota Public Radio. Contributors include. 3M, maker of Post-It brand removable notes, and the Honeywell Foundation, providing the benefits of control worldwide.

[PIANO TUNE]

This half hour on Midmorning, one of Minnesota's most politically active women talks about politics and gender. Gloria Griffin is considered one of Minnesota's most prominent feminists. She's our focus today on Minnesota voices. Every Monday on our Minnesota Voices Interview series, we take time for an extended conversation with people whose contributions are noteworthy.

Gloria Griffin's first work out of college was on Madison Avenue in New York as art director at Good Housekeeping and Harper's Bazaar magazines. Now, at 69, Griffin is the coordinator of the Minnesota Women's Consortium, which she founded. The consortium is a St. Paul-based interest group which lobbies on behalf of women's issues. Griffin told me recently she was not a feminist as a young woman and used her husband's old boy network to get her first job in New York.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: My husband and his friends, which was an old boys network, but it worked so well to my advantage. I did not see it as an old boys network. He knew that I was coming. We were going to get married. So his friends convinced the art director at Good Housekeeping Magazine that he was the only major art director in town without his personal assistant. So the next person who walked through the door was going to be hired as his personal assistant, and they made sure that was me.

It was wonderful to have such friends. Now I look back on it and say, that's what they do for each other all of the time. And why can't we do that? And now I think a few women have reached the point where we can do that. And of course, we're accused of being an all-girls network. That was once a goal a few years back.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah, right.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: So that was how I started. And then he quit in a fit of anger. I wasn't even there a year, I don't believe. When the art director quit, the associate, who was a woman, moved up to art director. And I became associate. It was one of those breaks that can only happen once in a lifetime, so that's the reason I was doing that at such a young age.

Then I became pregnant with my first child, and I, of course, expected to leave. And everybody else expected me to leave. But the Korean War came along, and my husband was called back. He had been in the Second World War, and he could not get out of it. He was just called back.

So I was shown off as the Korean War widow and how patriotic-- this was the Hearst Corporation-- how patriotic they were. And so I got to stay, even though I was pregnant, though most people didn't. The woman who had become art director had said to me a couple of times, if you can't have a baby while working at Good Housekeeping, then what the hell is the matter with the world? And I thought, oh, dear, that's such a hard attitude. But of course, once again, I was glad that it affected me that way.

PAULA SCHROEDER: But that wasn't the mainstream attitude at that time, was it? This was 1950.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: No, it was not. That's why I thought she was kind of nuts. So I didn't really recognize things that are so obvious now and that I think young women today just simply would not tolerate. I didn't really recognize them. Just about the time I was leaving, those people were waking up, too, that there was much more to women and women's concerns and women's writing and all of that. So I began to open my eyes a little.

So that's how I got from there to here, except that when I came here, I did not want to come. I thought there were only two options. One was divorce my husband and stay there, or two, go with him and leave New York, which I dearly loved.

So I finally decided to come with him, grumbling all the way in '67. And I went to my first precinct caucus, and I had always been active in my party at home. But when I got here and discovered the open-- the precinct caucus system, for one thing, was just such an eye opener.

I just couldn't believe that you did this. They elected me chairperson of my precinct. The first one I went to, I couldn't believe that. Because in Connecticut, you worked for 20 years to be--

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK, this was in the old Ward system?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Yes. Oh, god. So I think it was from precinct caucus night on, I just thought Minnesota was the greatest place I'd ever seen.

[CHUCKLING]

I went to the DFL convention, state convention that year, which is another thing that would have taken me 25, 30 years in Connecticut.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So that really swept you into the political world here. And that was in 1967, again, a time when women were becoming more politically active. But it still wasn't a very common occurrence. When did the Women's Political Caucus get started?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Well, they started, I think, in '72, and I was not there at the first start of that. But I had been very ill, and my mother really nursed me back to health. I had ulcers from Madison Avenue life. And then my mother died quite suddenly. She had cancer, and she just went very quickly.

And the whole thing just rocked me. I didn't know where I was coming. I wasn't really doing anything. And I read in the newspaper that the Minnesota Women's Political Caucus was getting together some people to go to the first National Women's Political Caucus Convention in Houston. That was in '72, I think, or '73, very early '70s.

And so I called up the person whose number was in the newspaper, was Mary Ziegenhagen, and asked if I could go along. And she said, oh, yes, we need the extra vote. And I said, oh, dear, I didn't mean to vote. I just want to go along. She said, no, we need the votes. Come on. She was just so friendly about it.

So at the airport, I met a couple of women who are still my dear friends, Avis Foley and Katie Sasseville and people like that. It was a-- was an absolute eye-opener. Because as long as I'd been active in democratic politics, I had it once again, I mean, obviously the candidates were men. Few of us ran for school board, that kind of thing. But that was the first time I really put a gender perspective on politics.

