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Title: Let Them Speak, All of Them Publication: The Chronicle |
Author: Mark Bauerlein |
Published Date: February 08, 2010 |
Why is there so much difficulty and controversy surrounding campus speakers? To be sure, only a small portion of the overall pool becomes a problem -- David Horowitz, Bill Ayers, the Minuteman founder, etc. -- but why should invited guests ever push administrators into cancellations, presentation conditions, added fees, and other odd stipulations? What are they afraid of?
The handling of David Horowitz by St. Louis University is a case in point. People might remember that, several months back, his talk was cancelled, and recently a new wrinkle has come up. Here is Horowitz' version:
"The administrator in charge, Dean Scott Smith, had told the student whose group had invited me that 'Horowitz would never be allowed to speak on a platform alone at Saint Louis University. He could be invited only if there was another speaker on the program to oppose his point of view.'"
Horowitz didn't let it go:
"I decided to call Smith's bluff and suggested that I debate Cary Nelson, the well-to-the left president of the American Association of University Professors, on the subject of academic freedom. I called Cary and he agreed. Smith didn't like this because he was aware that Nelson had responded to his attempt to bar me from speaking by saying that St. Louis University was a 'university in name only.' So Smith asked the student host Dan Laub why the subject had changed from Islamo-fascism to academic freedom. Why indeed!
"But again I decided to test his mettle and told Dan that the subject we would debate would be Academic Freedom and Islamo-Fascism. Curve ball. Smith came back with a new caveat. There would have to be a third speaker to mind Cary and me and put our discussion in the framework of 'Catholic Values.' Some joke. What Catholic Values did the communist Angela Davis or the atheist Norman Finkelstein express when they spoke alone?"
Not, of course, that Davis or Finkelstein shouldn't have been able to speak alone. Indeed, they should have. So should Bill Ayers, whose talk was canceled a while back at University of Nebraska (after a "threat assessment" -- see more here). After the invite had been made public, angry phone calls and emails poured in to the university, and after experts examined them they decided that actual violence was a possibility.
Nebraska thereby gave grass-roots censors a game plan for the future. Don't like a speaker? Manufacture an email protest campaign -- which is easy enough to do in these digital days -- add a few fringe and loopy remarks, and let the administrators do the rest.
To combat that tactic, administrators should give such threats a full airing. Let the comments circulate in the winds of public opinion, set the insults and anger in the light of common day. Plus, invite the opposition to a q & a to follow the speech. As long as everyone offers substantive points in rational ways, the campus is open. My guess is that they won't show up.
The more a threat is exposed, it seems to me, the less a chance it will be carried out. And the more the materials are amplified beyond the administrator's office, the less that administrator will feel put on the spot and pressured to act. Secrecy is the ally of bullies.