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History Teaches Us the Right Way Forward
By Eric Foner
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
A small piece of Columbia history may provide some context for the president of Iran’s visit. Back in 1961, a student group at City College, a mile up the road from Columbia, invited Benjamin Davis to give a talk. A longtime leader in the struggle for racial justice in New York, Davis had been elected to the New York City Council in the early 1940s. But Davis was secretary of the U. S. Communist Party, and administrators at the City University decreed that no communist could speak at any of its campuses, so his appearance was canceled.
I was then a Columbia undergraduate and president of ACTION, a student group that promoted liberal causes like civil rights, an end to the testing in the atmosphere of nuclear weapons, and freedom of speech (the country was just emerging from the dark days of McCarthyism). We decided to invite Davis to Columbia. Because of the controversy, he attracted a large audience—it filled McMillan Theater, as Miller was then called. After the passage of more than four decades, I have pretty much forgotten what Davis said, although I do recall his relating that New York law barred communists from holding drivers’ licenses and wondering how this enhanced national security.
What sticks in my mind is that, from top to bottom, Columbia’s administration, along with most of my fellow students, enthusiastically supported our invitation to Davis. They welcomed the opportunity to demonstrate that Columbia, unlike City, respected freedom of speech. They understood that a university is a place where even the most controversial unpopular ideas can be aired. Nobody thought that inviting Davis meant that Columbia University endorsed communism.
Americans too often tend to take our civil liberties for granted. After all, haven’t they been guaranteed by the Bill of Rights for over 200 years? In fact, for most of our history a rhetorical commitment to free speech has coexisted with severe restrictions on speech deemed dangerous, extreme, or simply unpopular. In the 19th century, mobs broke up abolitionist meetings. In the early 20th, members of the Industrial Workers of the World were imprisoned for delivering public speeches. Margaret Sanger went to jail in this city for distributing information about birth control. During the McCarthy era, thousands of persons lost their jobs for refusing to take loyalty oaths or otherwise being deemed un-American.
I do not wish to equate the president of Iran with these heroes of American liberty—far from it. I find his policies and beliefs reprehensible. But freedom of speech does not apply only to those with whom we agree. Our own liberties are not so secure that they can be infringed without long-term damage. Nor is American history a linear narrative of greater and greater freedom. Sometimes (as in recent years), our liberties contract rather than expand. The calls and e-mails that have deluged the administration in the last few days demanding the cancellation of the visit suggest that, even today, respect for freedom of speech is far from universal in this country. If allowing the president of Iran, like Benjamin Davis over 40 years ago, to speak reaffirms the sanctity of free speech at Columbia and in the nation at large, then an important lesson will have come out of the current controversy.
Eric Foner, CC’63, is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History.
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How strange so many "anonymous" writers are against Ahmadinejad's visit! Why do they feel ashamed of their position since they clearly are passionate about their conviction?
Look, if Mao Zedong were alive today, should Columbia accept or reject his offer to speak at Columbia? His brutal policies had caused the death of over 40 million Chinese (based on both western and Chinese sources), 4 times (plus) more than Jews perished in the Holocaust. Or should Columbia refuse President Hu Jintao of China from speaking at Columbia? He, as former party secretary in Tibet, had supervised the killing of tens of thousands of Tibetans during the Cultural Revolution? I am happy to see that on this point, Columbia would gladly extend an invitation to either one, should that opportunity arise. However, I would be equally dismayed if President Bollinger did another bush-league grandstanding cheap shot at a guest however much he disagrees with everything the guest stood for.
The anti-Ahmadinejad crowd is so afraid that someone they disagree with strongly might say something that might come across as reasonable that they forget the meaning of an "open" university. They are in fact saying Columbia students are not intelligent enough to know what's sensible and what is not. I am totally in agreement with Professor Foner's stance. Sin-ming Shaw CC'67.
Sin-Ming:
You are right in a sense. Bollinger's statements, although true, were not polite for someone you invite to your home. They also indicated a prescience of what was to come - i.e., non-responsive, counterfactual answers in propagandistic form that were not new to anyone who has been listening to his public rantings before. What, exactly, did the Columbia platform add to the mix that 60 Minutes and Ahmadinejad's speech to the UN did not? The fact that Bollinger thought he had to come out swinging in such a fashion, although fun to see, meant that he thought nothing new would be added to the debate by Ahmadinejad's appearance. So why inviite him? Would you invite Mao into your home for a chat if you knew in advance he would recite nothing but the words in his little red book that you've read a hundred times before? Would you invite him into your home if your family was among the 40 million and you expected him to deny that it happened or to say that nothing is certain? Not unless you idolized him and his ideology.