PAULA SCHROEDER: What were the goals of the Women's Political Caucus? Was it to get women into elected office, or was it to push the issues important to women?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Really both. But the caucus has always been devoted to get those women elected. And one of the reasons that we thought then and we still think now is that the issues that we're interested in, which we called women's issues then, child care, pay equity, et cetera, you didn't have to explain that to an elected woman. She could differ with you on what kind of childcare was needed and how much was needed and who for.

But you didn't have to explain what childcare was. And with almost all men legislators, you really have to educate. You spend a year or two educating a state legislator before you can really get much action out of them. And with women, that just is not necessary. So you're ahead of the game right from the beginning.

Those issues, of course, now are mainstream, and many more men understand them. But still, we feel that a woman has a better understanding. So we still feel that for us and someone to talk to, a woman legislator, a woman-elected official is the best.

Now, that's a very practical view if you're lobbying and if you're working on issues. The long view, which Arvonne Fraser said to me just the other day-- she says, I think we, meaning women, may be the answer to the country's problems and the only answer. And I'm beginning to try to see it that way.

We still have our feet on the ground. We still come off the street. We still have some common sense, and we just don't buy a lot of stuff. And we don't really go out there and stomp around.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, engage in the partisan conflict.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Yes. But it is coming down to, for instance, the kinds of budget cutting that are going on right now for children and women and for elderly and for poor. It's really very, very severe. And even if you agree that those cuts have to be made, why doesn't anyone even talk on either side about the defense budget?

It went up this year. We had to spend more. There was an emergency, a couple of billion for the Defense Department. I got to tell you, that's crazy. And there's hardly a woman that, if you discuss that, really discuss it with her, who doesn't think that is crazy.

I don't know why, as a nation, that we put up with that kind of smoke and mirror, is what that is. And nobody seems to say, guys, come on.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Do you think that there was a backlash against women? 1990 was called The Year of the Woman in national politics.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Isn't it great?

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]

GLORIA GRIFFIN: It was great.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And many women elected to all kinds of offices, both national at the Congressional level and at the local level as well. And it fell off in 1994. Do you think that women need to regroup and start over again or find a different path?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: I think we have to find different paths. I don't think it's starting over again. I have to admit, I think we just totally did not see that coming. The Year of the Woman thing, when Carol Moseley Braun, because she was the first African American woman in the senate, has just made an incredible difference.

One, because of her race, and two, because of her gender and her outspokenness, that it's just amazing that some of these guys have toed the line and really don't say quite the outrageous things that they would really like to say. But she's changed it more than that. There is an awareness that she has brought to that body, and you just can't help but think, if we had 10 of them or hundreds of them how different it would be. We just have to have more women at that level. It's very small.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, I know that that's one of the things that's important to you, is recognizing that spark, that talent, that almost-- well, the leadership quality in young women. Are you finding much of it?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Oh, yes. Yes. At the risk of insulting some folks, the women who are now 50, 40, and maybe late 30s are not as outspoken about feminism or as active. And I think a bunch of us began to feel, gee, we're going to be like the Suffragettes and just die out.

But the 20s are just something else again. I'm just amazed at them. I think it's wonderful. I realize that I may have met a small, select group. That may be something peculiar about our area, but I think that the 20s women, they have a real chip on their shoulder. They have a totally different attitude.

The things that they accept are very different. The issues may be the same. They use different words, but the issues are the same. Nothing has changed in what we all get or don't get. We still have 30% less money that we earn, but I think that their solutions are going to be very, very different because their attitude is so different.

I think most of them say, what the hell, I am worth every bit as much money as he is. And I am going to make that. And when you-- there's a difference between having that as a goal and something you really have to work for and accepting it and then stepping on it. And so I think that's going to be very, very different.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So you think the women in their late 30s, 40s, and 50s had to overcome that previous conception of what a woman's place was, and that's why they might not be pushing quite as hard?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: We don't seem to be driven by action, the need for action. If it isn't there, and we're really perplexed about something, we have a tendency to stop and think about it and stand still. I think that's what has happened to the 40s and 50s women, that they weren't sure where they were going. And yet, those are the mothers-- the 40s are the mothers of the 20s. And so some of that came through. And that--

PAULA SCHROEDER: And the 20-year-olds are the ones that are going to push it forward.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: They've been raised by feminist mothers, most of them. They certainly had feminist discussions and issues around all the time. And they may express it differently, but they really have a sense of what equality is and how much they are owed and how much they're going to get. Certainly, we had none of that sureness.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Gloria Griffin, this is Midmorning on the FM News Station, 19 minutes past 10 o'clock. I'm Paula Schroeder in St. Paul. This is our regular Monday feature, Minnesota Voices, a conversation with people who have made notable contributions in different walks of life. Gloria Griffin lost her race for a congressional seat in 1976 when she faced Tom Hagedorn. But Griffin is still committed to politics as head of the Minnesota Women's Consortium.

