9 4A - The Michigan Daily - Monday, November 25, 2002 O/ED ~Ibz lMirbijgrn ~aiIu 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, ML 48109 letters@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JON SCHWARTZ Editor in Chief JOHANNA HANINK Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. NOTABLE QUOTABLE "We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins." - An excerpt from Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America, "as quoted in yesterday's Observer, a United Kingdom newspaper. This c1 Will ~e. dm11 *ro~Mvi.~ Cord~ 4o OCXOSS l~ie Couy~4r~, PurS~un~t(I~ 4&~) SAM BUTLER THE SOAPBOX 0 Defining free speech down PETER CUNNIFFE ONE FOR THlE Rt)Ai 17ree speech is one o f the p illars on which we like to think our society rests. It's taken us down some odd roads in recent years, from the Supreme 'Mr Court decision establish- ing the principle that political candidates have the rights to buy as much advertising as they please to the more recently established pro- tections on virtual child pornography. Those are the relatively understandable legal ramifications of free speech however. Free speech has a great deal of meaning for people outside the legal sphere as well. Especially in academia, free speech is regard- ed, sensibly, as essential. But in the popular imagination, the term "free speech" has gone beyond a guarantee against being prohibited from saying what you please and has come to include the right to say anything you want, as offensively as you want, wherever you want. A good example of this occurred in mid- November when Harvard's English depart- ment invited Oxford lecturer Tom Paulin to give a speech on campus. Paulin, a poet and television arts commentator, has been the center of a great deal of controversy recently over remarks to the Egyptian newspaper, Al- Ahram Weekly earlier this year. Commenting on Jewish settler in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Paulin declared "They should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them." This invitation understandably provoked protests by students, faculty and alumni who objected to the presence of a man who supports killing Israeli civilians. Faced with the protest, Paulin was quickly disinvited by several profes- sors, seemingly diffusing the controversy. After a meeting of the full department a week later, however, Paulin's invitation was reissued. Explaining their decision, the department chair wrote that a significant factor in their decision was "widespread concern and regret for the fact that the decision not to hold the event could eas- ily be seen, and indeed has been seen-both within Harvard and beyond-as an unjustified breach of the principle of free speech within the academy." There are two possible explanations for this statement. The English department could have just decided it didn't like being bossed around and chosen to defy its many critics by reinviting Paulin - but also didn't want to sound so petu- lant and gave the more high minded free speech explanation. Or, as is more likely, there proba- bly are a lot of people who really did see this as an affront to free speech. Is it though? A school certainly has the right to invite who it likes to speak. However, it's difficult to think of anyone else who is so uninhibited in his advocacy of ethnicity-based killing who speaks at university sponsored events. I imagine this is because most advocates of violence are not notable poets, but there are also probably many violent people who have interesting this to say about a whole range of subjects. I doubt a Ku Klux Klan member (whether he so brazenly advocated killing or not) would ever receive an invitation to speak at Harvard, even if it was just about poetry or literature. Schools clearly have some leeway in deciding who they invite to give lectures. As the English department chair said, this is about something that "could easily be seen"~ as a breech of the principle of free speech. It was not something that was a breech of that principle. But the appearance was apparently enough. Rather than a promoter of murder being turned away because giving him a uni- versity-sponsored platform was, on reflec- tion, a bad idea, the situation became one of defending (apparent) free speech. Not getting to speak at Harvard because you've said lots of malicious and immoral things does stigmatize and in encourage, to some extent, others with sifch ambitions to not say such things. But a universities' rea- sonable control over who speaks at its official events is not censorship. When a particular forum, even a university, turns away a speak- er, it does not necessarily mean free speech has been damaged. As with Paulin's situation, many people cry free speech today when it is unwarranted. Many whose ideas come under assault use it reflexively to defend themselves when they merely have no better argument. But "I can say what I want" is a declaration of the obvi- ous. It shouldn't win arguments. So why did Harvard reinvite a speaker it had already dumped when they seemed to realize the free speech complaints were only a matter of appearance to some and not reali- ty? Free speech obviously is extremely important to them and it should be. But their attempt to prevent even the appearance of infringing on it shows why giving in to mere appearance and those who cry "free speech" rather than make actual arguments is a bad idea. Free speech is an important right, but it shouldn't be dumbed down. Peter Cunnife can be reached atpcunmftf~umichedu. 