If predictability of public statements is a criterion of invitations, I would suspect very few if any public figures should be invited to speak at this or any university. Would I have invited Mao to my home? Absolutely yes. Why? Because the opportunity to confront a man of such evil and power and be able to ask him questions even if some answers maybe predictable would have been worth it....just as Nixon et al thought so. And indeed just as Mao thought meeting Nixon might produce something predictable. But comparing my home with a university is a false one. A university is an open forum with many minds. You may think this Iranian politician is totally predictable, yet some maybe hearing for the first thing and then decide he is a total loss. Some commentators I have read feel he had retreated from his "Holocaust never happened" mantra -- which would suggest something new might have happened
Labeling an invitation as a sign of idolizing the invitee is a smear by those with a narrow mind.
If one learns anything from history, one should respect the idea that unpredictability maybe as inherent in human behavior as that of subatomic particles where the laws of quantum mechanics rule. Did any one predict as recent as 25 years ago (not even a drop in historical time) that Chinese economy is more capitalistic than much of western Europe? Did anyone predict the day after 9/11 that America's moral standing would become an oxymoron 5 years later? Did Adolf foresee his demise when his generals were toasting their"genius" at Trocadero? Be a little humble in your ability to foresee how Iran would turn out and be somewhat guarded in judging anyone. You could be similarly judged and erroneously by those around you who believe you were like an open book in your simplicity.
This Iranian fella about which I don't think the entire Morningside Heights know much about except by second hand source. Having him physicially present and be judged by students is like going to original sources in one's academic studies. The central attraction of a Columbia College education, the Core Curriculum, is about going to the source and then let the students decide.
By the way my oldest brother perished during the Cultural Revolution beaten to death by Mao's Red Guards in a factory. And a number of Tibetan monks I knew of perished in Tibet and I would still invite Hu Jintao.
I can't predict what he would say or do two three years from now. And if I were again a student at columbia, I would welcome his presence. But I certainly feel Bollinger has demeaned us with his self-serving speech playing, I suspect, to his well-heeled alumni detractors. Shameful.
My point is that Bollinger did not seem to believe that anything productive would come of this, as evidenced by his comments. If so, why sponsor a speech then? Just because Ahmadinejad is famous? Why not invite Britney Spears to talk about the situation in Iran - I'm sure just as many people would turn up to see her - everyone likes to watch a car wreck.
Taking it out of the political context, should Columbia invite people with shoddy scholarship to present lectures, just because they are notorious? Should Columbia invite a scholar who denies that there was slavery in the US? Should Columbia hire a professor of UFOlogy in its Physics department, just because many people in the US believe in UFO's?
I wouldn't object to all of this if the forum were different. If Columbia had invited an Iranian dissident to speak with equal time or if the format were strictly question and answer, at least there would be some utility.
Regarding the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad has said at various times that it didn't happen AND that it happened but we really don't know whether such a large percentage of the world Jewish population was wiped out. He has different messages for different audiences. His government sponsored both a Holocaust Denial Conference last year, with David Duke as a keynote presenter, and a Holocaust Cartoon Contest last year, in response to certain non-Jews in non-Jewish Denmark printing cartoons about Muhammed. That is sick, ill and evil and doesn't deserve an honor of an audience.
Would you suggest that Columbia provide a forum for David Duke, like Ahmadinejad gave him? Would you suggest that Columbia host a Holocaust Cartoon Contest or a Tibet Bashing Convention? Would you suggest that Columbia invite, and be respectful to, someone who advocates the death penalty for gays, merely because they are gay, or the death penalty for Chinese, merely because they are Chinese? Would your eldest brother sit politely in a seminar conducted by Mao and applaud when he finished his remarks about the remarkable success of the Cultural Revolution?
And, by the way, Columbia would not invite or tolerate someone else who was an avowed racist. In fact, a student at Columbia is subject to discipline and/or expulsion for engaging in hate speech. Columbia would not admit a murderer to one of its schools; why allow that person to speak to its students?
As for Nixon and Mao - they were talking about things of mutual benefit to the 2 countries. They weren't talking about whether Mao would give up Communism and killing dissidents or whether the US would cease to become Capitalist. Much of what was agreed to, was agreed to through the path of diplomatic agents prior to their meeting. I am not suggesting that Condoleeza Rice not interface with the Iranian foreign minister. Actual politics and diplomacy are different than scholarly presentations. The truth is that we do negotiate with terrorists when we have to; we just shouldn't invite them to tea and ignore the elephant in the room of their vast crimes.
