Neo Marxist Brown University Fights Free Speech
Source: EXCITE News | | March 22nd 2001
Freedom of speech must apply to controversial ads
By Carl Takei
Brown Daily Herald | Brown University
(U-WIRE) PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The events of the past week have left me feeling stunned and deeply disappointed with many of the leaders in the Third World community at Brown. Instead of using this opportunity to engage in civil discourse about both the reparations issue, or to provide tangible, long-term proposals to improve The Herald’s relationship with communities of color at Brown, they have engaged in name-calling, theft and censorship. Their actions were inexcusable, and I have lost a great deal of personal respect for many of those in the coalition.
In the past week, various members of the coalition have sent me hate mail informing me that I have been “co-opted” by whites, calling me an “idiot,” a “moron” and an “underhanded opportunist,” and even accusing me of being a paid snitch for The Herald — all because of my commitment to freedom of speech and open discourse. These words hurt me more than any inflammatory political advertisement ever could. Anyone who can complain about how much he or she was hurt by Horowitz’s ad, call for censorship and then turn around to launch such vicious personal attacks against a fellow student, is a hypocrite.
I am astonished not only by the coalition’s hypocrisy but by the weakness of its arguments. Many times this week, I have heard coalition members argue that The Herald editors’ decision to run the Horowitz ad was not a free speech issue, claiming that only the rich can buy ads and that freedom of speech does not apply to paid advertisements. The first claim is plainly false. A committed group of students can easily raise the money to place a full-page ad. The March 21 issue of The Herald contained a full-page statement in favor of open discourse by Students of Color Against Censorship that was paid for with less than a week of student fund raising.
The second claim — that freedom of speech doesn’t apply to ads — is simply ridiculous and shows a shocking ignorance of the role of the free press in protecting, among other things, the civil rights movement. In 1960, the New York Times ran a full-page ad entitled “Heed Their Rising Voices,” describing the abuses of Montgomery police against civil rights protesters and soliciting money for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Martin Luther King Jr. and the struggle for voting rights in the South. When Montgomery police commissioner L.B. Sullivan tried to sue the New York Times for running the ad, claiming it libeled him and that the First Amendment did not cover advertisements, the Supreme Court slapped down his argument for the sophistry that it was: “That the Times was paid for publishing the advertisement is as immaterial in this connection as is the fact that newspapers and books are sold.
Any other conclusion would discourage newspapers from carrying ‘editorial advertisements’ of this type, and so might shut off an important outlet for the promulgation of information and ideas” (New York Times v. Sullivan, 1964). I am deeply disturbed that coalition members seem unable to extend that reasoning to The Herald, and infinitely grateful that the Supreme Court justices in 1964 were not of the same mind as today’s coalition members.
Just as ridiculous — and just as revealing — is the “civil disobedience” argument that the coalition throws up to defend its theft of last Friday’s newspapers. As I understand it, civil disobedience is the deliberate violation of an unjust law. It not only requires taking responsibility for one’s actions (something that the members of the coalition, cloaked in anonymity, refused to do until they were thrust into the media limelight), but it requires an unjust law to violate. Unless they’re secretly protesting against petty theft laws, I can only conclude that the coalition is engaging in civil disobedience against the First Amendment.
This, unfortunately, is less bizarre than it sounds. The leaders of the coalition — along with Professor Lewis Gordon — now claim that the Horowitz ad is a “hate assault,” not an exercise of political speech. This claim is both false and dangerous. Although the Horowitz ad is certainly provocative and controversial — even offensive — it is fundamentally different from the gutter insults and personal attacks that have been prosecuted under Brown’s hate speech code in the past.
The Horowitz ad is clearly a political advocacy piece, containing assertions that one might expect to hear being said by conservative senators or written in legitimate national publications. It would be a grave mistake for this University to expand its amorphous hate speech code to encompass the Horowitz ad.
To classify Horowitz’s political advocacy as a “hate assault” would be to embrace the anti-free speech philosophies of Stanley Fish and Herbert Marcuse, who entirely reject traditional First Amendment jurisprudence and conceptions of academic freedom. For them, speech rights are meaningless except in their relation to institutional power.
Any speech that opposes the self-defined left is illegitimate, and only the speech of the “oppressed” is worthy of any protection. These ideas threaten the very foundations of the liberal university, shutting off political debate and strangling the free exchange of ideas.
Instead of allowing the coalition and its allies to institute a broad new regime of university-sanctioned censorship, we need to reaffirm our commitment to open dialogue and academic freedom. It is time for students, faculty and alumni of all races to join together in support of free discourse and against the censorious values of the coalition.
