NEW YORK, NY 8/11/01- With breathtaking hypocrisy, the Columbia University Senate
passed a resolution in support of freedom of speech. After decades of
watching Columbia trash and neglect free speech, legal equality, and all
notions of individual rights and responsibilities, the Senate suddenly
asserts itself, alarmed only about alleged patriotic threats to freedom of
expression.
The resolution claimed that, in the current climate, "some student members
of the Columbia community have felt pressure to curtail their opinions of
the national response to the September 11 attacks." In response, the
University Senate voted forty-six to none (with one abstention) to "reaffirm
open discourse as a prime value in our community and encourage diverse
participation in it."
Alan Charles Kors, president of FIRE, said, "Although they named no
patriotic threat to freedom of speech at Columbia--they could not--now they
choose to pay lip service to open debate. Where have they been?"
Kors asked, "Where was the Columbia University Senate when administrators
barred attendees at a conference on affirmative action - including columnist
John Leo and author Dinesh D'Souza--from holding their scheduled event on
campus?" In November 1998, hundreds of protesters showed up at the site of
the conference denouncing the first day's speaker, Ward Connerly, as a
"bigot" and "Uncle Tom." Mr. Connerly is black. Columbia told the
conservative group that organized the educational gathering that
circumstances had "changed." The conference was then denied the use of
campus facilities. The Columbia University Senate said nothing then about
the "prime value" of debate, let alone of dissent as essential to a vibrant
or creative community.
"Where was the Senate last year, when students, faculty, and the dean of the
Law School chilled the free speech rights of Professor George Fletcher?"
Kors asked. Fletcher, a renowned theorist in criminal law, posed an exam
question, drawn from real case law, in which a female victim expressed
gratitude to a male assailant for inducing an abortion that she could not
obtain from a medical facility. Law School Dean David Leebron investigated
Fletcher for angering a group of female activists and creating a "hostile
environment" for women. Despite Columbia's own faculty guidelines and
contractual obligations to academic freedom, the administration informed
Fletcher that his exam was possibly "unlawful."
The University Senate's refusal to defend Fletcher or conservative critics
of affirmative action reveals their current resolution to be partisan
currency, valid for political friends but unavailable to political
dissenters. Indeed, their refusal to defend academic freedom where it truly
matters, in the classrooms of Columbia's own campus, reveal their striking
bad faith and double standards.
If Columbia's University Senate is serious about liberty--which it is
not--it should begin by apologizing to the nation for Columbia's prior and
ongoing offenses against individual rights. Let them condemn what occurred
on their own watch. Then one might take them seriously as a body concerned
with everyone's freedom. While they are at it, let them rediscover due
process also and pass a resolution condemning Columbia's own Sexual
Misconduct Policy, a Star Chamber where an accusation is the equivalent of a
conviction, and where the accused is stripped of the most essential rights
to fundamental fairness.
"Colleges and universities indeed must be protected in their freedom,
despite themselves, but they also must be held accountable for their
betrayal of the essential principles of American liberty and justice," said
Kors. "FIRE welcomes all affirmations of the value of free speech," he
noted, "but this principle must stand for all times, and for all seasons--
not just when it is expedient."
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a nonprofit educational
foundation. FIRE unites civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars,
journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological
spectrum on behalf of due process, individual rights, freedom of expression,
the rights of conscience, and religious liberty on our campuses. FIRE's
website, www.thefire.org, explains FIRE's views of the assault on liberty
and dignity in higher education.
Thor L. Halvorssen
