The Death Of Free Speech On US Campuses
I write and say it with some frequency: The answer to speech you deplore is more speech, not shutting down the person doing the speaking.
Daniel Henninger writes in the WSJ about the hot new trend on campus. Unfortunately, it does not involve a new style of footgear everyone's picking up on, but a bunch of students banding together, on campus after campus, to keep commencement speakers out whose views they disagree with.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was the first -- at Brandeis. Next, Christine Lagarde, the French head of the IMF. "Off with her head," said the Smith College witch hunters.
And what might the problem be with Madame Lagarde, considered one of the world's most accomplished women? An online petition signed by some 480 offended Smithies said the IMF is associated with "imperialistic and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide."...On Tuesday, Haverford College's graduating intellectuals forced commencement speaker Robert J. Birgeneau to withdraw. Get this: Mr. Birgeneau is the former chancellor of UC Berkeley, the big bang of political correctness. It gets better.
Berkeley's Mr. Birgeneau is famous as an ardent defender of minority students, the LGBT community and undocumented illegal immigrants. What could possibly be wrong with this guy speaking at Haverford??? Haverfordians were upset that in 2011 the Berkeley police used "force" against Occupy protesters in Sproul Plaza. They said Mr. Birgeneau could speak at Haverford if he agreed to nine conditions, including his support for reparations for the victims of Berkeley's violence.
In a letter, Mr. Birgeneau replied, "As a longtime civil rights activist and firm supporter of nonviolence, I do not respond to untruthful, violent verbal attacks."
Smith president Kathleen McCartney felt obliged to assert that she is "committed to leading a college where differing views can be heard and debated with respect." And Haverford's president, Daniel Weiss, wrote to the students that their demands "read more like a jury issuing a verdict than as an invitation to a discussion or a request for shared learning."
Mr. Birgeneau, Ms. McCartney, Mr. Weiss and indeed many others in American academe must wonder what is happening to their world this chilled spring.
Here's the short explanation: You're all conservatives now.
This is the antithesis of what a college education is supposed to be. Go in with closed minds; come out with them sealed even more tightly shut.
Also, the notion that people whom you disagree with -- even deeply -- have no value, is immature and ridiculous. I was very much against the Iraq War, as, writes Damon Linker at The Week:
The situation involving Condi Rice, by contrast, is a much more typical case of academic moral grandstanding: liberal and left-wing faculty members strenuously objected to extending a speaking invitation to a leading official in a Republican administration who played an important role in prosecuting a deeply unpopular war and justifying highly controversial methods of interrogation that many describe as torture.Lord knows, I detested the Iraq War as much as anyone. But you know what? The world is an imperfect and morally complicated place, filled with people who regularly do things I consider wrong, stupid, misguided, foolish, and unethical. That doesn't mean they should be excommunicated, ignored, or banished from public life.
This is especially true when that wrong, stupid, misguided, foolish, or unethical individual also happens to be, as in Rice's case, a very impressive person who's an esteemed scholar and pianist, a former university provost, and someone who has devoted a large chunk of her life to public service. (Yes, service to the administration of George W. Bush still counts.)
Condoleezza Rice is, without question, one of the most accomplished African-American women in U.S. history. And the faculty of Rutgers University has just told her, in effect, to go to hell.
Why is such moral preening so common in the university? Why are professors so prone to ostracize those who they disagree with? Especially when it accomplishes nothing whatsoever beyond convincing the protesters of their own moral superiority?
I got an email from Smith saying Mme Lagarde decided on her own not to speak, and that she was not asked to step down as speaker by the College.
I suppose they could be lying, but it would seem strange to lie in writing...
NicoleK at May 15, 2014 2:16 AM
Doesn't seem like it.
Also from the piece, but which I didn't quote here:
Why would she do that unless there was a controversy about her speaking there?
Amy Alkon at May 15, 2014 5:21 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/05/15/the_death_of_fr.html#comment-4631222">comment from Amy AlkonYes, it seems clear -- she withdrew because of the pressure that she not speak there:
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/05/smith_college_commencement_201.html
Amy Alkon at May 15, 2014 5:22 AM
It's easy and fun to identify political criminals and denounce them, or even stop them from speaking at your school. All you have to do is sign the petition, or if you're too busy, just click "Like."