The women's consortium was founded as a way-- as a place, really, for women to come together and talk about issues that are important to them. Do you think that has influenced that younger generation of feminists and kept the idea of feminism alive in this community?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Oh, I think so. Sure. [CHUCKLES]

PAULA SCHROEDER: How so? What are some of the things that you think are most important about the work that the consortium does?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Well, a lot of things. But what I see as the most important thing is that it gave a lot of women, some women who would not call themselves feminists, the feeling that there was a center. There was a place for active women. We are influential.

We do have a home, and we're here. And you'd better listen to us. It's that "us" part that it's not just me and my friends, and it's not just me or my club. It's all of us. And I really think that single voice impression has made a great deal of difference in Minnesota.

For a long time, the legislators-- they're so snarly this year that I'll excuse this year. But for a long time, the legislators really thought all those women said the same thing. Well, we don't. You know that. We differ on all kinds of things where we have differences. But the rest-- when the rest of the world sees us as speaking in one voice, that really gives us all a great advantage.

PAULA SCHROEDER: One of the more controversial aspects of the consortium is that organizations that are part of it must have a prochoice stance on abortion, right?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: No, no. You can be neutral.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK, but you can't be pro-life. Why is that?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: That's right. You can't be against women's reproductive freedom. I guess most of us just feel terribly strongly that if you can't make the decision about your own body and your own life, you do not have equality. And that's what it's all about.

Mine is really the equality generation. We, you know, we've never wanted to run the whole thing, but we run on 50% of it. And if a bunch of guys-- I mean, go up to the legislature and watch it for half an hour. And if you want those guys making that decision for your daughter or for you, well, heaven help you. And I wish you the best of luck.

But I don't think any woman interested in equality can feel any other way, but that whatever you decide, that's your decision. And you can have your doctor's help and your mother's help and your pastor's help. But in the end, if you can't make that decision, you are not equal. And you're never going to make the other thing.

So that's the way it's going to-- I must admit that when we first started the consortium, I had hoped that we would include pro-life women because there are still issues like pay equity on which there ought to be absolutely no difference whatsoever, earning capacities, discrimination, sexual harassment. There is no room for the abortion question on that kind of thing, and we should be able to do that. It's unfortunate, but we've not been able to do that.

So when we started the consortium, we just decided that you can have a neutral stand on that or any other issue you can be neutral on. But if you work against one of the planks in the Houston plan of action, then you wouldn't want to be in this group.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Over the years, there has been some criticism of the feminist movement, that it's excluded women of color, that it tends to be more of a middle-class, white women's kind of a movement. What's your response to that?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: It's true. It's true. I think that so many of our organizations have worked very, very hard on diversity. We've had a lot of discussions. Everyone has had racism workshops. It's been going on.

And my young jewel upstairs, Annie Lee-- we were arranging another program. And I said, how do you really feel about that? And Annie said, there's a lot of wonderful talk out there but very little action. And that's really where it is.

We all have the same issues and we have had for some years, but the priorities are very different. One of the priorities for African American women is the state of Black males, especially young. And I worry about them, too, but that's their priority and working with those issues, with those people on on-the-street issues for them.

Our on-the-street issues are abortion. Black women think that's fine, and they're mostly pro-choice. But they couldn't bother-- they think we put way too much time, effort in into that fight. So that's just a difference of priorities. I don't think we differ on the issues.

The problem is, working together, who's going to bury that priority? I'm not sure that we shouldn't be trying to think of a different configuration instead of you and me working together on the problem. Maybe we should simply make sure that each are informed, fully informed, and have a different kind of partnership or a different kind of arrangement.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Any other issues that you think are really waiting out there and wanting for some attention that haven't been given attention?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Sexuality. On the one hand, we all can agree. You don't want all these teenage births. On the other hand, we can all agree that you can't go back to Victorian times where women are totally sheltered. And you don't want them to know anything about sex.

On the other hand, there's the sexual revolution, which was really for men, not for women. But women partook of it and thought, if men can have a freer sexual life, so can we. All of those things have their answers and attitudes. And we all think, for us, perhaps we've got the right attitude. And it's OK for me.

But as a whole, I think that we are the responsible people, not because we should be, but because women just are responsible. We're going to have to find some better solutions to that whole thing, not for the rest of society, but just for ourselves. And I think that's really mixed up now. I just don't know what we're going to do on that one. But once again, I'm hoping for the 20s [CHUCKLING] people. I think they may be a lot smarter than we are. I don't know.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You mentioned that you thought this country would be a lot better off if women ran it.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: I wouldn't be-- I wouldn't say it that way if I'm really serious. We need every brain we can get. We need every good thinker. We need every leader. And I really believe that about half of those are going to be female, and half of them are going to be men.

