9 October 2006 @ 8:41AM >> I have always thought that Peter Beinart of The New Republic is one of the more sensible, intellectually honest voices on the left. His latest piece is an example why:

Last week, I went searching the liberal Web for discussions of Idomeneo. The Deutsche Oper, a Berlin opera house, had recently canceled the Mozart classic because it feared Muslims would react violently to a scene featuring Mohammed’s severed head. Germans declared that free speech was under siege. The New York Times covered every wrinkle. Right-wing websites buzzed. And, on the big liberal blogs, virtual silence.

If pressed, most liberal bloggers would probably have condemned the opera house’s decision. But they didn’t feel pressed. Blogging thrives on outrage (see, for instance, my colleague Martin Peretz’s outraged blogging on the affair at tnr.com/blog/spine), and the Idomeneo closure just didn’t get liberal blood flowing. And why is that? Perhaps because it didn’t have anything to do with George W. Bush.

[...]

In much of Europe, Muslim violence has become a serious threat to free speech. In publishing its cartoons of Mohammed last fall, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten performed a test: Is it possible to safely caricature the Prophet? The answer—received loud and clear by the Deutsche Oper—was no. Lower profile incidents confirm the point. Within days of the opera’s cancellation, a French philosophy teacher was placed under police protection for writing an article critical of Islam.

[...]

Liberals are less prone to a “clash of civilizations” mentality that undermines the very notion of free speech as a universal value. And that is why they must make the cause of European free speech their own. The best analogy is the “political correctness” fights that roiled college campuses in the late ’80s and early ’90s. When professors and students were punished for statements that violated racial and gender orthodoxy, it was conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza who most aggressively came to their defense. But many conservatives were tainted by their defense of the McCarthyite assault on campus free speech in the 1950s. In 1991, THE NEW REPUBLIC published a review of D’Souza’s book by the renowned Southern historian Eugene Genovese. “As one who saw his professors fired during the McCarthy era, and who had to fight, as a pro-Communist Marxist, for his own right to teach,” wrote Genovese, “I fear that our conservative colleagues are today facing a new McCarthyism.” Yet the conservatives, he argued, couldn’t defeat it alone. The cause of free speech “will go down, unless it is supported by a substantial portion of the left and center. ... It is time to close ranks.”

We have reached that point again. During the PC wars, many liberals were genuinely conflicted about whether free speech outweighed racial and gender sensitivity on campus. Today, some liberals still excuse censorship in sensitivity’s name. The bigger danger, however, is not sensitivity; it is indifference. Having adapted themselves so fully to a hyper-partisan environment, many liberals seem unable to conceive of a struggle in which the Republican right is not an enemy but an ally. But there are such struggles, and, without today’s activist liberals, they will be harder to win. Free speech is under threat, and Idomeneo should be the last straw. It is time, once again, to close ranks.

9 October 2006 >> If you set foot on a college campus these days, you’ll be bombarded with feel-good buzzwords intended to convince you of how caring and inclusive the environment is.

The words “tolerance” and “diversity” are drilled into students’ heads from orientation on, but it doesn’t take savvy students long to figure out just how empty those concepts are in academia these days.

The concept of diversity is only skin deep; everyone is welcomed regardless of color or sexual orientation—as long as they don’t deviate from the narrow ideological framework that dominates many college campuses. Diversity of thought—presumably the most important type of diversity in an institution whose purpose is to enrich the mind—is not valued. And tolerance never seems to extend to those who reject the worldview that schools attempt to impose.

Case in point, Columbia University:

Students stormed the stage at Columbia University’s Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.

Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.

[...]

The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.

A student’s demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, “Wrap it up, wrap it up!” Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, “No wonder you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border,” Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. “They have no right to be able to speak here.”

As of now, the Columbia administration has taken absolutely no disciplinary action launched an investigation.

If it infuriates you to read this, then you may want to be sure you’ve taken your medications before watching the video.

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Update: Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement on the incident, which I’ve excerpted:

The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.

Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views.

This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.

It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.

These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.