Of course, on false step, and the mob can go after you, too. Karma's a bitch, but the very young can be forgiven for missing that. The faculty should know better, though.
Meanwhile, via today's Maggie's Farm,, an ex-intern is fed up with the whole thing.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at May 15, 2014 7:05 AM
Nicole, Lagarde did indeed withdraw on her own, but it was because of pressure. While there is a small difference between that and the college itself revoking the invite, that small difference in no way invalidates Amy's fundamental premise: that Smith, among other American "bastions of academic freedom," is turning out a bunch of closed-minded bigots of the most dangerous sort - the ones who won't allow the opposition to be heard.
Smith's president's lame-ass statement does nothing to ameliorate the situation, either. She may be "committed to leading a college where differing views can be heard and debated with respect" but she doesn't lead a college like that, and she's apparently not willing to stand up to change that fact.
This problem is not historically limited to the political left, but it is more common to the left, it is tactically explicit to the left, and it's painful to contemplate the same sort of people who protested the squelching of their voices in the '60s and '70s now protesting to squelch other voices. For shame.
Grey Ghost at May 15, 2014 7:09 AM
"and it's painful to contemplate the same sort of people who protested the squelching of their voices in the '60s and '70s now protesting to squelch other voices."
I once had a chance to ask David Horowitz that same question. He replied: "For us, freedom was always a ruse. We only wanted our rights so we could use them to take away everyone else's rights."
If university presidents really cared, they could easily put a stop to all this monkey business. They could tell the students: "You don't like having a speaker you disagree with? Well, then, I guess you aren't really interested in a ceremony. Commencement is cancelled. You have until noon to get your crap out of the dorm room and get off campus. Your diplomas will be in the mail." After a few graduating classes underwent this indignity, the problem would be solved.
Cousin Dave at May 15, 2014 7:43 AM
This type of situation makes me appreciate my education at Big State Party U even more. We had all kinds of people, all types of organizations (greek organizations were allowed, I wasn't in one,) and views across every spectrum. (I doubt that any small-town bible-belt kids ever stand up to challenge their professors points of views in political science classes at Smith.) When the US was going into Afghanistan, we had both protests and support demonstrations. You didn't *have* to think a certain way.
Plus, I graduated with no debt. That was over 10 years ago, though, so education was cheaper, and it was still normal to work part-time during college.
ahw at May 15, 2014 8:10 AM
I don't even remember who spoke at my Smith commencement. I remember the speeches at pretty much every commencement I've been to to be long and dull. The one exception was the Latin address when I got my Masters... the Red Sox Curse had just been Reversed, and she compared life at school to a Sox game. I especially enjoyed translations such as "Giovanni Daemonus".
Other than that, I'm finding the students surprisingly vested in a speech that will be too long and dull no matter who gives it.
Let me sum up every graduation speech ever: Funny joke or anecdote in the beginning, one in the middle, everything leading to a poignant ending, with lots and lots and lots and lots of filler in between.
NicoleK at May 15, 2014 8:48 AM
Madeleine Albright was the speaker at my college graduation. Her two-hour speech was little more than a strained defense of Bill Clinton and an attack on the then-ongoing impeachment process.
And do you know what I did? I listened to her speech and clapped politely when it was finished.
I didn't publicly accuse her of war crimes (Kosovo bombing campaign), threaten to hold an alternative commencement, stage a protest with silly and derogatory signs, or whine to the media about how it was my graduation and having to listen to someone with whom I disagree politically was offensive.
Conan the Grammarian at May 15, 2014 8:25 PM
Modern academia has become a jest.
Those who cannot do: Teach
Those who cannot teach: Criticize
Those who canot criticize: Pretend to teach and silence anyone that may reveal your mediocrity
Robert at May 15, 2014 9:15 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/05/15/the_death_of_fr.html#comment-4635063">comment from Conan the GrammarianRight on, Conan. I did the same when Oliver Stone spoke at an alt weeklies conference.
Amy Alkon at May 15, 2014 10:13 PM
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was not the first. A crowd at my campus shouted down David Horowitz when I went to hear him speak, before I'd ever heard of Ms. Ali.
If I'd been able to tell the shouters apart from the people who'd gone there to listen, I'd have smashed shouters' faces until the police hauled me away. No one has business doing that.
jdgalt at May 16, 2014 12:15 PM
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