I think we're in all kinds of trouble at the moment, and some of that trouble I see as really male socialization. The way we socialize our boys still is a problem. And having had three sons, I know how hard it is. You really want to raise a feminist kid. They really do seem to learn much more from their peers than they do from us.

But the one upsmanship, the business about having to police the whole world, and the simple business of still killing each other over whatever that problem is-- I think that we have to add our $0.02 to that. And we have to get some common sense and that kind of thing.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Gloria, you are in your 70s now?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: No, I'll be 70 in September.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK, OK.

[CHUCKLING]

So you haven't obviously hit your personal retirement age yet. What's ahead for Gloria Griffin?

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Well, travel. I'm going to win the lottery.

[LAUGHTER]

Consortium's been terribly important to me. When I feel that the consortium is on really good, solid ground, why, then I'll think about leaving. The meantime, I'm thinking I might share it with somebody, so that would be kind of fun to work half-time and do that.

I really have to feel that-- well, there are a couple of things that are unknown. We need to expand this building, and so I want to get that expansion done. I also definitely feel that there is a metro rural split. We have, for many years, been trying to draw on rural women. Rural women are wonderful. Things go along great.

And then if you don't constantly keep at it, once again, you find yourself-- they're a greater Minnesota, and we're metro. So I have-- not a new idea. There aren't any new ideas, but I'm going to approach it a different way in the next year or two. I would like for all the women in Minnesota to feel it's us, all of us. If this affects women, that's all of us.

And I really don't think that happens yet. It's rural women who-- they just have transportation problems that we don't have. They have isolation problems we don't have. They have lower incomes. There are just all kinds of real differences. But I still think that we can probably get under one roof better than we've done in the past. And I think it's going to take some work. It takes real organizing.

But we've all done a lot of political organizing now, and we hope we've learned something new. So that's one of my personal goals. The other personal goal is I've got to see someone in Washington, some female from Minnesota, in Washington.

We've only sent one woman to the congress, no women to the Senate. We've had two wonderful candidates. That's just a crying shame. In a liberal state that calls itself forward looking and really is open, politically, talented women, and we still haven't done that. So I want to see that done.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Gloria Griffin, thanks a lot for talking with us.

GLORIA GRIFFIN: Thank you. I've enjoyed it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Minnesota Women's Consortium director, Gloria Griffin. Our Minnesota Voices series is produced by Dan Olson with assistance from research intern Dan Romeo. Next week, we hear from Calvin Griffith, the former owner of the Minnesota Twins. All of our Minnesota Voices interviews can also be heard every Saturday at 2:30 in the afternoon as part of Week in Review.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Minnesota Public Radio News is supported by 3M, generously matching more than 800 employee contributions to MPR. Its 29 minutes before 11 o'clock. Karen Barta's here with news. Hi, Karen.

KAREN BARTA: Good morning, Paula. Affirmative action has received a potentially deadly blow from the Supreme Court. In a decision today, the court ruled that Congress has no more power than the states to offer special help to minorities.

Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady sits down to lunch with President Clinton this hour. Clinton has invited the F-16 pilot to the White House to hear firsthand how he survived being shot down in Bosnia. They both then head to the Pentagon for another ceremony honoring O'Grady.

Jurors in the OJ Simpson trial marked today's one year anniversary of the double murders by hearing a half day of testimony. The defense had asked to cancel today's session, but Judge Lance Ito refused.

Officials from the United States and Japan will meet this week in an effort to end their bitter trade dispute. Unless the talks produce a compromise agreement, punitive tariffs will take effect June 28. US ambassador to Japan, Walter Mondale, says there have been discussions but no progress on the issue of auto trade.

WALTER MONDALE: The problem is that we have a very open market for Japanese and other cars in the United States and for the sale of auto parts but that the market here in Japan is not totally closed, but largely closed.

KAREN BARTA: Last month, the US announced plans to impose punitive tariffs that would virtually double the prices of 13 Japanese luxury models here in the US. The state higher education board expects to name a chancellor today for the soon to be merged Minnesota State Colleges and University system. Three finalists are to be interviewed today.

The state forecast today-- mostly sunny, a little warmer highs from the middle 70s in the east to lower 80s in the west. For the Twin Cities, sunny with a high around 78. Around the region, it's sunny. In Rochester, it's 66, 68 degrees in Duluth. In St. Cloud, it's 69. And it's 70 in the Twin Cities. Paula, that's a news update from the FM News Station.

