The (No) Free Speech Movement

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The (No) Free Speech Movement

They were cowardly at Cal, but at Wisconsin, we won't give in to badgering.

BY JULIE BOSMAN

Wall Street Journal; Wednesday, March 14, 2001

MADISON, Wis.--One hundred screaming protesters outside the doors of a small newspaper office can be intimidating, especially for the editor who is the main target of their abuse.

The protesters swarmed outside the office of my paper, the Badger Herald, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, after first marching across campus brandishing placards that read "Badger Herald Racist." They demonstrated for more than an hour, demanding my resignation as editor, because the Herald had run a paid advertisement entitled "Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery Is a Bad Idea--and Racist Too." The ad was written and placed by David Horowitz, a conservative author, and had appeared on the last day of Black History Month, a full six days before the demonstration, which took place March 6.

The 10 anti-reparations reasons listed ranged from the commonplace ("There is no single group clearly responsible for the crime of slavery," or "Only a tiny minority of white Americans ever owned slaves") to the very controversial ("What about the debt blacks owe to America?"). But our decision to publish was based on the straightforward view that our paper believes in free speech.

The Horowitz ad was published elsewhere too, and the hostile response to it was as disturbing as the mobbing of our offices. Angry protesters confronted staffers of the Daily Californian at the University of California, Berkeley, after the ad had run. The Daily Cal's editor, Daniel Hernandez, printed a front-page apology for running the ad, calling his paper "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry" and acknowledging, in a mea culpa wrung from him by the protesters, that the ad had not passed through the proper channels.

We were also under pressure to abase ourselves. But the Herald editorial board refused to run an apology. Instead, we published an editorial saying that "at the Badger Herald, we only regret that the editors of the Daily Californian allowed themselves to give in to pressure in the manner that unfortunately violated their professional integrity and journalistic duty to protect speech with which they disagree."

The issues raised here go to the heart of a critical question: Are American university campuses free and open to a spirit of inquiry, or closed places where activist cohorts can determine what is, or isn't, acceptable? Signs of rot can be detected in the fact that at least 15 college newspapers--including those at Harvard, Columbia, Notre Dame, the University of Washington, Georgia Tech and the University of Virginia--have rejected the Horowitz ad on grounds that it was politically unacceptable.

This is not to say that newspapers must print all advertisements submitted. The Herald does not prints ads that are completely false. The ad submitted (and rejected) last weekend by the Multicultural Student Coalition calling the Herald a "racist propaganda machine" would fall into this category. But the Horowitz ad is well within the bounds of political discourse.

One student (and student-government representative) at the Badger Herald rally shouted, "This isn't free speech, it's hate speech." Really? Most people outside of college campuses no doubt would be amazed to find that reparations for slavery has become, for some, a nondebatable subject.

On a traditionally liberal campus like ours, any opinions originating from the right tend to be stomped out with a vengeance. Rather than rebut Mr. Horowitz's arguments, the protesters simply tried to drown out his message with name-calling directed at the Herald. It's woefully apparent that the same campuses that once stood for idealistic causes in the '60s and '70s now tolerate only political hyper-correctness and unchallenged "progressive" thought. Though the students who protested at the doors of the Herald say they demand "diversity"--UW-Madison's latest buzzword--they appear not to accept that principle when it comes to expression or beliefs.

The most consistent criticism of the Herald's action in printing the Horowitz ad has been our alleged lack of sensitivity to students of color on campus. While I do not deny the passionate reaction by many students to the advertisement, this is one of the painful and inescapable by-products of the free-speech principle by which ethical journalists must abide.

Shamefully for the culprits, the most recent maneuver in the speech wars at UW-Madison is an illegal and cowardly one. Several students have witnessed others throwing away stacks of Heralds from their racks in university buildings, while several Herald staff members have retrieved heaps of bundled papers from garbage cans in the same buildings. How ironic it is that the diversity of viewpoints the activists are demanding is trashed along with the open forum in which it can be represented.

Ms. Bosman, a journalism major, is the editor in chief of the Badger Herald at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.



-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), March 14, 2001

Answers

If it was a paid advertisement, then the cause of free speech is overblown. This was an editorial decision by Ms. Bosman to accept $$$ to publish the Horowitz' piece. Nothing free about it.

Advertising revenue is obviously critically important in all forms of media. Bills must be paid. Call it what it is.

I chuckle at PC behavior. That said, if I were editor I probably would not have run the paid ad during Black History Month. The timing of it leaves much to be desired, IMO. Would running the ad on, say, March 13th have led to a reduction of negative reaction? I don't know. I don't have a feel for the importance of Black History Month on college campuses.

