The Chronicle

Issue date: 10/16/07 Section: Columns
Last update: 10/16/07 at 7:20 AM EST

Kristin Butler

Three years ago today, Duke hosted the Palestinian Solidarity Movement's highly controversial national conference. Seniors will recall the turmoil and fears of violence that accompanied the event, including a bomb threat that necessitated the evacuation of the Bryan Center. And it's hard to forget the heated debate that questioned the propriety of welcoming what one Chronicle columnist called "a recruiting session for Palestinian terrorist organizations."

Today, it's apparent that President Richard Brodhead has been vindicated for insisting Duke should permit the conference because "it is a foundational principle of American life that all ideas should have an equal opportunity to be expressed. Universities, in particular, must give wide latitude to free speech and free debate because the pursuit of truth... is the very stuff of education."

But Brodhead's success has done little to resolve broader questions about the limits of acceptable campus discourse. Columbia President Lee Bollinger discovered as much when he hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sept. 24 for what he termed "an opportunity for faculty and students... to engage with the president of Iran." Although Bollinger defended his decision to invite a notorious Holocaust denier in language almost identical to Brodhead's, he has been roundly criticized for everything from permitting the event to behaving "like a hooligan" when introducing Ahmadinejad.

Much of that criticism was justified. In particular, it's hard to reconcile Columbia's ban on military recruiters (owing to the armed forces' discriminatory treatment of gays) with the decision to host Ahmadinejad, a man who sanctions the execution of homosexuals. Others, including Sen. John McCain, argued that "a man who is directing the maiming and killing of American troops should not be given an invitation to speak at an American university," and worried that the event legitimized his views.

Yet the institutional consensus at Columbia, Duke and elsewhere seems to hold that the importance of preserving free speech on campus should outweigh those (entirely valid) concerns.

Fair enough. If universities limited their speaking invitations to individuals whose politics were "correct," then the pool of acceptable speakers would be quite small. And as Bollinger noted, "It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices"; to behave otherwise would "make vigorous debate impossible."

Continued...

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