PAULA SCHROEDER: All right, thank you, Karen. 27 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder. Coming up, we're going to be finding out about the United Nations Conference on Women, which is in September. And the Chinese government has been creating some problems for the planners of this conference. We'll find out more about that.

But first, tell you about First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was in town yesterday. She urged a strong commitment to education funding during her commencement speech at the University of Minnesota. Speaking to graduates of the College of Liberal Arts, the First Lady took several swipes at Republican plans to cut education programs.

Rodham Clinton said the nation's economic and moral health depends on a well-educated public. And that, she says, means providing educational opportunities for all Americans. Here's an excerpt from the First Lady's commencement remarks.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: There are all kinds of people in our society today who need to learn and want to learn. They range from the very young to the very old. They are all kinds of people who recognize that the challenges of the global economy are such that they can only be met by a spirit of learning. But tragically, as we all know today, there is a movement afoot in state capitals and the nation's capital to retreat on America's historic commitment to education funding.

It is a retreat marked by a rather unusual argument, one that says, slashing education funding is for the good of our children. Under this skewed logic, cutting back on education will enable us, in some miraculous way, to provide more and better opportunities than we now enjoy. Nothing could be further from the truth. If we sound the retreat on education--

[APPLAUSE]

If we sound the retreat on education in America, we deny the opportunity of preschool and Head Start to thousands of children. We deny tens of thousands of elementary school students the resources they need to improve their reading and math skills. We deny summer jobs and learning opportunities to young people. And most cruelly of all, we deny the opportunity for college to millions of Americans by decreasing the availability of loans, making them less flexible, and raising interest payments and tuition beyond the reach of many working families.

[CHEERING, APPLAUSE]

KAREN BARTA: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking to the 1995 graduating class of the University of Minnesota's College of Liberal Arts. She was here yesterday for that address. It's going to be an absolutely beautiful day across the state today, mostly sunny skies with temperatures in the mid 70s to lower 80s. Look for a high around 78 here in the Twin Cities.

Well, thousands of women from all over the world are planning to attend the United Nations fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in September. A platform addressing women's concerns, such as poverty, access to education, health care, violence against women, and access to economic resources is expected to be adopted. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, financial institutions, and the United Nations itself will be encouraged to adopt strategic actions to eliminate inequities and injustices that present obstacles to women.

It's a monumental organizational task getting women from all over the world together, and now those plans are in limbo as the Chinese government throws up roadblocks. But here to give us an update on the conference is Carolyn Keefe, who is spokeswoman for the Women's International League for peace and freedom in the Twin Cities, which is planning an even more extensive event involving the journey to the UN Conference in Beijing. Hi, Carolyn.

CAROLYN KEEFE: Hi. Thank you.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thanks for coming in today. Now, you were just telling me that there really has been a lot of disruption in the plans, a lot of doubt, nobody knowing for sure if this was going to pull off or not. But late word is what?

CAROLYN KEEFE: Late word is that the conference will go as scheduled on the dates originally planned. The activities will be divided between the original site in Beijing and the alternative site proposed by the Chinese government, which is about 30 miles outside in the Huairou tourist area. That's a compromise that was reached by the nongonvermental forum planning committee and by the Chinese government.

PAULA SCHROEDER: What was the problem here? As I understand it, it did involve the nongonvermental organizations that are going to be taking part in this conference.

CAROLYN KEEFE: Yes, all United Nations conferences have a parallel meeting of nongonvermental organizations. Now, when China bid for this conference about 2 and 1/2 years ago, what they really wanted was the government meeting. China was the only country to offer from Asia, and it was really felt that this women's conference had to be in Asia.

But I don't think they quite expected the interest and the attention that was given to the nongonvermental forum. So at meetings leading up to the conference, there's a lot of political activity, protests, discussion of human rights, a lot of media attention. And they were not expecting that. Their response was to try and move the conference far outside of Beijing and, I assume, out of sight of a lot of media and regular Chinese citizens.

Well, that was protested strongly by the nongonvermental forum planners. And through a long, drawn-out process back and forth, finally Boutros Boutros-Ghali sent a representative to negotiate. And they have come up with this compromise, to divide the activities between the two sites so that women have plenty of room to meet, do artistic and cultural events, have tents and so forth, and also have a chance to meet in workshops on issues, and then take their issues to the official government meeting.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Do you think that there is going to be any problem with censorship?

CAROLYN KEEFE: All United Nations meetings have guaranteed free speech. Now, that is going to be true on the site of the International Conference. That is not true for all of our activities throughout Beijing and in China. So while we have free speech at workshops and so forth, we do not necessarily have the same guarantee if we were to go out of that area and into other areas.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You are part of the women's International League for peace and freedom, which is really planning an event prior to the conference that starts in Helsinki, Finland. Can you tell us about that?