0 9, VIEWPOINT Prof. MacKinnon an enemy of University's values BY JUSTIN SHUBOW The University of Michigan has an igno- minious record when it comes to academic freedom. Perhaps most notoriously, in 1988 the Uni- verity5 intte aesweepn speech code, eral district court as flatly unconstitutional since it prohibited unpopuar specih wvrte University Senate passed a resolution aflinming the fundamental value of free inquiry, and established the Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lec- ture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom to promote such freedom. (The three names are those of professors who were suspended or fired in the 1950s during the red scare.) Was this a sign that the University had finally learned its lesson? It would appear not, for it invited none other than University Law Prof. Catherine A. MacKinnon to give this year's lecture on Oct. 31. A worse choice could hardly have been made, for no professor at the University, and indeed probably in the entire state, has striven harder to suppress free speech and academic freedom. MacKinnon is best known for her crusade against pornography, which she believes to be the root cause of women's oppression. She and fellow radical feminist Andrea Dworkin co- authored anti-pornography ordinances that they attempted to put into law in major American cities, though they ultimately failed when the Supreme Court declared such ordinances unconstitutional. MacKinnon had better luck in Canada, though. Persuaded by her arguments, the Cana- dian Supreme Court decided to ban sexually explicit material that degrade women, on the grounds that such material actually harms women. Civil libertarians point out the irony that the first time this new definition of obsceni- ty was employed was when the Ontario govern- ment prosecuted a gay and lesbian bookstore. Pornography is by no means the only thing MacKinnon wishes to censor, however. She not only supports campus speech codes but also calls for laws to make group defamation illegal, since she maintains that freedom of speech often conflicts with equality, the latter being a superior value. In her book "Only Words" she argues that speech rights are a zero-sum game: "The more the speech of the dominant is pro- tected, the more dominant they become and the less the subordinated are heard from." On similar grounds she is quite forthright about her desire to censor teachers, including professors. She writes, "Suffice it to say that those who wish to keep materials that promote inequality from being imposed on students - such as academic books purporting to document women's biological inferiority to me ... or that reports of rape are routinely fabricated - espe- cially without critical commentary, should not be legally precluded from trying . .." In other words, if MacKinnon had her way, psychology professors could be forbidden from teaching that there are inherent cognitive differences between the sexes, and law professors who provocatively raise the issue of false claims of rape in class could be silenced. But perhaps the most telling evidence for MacKinnon's disdain for academic freedom comes from 1992, when she was involved with censoring an art exhibit at a conference held at Michigan's Law School. Invited by the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, which was holding a conference on prostitu- tion, local artist (and outspoken opponent of MacKinnon) Carol Jacobsen installed a pro- prostitution video display that contained sex- ually explicit content. Acting on a complaint conveyed by MacKinnon, law students from the journal's staff removed what they believed to be an offensive videotape - without contacting the artist first. Upon learn- ing of the tampering, an angry Jacobsen told the students that if they wanted to censor any part of the exhibit, they would have to censor the whole thing. So they shut down the entire exhibit. After suing the University, Jacobsen eventu- ally reached a settlement in which she received $3,000 and had her exhibit reinstalled Given the University's history regarding free speech, it should come as no surprise that then Dean of the Law School Lee Bollinger - who is, of all things, a First Amendment scholar - denied that the students had violated Jacobsen's legal rights. MacKinnon, who was a speaker at the conference and a guru to the students from the journal, denied having explicitly urged the stu- dents to censor the exhibit, although they did ask her for advice. Nonetheless, she told The New York Times that she fully supported the students' decision. Thus, she is on the record as having supported the infringement of academic freedom at the very school at which she teaches. Perhaps only George Orwell could do jus- tice to the fact that the University's main lec- ture in defense of academic freedom was given by the school's greatest opponent to free speech - a lecture in which MacKinnon railed against the "overuse" of academic freedom, calling it "a sword (used) against students." It's as if Patrick Buchanan were a professor at Michigan and had been invited to give the University's lecture on racial diversity. In the end, whether it is McCarthyites or radical leftists who wish to abridge academic freedom in the name of national security or equality, respectively, one thing at Michigan hasn't changed: The University contains ene- mies of one of its core values. But from its choice of this year's lecturer on academic freedom, it is unclear whether it fully recog- nizes that threat. Shubow Ls a Rackham student. S LETTER TO THE EDITOR does not Care abou4t students, courYse offerings insuffiCient To THE DAILY: I am a last semester senior maioring in Department must, by now, know what its most popular classes are -- some classes have full waitlists only hours after registra- tion begins. Why are these classes so small and so rarely offered? Every semester the same three classes are never full (Comm. 481, 482, and 484), but these are offered every single semester. Useful classes like Comm. 468 are offered to only 13 students. sonally ashamed to be a part of the Com- munications Department. The faculty and staff have no appreciation for the students that make the department possible, and are arrogantly oblivious to their students' needs. I understand the department is piti- fully understaffed, but this its your prob- lem, not mine. I will araduate this April and go off [ IWUIUJ4LItflI4I Ul4~l4i~K Via ~ 4i1'..4 LL'..~~LI.A.I ~ a