Columbia University is a private corporation, and the World Leaders Forum is a highly selective speakers series that has, until now, exclusively featured world leaders who were almost universally approved or widely unknown (although the University was willing to host Hugo Chavez last year). Ahmadinejad has no more of a "right" to speak at Columbia than President Bollinger has a right to address next year's Academy Awards Ceremony. "Freedom of speech," as a constitutional question, is not at issue. And, in view of the fact that Ahmadinejad had nothing novel or forthright to contribute to yesterday's event, I can say, with absolute certainty, that the University would not have deprived anybody the exposure to a single free thought had they declined to offer the invitation.
Professor Foner:
You decry that "The calls and e-mails that have deluged the administration in the last few days demanding the cancellation of the visit suggest that, even today, respect for freedom of speech is far from universal in this country."
On the contrary, all of these people were vigorously exercising their right of free speech to ask the University to exercise its faculty of judgment and reconsider its provision of a forum for what these callers viewed as hate speech. You seem to be taking them to task for having the temerity to do so.
The University does not have an obligation to provide a soapbox to every madman with racist, misogynistic, homophobic and homocidal tendencies. Pleading for the cancellation of the event in this context does not equate with a lack of respect for "freedom of speech"; although some indeed may want Ahmadinejad's tongue cut out for the things he says, the clear message was for the inviting party to exercise discretion, not for a superior governmental entity to prevent Columbia from having the event altogether.
It is disingenuous, if not careless, to assert that Ahmadinejad's ramblings at Columbia represented some victory for the First Amendment or even for academic freedom. Neither the Columbia Administration nor the US government ever expressed any intention to forbid the invite of the President of Iran. Indeed, it was the administration (or the administration of SIPA) that invited him. Dismay at the University's judgment in inviting this man (even if coupled with threats of no more donations) does not rise to a restriction on free speech. Nazis marching in Skokie was a victory for free speech; protesting the Nazi march in Skokie was a victory for free speech; the fact that ACTION was not censored by the University (which had power to prevent the talk on private property) was a victory for free speech. It would not have been a war on free speech if ACTION, after hearing reasoned pleas for not having Davis speak, reconsidered its position on inviting Davis. It was a war on free speech for John Kerry to allow a student to be tasered while engaging in similar verbal protest that Kerry participated in when he came back from Viet Nam.
I would not ask the University to forbid a campus organization from inviting David Duke to campus to talk about why he thinks minorities are sub-human. I would, however, expect that the University itself had enough responsibility and morality not to invite David Duke as a keynote speaker (even if President Bollinger railed at him as being a degenerate bigot). I would expect you, as a seasoned veteran of free speech battles and as an historian, to understand (and not obfuscate) the legal difference.
Respectfully,
Harris Fenton
In Prof. Foner's roster of "heroes of American liberty" who were deemed too "dangerous, extreme or simply unpopular" for their free speech rights, I was amazed to see Margaret Sanger's name described one who "went to jail for distributing information about birth control. " Well noble as that may sound, it is a bite that spins and misrepresents history. Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist. And believe me she had her free speech rights. An activitist, she authored many pamphlets and books, among them "Birth Control and Positive Eugenics" and "Birth Control the True Eugenics" ; she went across the country, speaking and spreading her ideas. It was only when she broke the law that she was jailed. And just what was the content of her "free speech" anyway? It was about mandated birth control to purify the "breeding stock" and remove the "bad strains." Included in her list of the "unfit" were "the shiftless, ignorant and worthless class of antisocial whites of the South." Also included were the poor, uneducated who had large families -- well you get the idea. In other words, your hero of American liberty would have taken our civil liberties away. And though in my opinion, she WAS too dangerous for her free speech rights. she had them, nevertheless. But don't make her a heroine of liberty. Please.
Freedom of Speech does not mean I have to enable you to speak, it simply means I cannot put in place restrictions on your ability to speak. By providing a platform, you enable one to speak. By not providing a platform, you do not prevent one from speaking elsewhere. If no one wants to host him, that reflects on the quality of what he has to say, not on his lack of freedom of speech.
Yes, one can be afraid of the day when the mob mentality prevents any place from providing one the ability to speak, but as Ahmadinejad is the President of his own country, that's not a worry that he has to face as he has plenty of platforms available to him.
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