CAROLYN KEEFE: Yes, well, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is the only global women's organization that addresses peace as its primary issue. We were founded in 1915 by women trying to find a peaceful resolution to World War I. Now, this year is our 80th anniversary.

And to celebrate that and to call attention to the issues and activism of women on peace, we will be having a train going from Helsinki, Finland, all the way to Beijing with about eight or nine stops in between in places like Bucharest, Romania, Odessa, Ukraine, St. Petersburg, Russia, Istanbul and so forth.

And we'll be talking to women about nuclear disarmament, the rise of fundamentalism, women's human rights, conflict mediation and prevention, and so on. It's going to be a very, very exciting trip and a chance for women to really show that they are the solution to global violence, not just victims.

PAULA SCHROEDER: I know that this is-- takes an awful lot of organizing and planning. And you were planning on leaving in August, right? August 7 is when the train takes off.

CAROLYN KEEFE: Yes, our international Congress will be August 1 through 7 in Helsinki. And then we'll have a big goodbye party. And those of us on the peace train will take off. It'll be a 22-day trip, and we will arrive in Beijing on August 29, just in time to get ready for the actual nongonvermental forum of the World Conference on Women.

PAULA SCHROEDER: I know that there are, what, about 20 women from Minnesota who are planning on going on this particular trip. And with all of the plans up in the air until this recently, how has that affected planning for this? I just can't imagine trying to do a transglobal trip and not even knowing a couple of months before I'm supposed to leave if it's all going to go off or not.

CAROLYN KEEFE: Well, it has been very nerve wracking, especially for those of us who, for two years, have pretty much devoted our entire careers to preparing for this conference. The peace train was never in doubt. We were going to go whether the NGO forum happened or not, because we had made so many plans along the way and as separate from the actual forum.

About 200 Minnesota women will be going to the World Conference itself. And that was a lot more worrisome because we were worried about airfares being refunded and people's hotel spaces being reserved. And what if we don't get a visa, and so on and so forth?

So I guess that's the risk you take when you start venturing into world politics, and it's a risk that I'm very glad many Minnesota women took because we're going to have one of the most diverse and largest delegations of any state to the conference. And so the opinions and ideas and strategies we bring home are just going to be phenomenal.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Carolyn Keefe, I want to thank you so much for joining us with the update on the International Women's Conference in Beijing.

CAROLYN KEEFE: Thank you.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thanks a lot. Carolyn is with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which leaves in August for Helsinki, Finland, for the peace train to Beijing.

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It's 16 minutes before 11 o'clock. You're listening to Midmorning on the FM News Station. And if you want a great weather forecast, listen up because we have mostly sunny skies predicted for the next several days. Look for a high today in the mid 70s to low 80s across the state of Minnesota.

It's going to be even warmer tomorrow, with highs in the 80s across the whole state. Low temperatures from the upper 40s in the Southeast to the middle 50s in the Northwest, so great sleeping weather besides. Boy, it doesn't get much better than this. 78 for a high in the Twin Cities today. Right now, it is 72 degrees.

Well, a trial of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin is scheduled to begin tomorrow. Nasrin, a women's rights activist, is charged with blasphemy for criticizing the Muslim Holy book, the Koran. The maximum sentence is two years in jail. She fled Bangladeshi nearly a year ago after Muslim extremists issued a fatwa or death sentence against her. She's now living in exile in Sweden. National Public Radio's Eric Weiner reports.

ERIC WEINER: Nasrin is being tried for comments she allegedly made to an Indian newspaper, saying that the Quran should be revised thoroughly. This outraged Bangladesh's Muslim fundamentalists, who consider the Koran the word of God. Nasrin insists that she had been misquoted. But the government has pursued the case against her anyway, charging her under a century-old blasphemy law originally enacted by the British.

Nasrin will not be present for her own trial. Last August, fearing for her life, she fled to Sweden, where she's been living in exile ever since. In an interview shortly before she went into hiding, Nasrin criticized the Koran and Islamic law for its treatment of women.

TASLIMA NASRIN: [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

INTERPRETER: I have taken verses directly from the Koran and have proven time and again how Koran discriminates against women and how it speaks demeaningly of women in general.

ERIC WEINER: Nasrin compared her plight to that of British author Salman Rushdie, who's been in hiding for the past six years, ever since the Iranian government issued a fatwa or death sentence against him. Taslima Nasrin has written 15 books, nearly all of them controversial. She's openly criticized the treatment of women in Bangladesh. She's attacked her country's, quote, "religious fanatic cowards who," she says, "treat women like tasty morsels."

Nasrin's blunt criticism of Islam outraged Bangladesh's Muslim extremists. They issued a fatwa against her. One Muslim cleric offered a $1,200 bounty to anyone who kills her. The threats continue today, and that's why Nasrin is unable to return to Bangladesh to defend herself. Rani Jethmalani is a women's rights activist based in India.

