THE MICHIGAN DAILY NEW STUDENT EDITION PERSPECTIVES THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1994
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PC drive squelches free speech
'U' has history of
enforcing 'correct' Q
speech behavior k
By JIM PINKHAM
Daily Staff Reporter
On college campuses political correctness often sug-
gests a stifling of words or deeds that might offend some
on the basis of race, gender or sexual affinity.
"Worrying about what you say in class is just another
part of academia today. It is certainly not a good thing, but
it is only one of the craters in the landscape," said Eric
Wignall of Indiana's Valparaiso University.
Just ask David Goldberg, a veteran of 37 years teaching
in the University's sociology department and known among
his colleagues as "a liberal humanist." He took his combat-
ive, non-PC style to one class too many in the fall of 1992.
In an anonymous letter to the University, graduate
students accused him of using illustrative data to humili-
ate and harass Black students and women.
"His intention was quite the contrary," said a former
colleague. "He set out to show that data can be misused to
come to false conclusions and showed as examples data
that did this.... He had three or four people in there that were
simply stupid and didn't understand what he was doing."
Goldberg was kept from teaching the class until a second
section taught by another professor could be added.
W. Reynolds Farley, another University sociology pro-
fessor, who was maligned as politically incorrect in 1988 by
an unsigned letter to the Daily, said he would like to see the
University take a strong stand and say that controversial
issues will be discussed openly.
"I doubt that we will see strong action by administrators,"
Farley said.
Some see PCas a daunting stumbling block strewn across
the path of free speech-and one that isn't getting any better.
Richard Campbell, a former assistant professor of
communications at the University, who once helped orga-
nize a national conference on PC, admits that some people
are strident, that "there are some stupid, silly codes" and
that a few people may have been wrongly stifled. But, he
maintains, overall "speech has never been freer."
Another aspect of the PC trend concerns what is happen-
ing to speech codes.
No state-funded school can restrict speech within the
confines of the First Amendment. Private schools "have the
freedom to use whatever restrictive regulations they see fit
to control student behavior, including expression."
Troubled by what the University Board of Regents saw
as increasing racism on campus in 1987, the University
adopted the first major university conduct code to be tested
in the courts. It provided for discipline of "behavior, verbal
or physical, that stigmatizes an individual on the basis of
race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, na-
tional origin, age, marital status, handicap or Vietnam-era
veteran status."
That code was used to bring one student up on charges
for claiming that homosexuality is a treatable disease and
to punish another for reading an allegedly homophobic
limerick to a business class.
In 1989, a federal district judge struck down all parts
of the code restricting speech, noting that the "apparent
willingness to dilute the values of free speech is ironic in
light of the University's previous statements of policy on
this matter."
FILE PHOT
A mob of protestors snowballed this neo-Nazis group at
City Hall last year.
Offensive language
should not be silenced
By JASON S. LICHTSTEIN
Daily Opinion Staff
The notion that a phalanx of political correctne
warriors has descended onto this University, in the for]
of left-leaning feminists, '60s-inspired administratorsc
racial quota hounds has captured the attention of most i
this University community. True, the now-lambaste
(thanks to talk-radio reactionary Rush Limbaugh) P
values and PC speak are rarely discussed in a constructiv
thoughtful way -now, it is even cool to call oneself anti-PC
There is much good, and unfortunately, too much ba
and intellectually repressive, about the PC take on cultur
Political correctness, both here at the University an
across the nation, can mean tolerance, open-mindednes
a liberal attitude about important political and soci
issues and the acceptance of others unlike oneself. How
ever, as demonstrated by the incident at the University c
Pennsylvania a couple of years ago in which a new Jewis
student on campus yelled out of his dorm window to
group of Black women: "Shut up, you buffaloes," the P
movement, although liberal, tends to shun or selectivel
ignore many of the core liberal notions that this nation
founded upon. The student who made those comment
was forced through a legal maze, initiated by his unive
sity, to officially condemn statements he made on his ow
volition. There can be no doubt that those under th
banner of political correctness - such as socialist type
on campus who tried to forcefully stop a group of neo
Nazis from demonstrating near City Hall last year, pro
claiming "No Free Speech for Fascists" - threaten ou
most basic right, that of free speech.
New students at the University beware: To be libera
and active at this University does not translate into restric
tions on student or faculty speech or placing limits o
what is discussed in the classroom. This is the danger o
what political correctness can represent. It is always bette
in a University community to debate, discuss and dismis
racist, sexist, antisemitic or homophobic ideas in the ligI
of the public discourse, and never to silence speech tha
we find offensive. This only compounds the problem.
Religious
faith: subtle,
diverse
By JASON S. LICHTSTEIN
Daily Opinion Stal
Religion on campus is as varied.
subtle and multifaceted as a prism.
Religious, or spiritually moved, indi-
viduals can follow their path or prac-
tice their faith in a number of different
ways - from Sunday Mass at St.
Mary's Student Parish, to Friday night
services at Hillel, to a late Sunday
prayer session at the local Zen Bud-
dhist temple. Although the Univer-
sity administration's religious bias is
clear - students have two weeks off
for Christmas, but no officially sanc-
tioned holiday for Yom Kippur, Rosh
Hashanah or Ramadan, this commu-
ro nity is religiously diverse, religiously
tolerant and enlightened.
In Ann Arbor, neither the Campus
Crusade for Christ, nor organizations
under the mantle of the Christian
Coalition, block access to abortion
clinics or call for a theocratic Ameri-
can government.
Here, spiritual people pursue self-
fulfillment, happiness, truth and self-
s actualization at the Yoga center in
m town or attend a lecture by the Dali
or Lama of Tibet. More conventional
n displays of religiosity abound on the
d weekends, as the weekly Sabbath is
C commemorated by Jews and Chris-
e, tians (albeit a day or two apart). At
times, someone may give you a weird
d look if you tell them that you are
e going to services this Friday night.
d What, and miss pre-party drinking
s, with the boys! But yes, thousands of
al students attend worship services each
- week, and some even manage the 8:3
f a.m. mass at St. Mary's.
J1 One may say that religion is forced
a into the closet, away from the public
C eye, in Ann Arbor - a town well-
y known for its social activism, historic
is liberalism and disdain for conformity
ts and organized religion. True, the
r- Catholic church's views of women
n priests and homosexuality do not sit
e well with many liberals, and right-
s fully so. But all in all, our city is a
- respectable place for religious, and
- even non-religious people, to seek
r out human universal values that all of
us share. To paraphrase His Holiness
al the Dali Lama, religion without spiri-
tuality is nothing. Or, to put it another
n way, although many different denomi-
f nationis and religions are practiced in
r this city of 100,000 people, what unites
s almost all religious people is a basic
ti understanding of spiritual values,
at which are the motor and engine of
our lives.
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