[CrackMonkey] Brown U. HATE SPEECH (from Politech)

[Seth David Schoen]

Don Marti writes:

> ----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----
> 
> We believe that you have yet to address fully the gravity of the situation,
> particularly its impact on faculty, students and staff of color on this
> campus. If you were to make such an address, it would greatly alleviate this
> situation and allow for the kind of dialogue you argue is needed. In your
> press release of 17 March 2001, for instance, you argue that "The most
> effective response to ideas, however - even to ideas that may be deeply
> offensive - is not to silence them or intimidate those who espouse or
> publish them, but rather to develop effective opposing arguments through
> wider civil discourse." However, your refusal to condemn the advertisement
> as a forum of harassment has--perhaps inadvertently--led to the silencing of
> many people of color on campus.
> 
> 
> At the present time, we are faced with an increasingly tense climate for all
> people of color and their white supporters, and a situation in which a few
> students of color have been egregiously selected by the administration as
> scapegoats for an investigation of violations of the Brown student code of
> conduct. Allegations against the students include the "theft or attempted
> theft of personal or University property," a reference to the collective
> symbolic action by a group of students on March 16th.
> 
> 
> The scapegoating of a few students, as we are sure you are aware, is in
> direct contradiction to what is known, both at Brown and throughout the
> United States, to have occurred: that is, that a coalition of anywhere
> between 50 and 100 students-one-third of whom were white-removed the March
> 16th run of BDH newspapers, 3 days after the Horowitz ad came out. As we are
> certain you are aware, they did so out of frustration, and, consequently, in
> symbolic protest over both the publication of Horowitz's commercial ad, and
> the BDH's refusal to provide the students with equal space, free of charge,
> for a response to the ad's racist and assaultive statements.
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----

Or, "we do not agree with what you say and we won't defend for a
second your right to say it".

I like that "one-third of whom were white" bit.  I think more than
one-third of the people who stole the _Daily Cal_ issues when Joe
Eskenazi's and my pieces appeared in 1997 were white.  We weren't
criticizing their race; we were criticizing their politics.

And of the great ironies was that part of Eskenazi's column was about
how _Daily Cal_ columnists were reluctant to criticize BAMN because
newspapers were always stolen on days when BAMN was criticized.  Of
course BAMN couldn't let anybody read about its supporters' practice
of preventing the campus public from reading about its supporters'
practice of preventing the campus public from...

Herbert Marcuse's ghost is alive and well (see _The Shadow
University_).

I wish that certain factions on the left would take a page from the
skeptics and _subscribe_ to their opponents' publications.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5