RANI JETHMALANI: Is the state willing to guarantee her safety? Is she willing to be given complete protection and custody? If the state is willing to guarantee all that and she has to be put into a bulletproof room all the time, I mean, can you have a trial possible under those circumstances? I mean, Salman Rushdie hasn't been able to escape the wrath of militants. How would she be able to escape it?

ERIC WEINER: Nasrin has received some support from Bangladesh's small community of writers and human rights activists, but most of her support has come from overseas. About 8,000 American writers, including John Irving and Norman Mailer, have written to Bangladesh's prime minister, Khalida Zia, urging her to drop the charges against Nasrin.

In fact, the furor over Nasrin's writing, and now the public trial, has proved something of an embarrassment for Prime Minister Zia. She's head of the country's first democratically elected government in nearly a decade and one of only a handful of women leaders in the world. Again, Rani Jethmalani.

RANI JETHMALANI: The state is always in the grips of many of these fundamentalists. But it would take a strong woman leader, like the present prime minister of Bangladesh, to really not to succumb to those forces. And it's a challenge for her whether she can really assert herself and give equity and justice and believe in the human rights and dignity of women to have a fair trial in the country.

ERIC WEINER: The trial is mostly a symbolic event. Whatever the verdict, Taslima Nasrin is unlikely to return to her home country anytime soon. This is Eric Weiner reporting.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: It's 11 and 1/2 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder. Well, the future of federal affirmative action programs could be in doubt after a Supreme Court ruling today that says Congress is just as limited as the states in giving help to minorities, and that could endanger programs that award billions of dollars in contracts to minority-owned companies.

The Supreme Court is also making it easier to end court-ordered school desegregation plans. In a 5 to 4 decision today, the court says such plans can be stopped even if students standardized test scores have not improved to national levels. Well, the former executive director of the NAACP, Benjamin Chavis, has formed a new civil rights organization.

Chavis was fired last year for using the NAACP's money to settle a sex discrimination claim. Over the weekend in Houston, he formalized his unity summits into a coalition called the National African American Leadership Summit. Reporters were given only limited access to the Houston gathering, but were allowed to cover the opening news conference. Among those who did was Jim Bell.

JIM BELL: The NAALS is a coalition of more than 200 national, regional, and local African American groups brought together by the Reverend Ben Chavis. Chavis told a Houston news conference that NAALS will give those divergent groups a way to work collectively on problems that affect them all. Proof of the need for this effort, Chavis says, can be found in their growing numbers.

BEN CHAVIS: The truth of the matter is, in 1995, within the African American community, we have more organizations than we had in 1965 or '55 or '45. We have leaders of these organizations. The problem is getting the organizations and the leaders to work together.

JIM BELL: In his opening statement to the media, Chavis stated right up front that one of this group's most important goals will be to fight the conservative agenda of the Republican-controlled Congress.

BEN CHAVIS: We will be discussing not only our response to the so-called contract with America and the cutbacks and the Supreme Court decisions that may be detrimental to our people. But we're going to leave for a more proactive vision and understanding of our responsibilities.

JIM BELL: Chavis held the first of these national summits last year when he was heading up the NAACP. His decision to include nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and other Black nationalists stirred anger and controversy in the older and more mainstream Black civil rights organization. In this new association, Chavis is still reaching out to Farrakhan and others from all over the Black political spectrum, including many individual members of the NAACP.

BEN CHAVIS: Many local branches of the NAACP have been participating in the life of the NAALS, so we have not run into a problem within the Leadership Summit on the diversity question. Now obviously, some folk have expressed nervousness that Black people are getting together finally across these lines of division. But we are not nervous about it. The more diversity, the better.

JIM BELL: While Chavis downplayed the messy problem that led to him being fired from the NAACP last year, one high profile Houston member of that group says all that personal baggage disqualifies Chavis from leading this new effort. The Reverend Bill Lawson was marching in the streets with Dr. Martin Luther King when Chavis was a teenager. Lawson says he supports this new association's goals, but he doesn't think Ben Chavis is the right person for the job.

BILL LAWSON: I'm not sure whether or not Ben Chavis is going to be able to rally the troops. I could wish that he could. But right now, it's going to take somebody with a tremendous amount of charisma. It isn't enough just to gather a bunch of leaders in some community to come to a university. There's going to have to be somebody who can reach the people at the grass roots who will also be willing to follow. King did that. I don't know that Chavis has as yet earned the right to do that.

JIM BELL: Lawson says, despite Chavis's history of problems, he's willing to give him a second chance to prove himself as a leader. For the Christian Science Monitor, this is Jim Bell in Houston.

