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."
But why do these events remain so controversial? For one thing, these speeches-which are justified in the name of "education" and "understanding"-often don't turn out to be very informative at all.
Case in point: Although The Columbia Spectator found that student leaders "overwhelmingly" agreed the Ahmadinejad speech was "in line with the academic purpose of the University," two senior guest columnists termed the event "a betrayal of University ideals.... [which] undermines the values of true academic freedom and symbolizes the suppression of adequate student participation."
Students were given just four days' notice before Ahmadinejad spoke. Seats sold out in just one hour, and even the "most well-connected" undergraduates who did snag tickets were not permitted to ask Ahmadinejad direct questions (inquiries were filtered through the dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs).
Bollinger himself did not live up to "the best of Columbia's traditions." His introduction, which taunted Ahmadinejad for being "ridiculous," "a petty and cruel dictator" and "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," was so inappropriate that spectators cheered when Ahmadinejad rebuked the president's "insults" and "incorrect claims."
In other words, like so many other hotly contested campus speeches Ahmadinejad's appearance did not match controversy with content. The Iranian president used his time to insist that women in his country enjoy "the highest level of freedom," that the Holocaust did not occur and that his country lacks homosexuals. Although the occasion avoided violence (in sharp contrast to another Columbia-sponsored speech that ended in a near riot), it failed to incorporate the very "effective discourse and debate" that justified its existence.
Such concerns are not foreign to Duke's campus. Although the University paid more than $50,000 for security and other accommodations for the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, the sponsors of "open dialogue" on the Middle East were allowed to screen participants and bar journalists from a number of their sessions. And the healthy "debate" this event was supposed to provoke largely consisted of a Chronicle column titled "The Jews," which bemoaned the "powerful Jewish establishment" and its "Holocaust Industry."
As we mark the anniversary of the PSM conference, let's seize this opportunity to make our definition of academic freedom one that does more to benefit students, a mission that truly honors the academy's "best... traditions."
Kristin Butler is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every Tuesday.
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