My first question is, has Bosman sat down with those who are ticked off for purposes of discussing the reasoning behind actions and reactions on both sides? Is a formal campus roundtable discussion scheduled anytime soon?

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), March 14, 2001.


Rich,

First, here's the original article that was the forerunner of the ad that's at the center of the firestorm...

Link

Certain "speech" (e.g., that could create a "clear and present danger") aside, for the moment --

If the speech isn't censored by the government or suppressed through, say, theft of newspapers or shouting someone down, then it's free. The fact that the speech is part of a free, voluntary transaction (paid, bartered or what have you), IMO, actually EMPHASIZES -- not diminishes -- its freedom.

The Black History Month issue has always puzzled me, though. Can you imagine the reaction to a White History Month?

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), March 14, 2001.


A small backgrounder--The Badger Herald is the Conservative campus paper on the UW campus. It was started in the 60s in reaction to the PC Leftism of the traditional campus paper, The Daily Cardinal.

Conservative papers sprung up at many campii around the country at that time. Naturally the Left jeered that the new, Conservative papers were funded by corporate money.

They must have filled a need. They are still there.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), March 14, 2001.


I was being a bit playful (read: stupid) with my free vs. paid comments. Feel free to ignore.

[Thread Hijack Ahead] As to Black History Month: I don't know what it accomplishes. I don't know if educational systems today include black authors. I don't know if textbooks have been updated to include achievements of black Americans and address the horrors of segregation and treatment of blacks as a group in the U.S. over the years.

I do know MY educational experience through two years of high school ommitted black authors entirely, and black accomplishments beyond Eli Whitney, and Crispus Attucks (who claim to fame was death by gunshot) were nowhere to be found. I didn't read the book Black Like Me until I was in my twenties. I really had little clue as to the status of black Americans during the twentieth century, thanks in no small part to the educational systems failures to address the issue. Looking back, I regard this as almost criminal.

I took an African-American Lit course in college and boy were my eyes opened! Richard Wright's Black Boy, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Du Bois, Hughes, Baldwin and on and on. My world expanded during those couple months. I tell you, I was pissed off I had not received exposure to these authors earlier.

Rent Spike Lee's X, read selections from the authors listed above, ask black friends, relatives & associates, and then re-visit this question. Do we need Black History Month? I don't know.

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), March 14, 2001.


Rich, great points, and a star-studded list ya have there. Maybe a Black History Month WAS necessary to help get people to wake up; although I don't see any further use for it -- in fact, it almost seems divisive and alienating now.

We really should be emphasizing "achievement" across the board, instead of any race, culture or color.

-- Eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), March 14, 2001.



I will grant you a Black History Month, which seems like it lasts maybe three months. But I don't think the fair balance is a White history month, since I don't consider myself ethnically White. Rather, I consider myself ethnically Italian. WHy not an Italian History Month? And a Polish? And a Polynesian? Or a Chinese or Filipino?

-- Mister (Roboto@Domo.Arigato), March 14, 2001.

An indication of where the colleges are heading was given to me by a friend who is white. His first year attending a local state college in the suburban Northeast, he was subjected to bigoted verbal abuse by black students. He was threatened with physical mayhem. The last straw was a slogan he saw spraypainted in one of the men's room stalls - "Kill Whitey". A report to the school authorities regarding this was met with indifference, and he chose to leave that particular institute of higher learning shortly thereafter. He did come away from the experience with a strong distrust, if not outright comtempt, of both authority and black folk.

The moral of the story is that the neo-nazis and the Klan don't need to recruit sympathizers - the schools seem to provide extremely fertile ground in and of themselves.

-- whatnow (not@my.school), March 14, 2001.


...The last straw was a slogan he saw spraypainted in one of the men's room stalls - "Kill Whitey".

Whatnow... interesting. What college was this? Did your friend do something to fan the flames, like display a confederate flag, attend skin-head rallies, etc?

-- Bemused (and_amazed@you.people), March 15, 2001.


Bemused,

I hesitate to name the school as I was not a direct witness to this. Suffice it to say that it was a state-run college, and the vast majority of the black students (who constituted the majority of students in toto) had apparently gained admission based on attributes other than their academic performance, i.e. quotas, athletic scholarships, etc. Many in his freshman classes could neither read nor write at greater than a fifth-grade level.

My friend had attended a predominantly white suburban high school prior to entering college and was in no way ill-disposed towards people of other races prior to these incidents - it simply was not an issue for him. He was not stating that he was being singled out, either, but that this was the way almost all white males were treated by the majority of blacks in the student body. He did not feel that the spraypainted slogan was directed at him personally, as he saw it in a room that he did not usually frequent.

-- whatnow (not@my.school), March 15, 2001.


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