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GARY EICHTEN: National Public Radio is celebrating its 25th birthday this year. And to mark the occasion, Linda Wertheimer is out with a new book called Listening to America. Hi. This is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us for Midday on the FM News Station. All Things Considered co-host Linda Wertheimer will look back on those 25 years at NPR, how it all began, and some of the highlights along the way. Midday begins at 11:00 this morning with a rebroadcast at 9:00 this evening on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And coming up next on Midday at 11 o'clock, host Perry Fanelli will be talking with University of Minnesota constitutional law professor Suzanna Sherry about this morning's Supreme Court rulings on school desegregation and minority set asides. That's at 11 o'clock. But first, here's Garrison Keillor in the Writer's Almanac.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday, 12th of June, 1995. It's the birthday of the engineer who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, John Augustus Roebling, born in Prussia in 1806, came to America when he was 25. He farmed for a time in Pennsylvania and then returned to his trade, civil engineer, and was drawn toward designing steel suspension bridges.

It's the birthday of Johanna Spyri, born in Hirzel, Switzerland, in 1829. She moved to the big city of Zürich after she married, missed her little town, and wrote a book about it, Heidi. It came out in two volumes in 1880 and 1881.

And it's the birthday of Annelies Frank, Anne Frank, born in Frankfurt in 1929. She and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in July of 1942 in small rooms behind her father Otto's offices in Amsterdam. She began keeping a diary addressed "Dear Kitty" June 12th, 1942. And she continued it through August 1st, 1944. The family was discovered on August 4th and taken to concentration camps, where she died just two months before the liberation of Holland.

Here's a poem by Walt Whitman from Drum-Taps, his poems of the Civil War.

"A march in the ranks, hard-prest and the road unknown,

A route through a heavy wood with muffled steps in the darkness,

Our army foiled with loss severe and the sullen remnant retreating,

Till after midnight glimmer upon us the lights of a dim-lighted building,

We come to an open space in the woods and halt by the dim-lighted building,

Tis a large, old church at the crossing roads, now an impromptu hospital,

Entering but for a moment, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made,

Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,

And by one great pitchy torch stationary with wild red flame and clouds of smoke,

By these crowds, groups of forms vaguely I see on the floor, some in the pews laid down,

At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad in danger of bleeding to death, he's shot in the abdomen,

I stanch the blood temporarily, the youngster's face is white as Lily,

Then before I depart, I sweep my eyes or the scene feign to absorb it all,

Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead,

Surgeons, operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood,

The crowd, the crowd of the bloody forms, the yard outside also filled,

Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm, sweating,

An occasional scream or cry, the doctor's shouted orders or calls,

The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches,

These I resume as I chant, I see again the forms, I smell the odor,

Then hear outside the orders given, fall in, my men, fall in,

But first I bend to the dying lad, his eyes open, a half smile gives he me,

Then the eyes close, calmly close, And I speed forth to the darkness,

Resuming, marching ever in darkness, marching on in the ranks,

The unknown road still marching."

Poem by Walt Whitman from "Drum-Taps," "A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, And the Road Unknown."

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That's the Writer's Almanac for Monday, June the 12th, made possible by Coles Magazines, publishers of early American life, and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: That's Midmorning for this Monday, June 12th, 1995. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks a lot for joining us today. And tomorrow, you can tune in at 9 o'clock for a discussion with-- about immigration, actually, with Barbara Frey, who is executive director of the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, also Joel Worrall, assistant director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. Find out about immigration here in our area and what's going on now. That's coming up tomorrow at 9:00 on Midmorning. Tune in then.

JOHN RABE: I'm John Rabe. And on Monday's All Things Considered, Dr. Alan Isaacman on getting more minorities to pursue careers in international diplomacy. It's all things considered every day at 4:00 on the FM News Station, KNOW FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 72 degrees under sunny skies at the FM News Station. KNOW FM 91.1, Minneapolis, St. Paul.

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PERRY FINELLI: Good morning. This is Midday on the FM News Station. Gary Eichten is on vacation this week. I'm Perry Finelli. In the news this morning, a pair of civil rights rulings today from the Supreme Court. In the first, the court delivers a big setback to affirmative action, making it far more difficult for Congress to offer special help to minorities. In the other, the Supreme Court sided with the state of Missouri in a school desegregation battle from Kansas City dating back more than 17 years.

Nebraska's Assistant Attorney General told federal judges this morning in St. Paul that death sentences against a man convicted of killing two boys should stand. And US and North Korean officials are heading home with new language on curbing North Korea's nuclear program.

During the Noon Hour portion of the program today, you'll hear the recent Augsburg college lecture by National Public Radio's Linda Wertheimer. Of course, she is the co-host of All Things Considered. Her new book, Listening to America-- 25 Years in the Life of a Nation, as heard on National Public Radio.