Administrative Speech and Press

So, we couldn’t even make it to the first day of the semester before someone caught the nasty hate virus somewhere in our venerable community. On Monday, so-called sexist graffiti was found on the sixth floor of Barnard’s Hewitt Hall. On Wednesday, Spectator quoted a student on the floor who described the graffiti as a “stick figure drawing of a person holding a burning bra” and “the word feminist with the ‘f’ made into a swastika” on an index card, as well as “a woman being chainsawed in half” on a student’s dorm whiteboard. Any well-informed individual, or an uninformed individual with access to Google images, would know that the drawings in question are right-wing antifeminist political symbols meant certainly to shock, but not to incite violence or cause actual bodily injury.

Rest assured, all my strong, beautiful Barnard women—Judge Judy Shapiro has arrived, via the highly personal campus-wide e-mail (check your spam folder), to denounce these acts as “racist ... blatant bias ... [targeting] feminism ... appalling to encounter at a women’s college.” The missive came complete with a reminder of a meeting held Thursday night on the new Barnard Community Code of Conduct.
As a member of the University community, I’m supposed to be stunned, appalled, and hurt by these drawings. The truth is that the drawings could, alarmingly, set off a vigorous debate on feminism at our prestigious Seven Sisters affiliate. There even remains the treacherous possibility that someone’s convictions may be brought into question, challenged, debated, or—wait for it—even changed, making them a better informed and more tolerant individual. This premise is obviously “appalling to encounter.”

Naturally, we cannot let this kind of activity take place in our community. Rather, we must hold a forum in a large auditorium where we can hold hands and sing camp songs while denouncing these acts of, again, “racist ... blatant bias,” followed by after-hours counseling to ease the minds of the offended. Finally, a few weeks from now, when what happened on Jan. 21 is long forgotten, we can sip on lattes while reading below-the-fold news of disciplinary procedures against what Spec called the “perpetrator.”

It’s so sad that it has come to this at the once-progressive Columbia University in the City of New York, the bastion of liberalism on the eastern seaboard. Last semester, our community was rattled with a noose on the door of a black professor at Teachers College and the drawing of a swastika alongside an individual wearing a yarmulke in Lewisohn Hall. Each incident was followed by a Bollinger e-mail blast—the few electronic communications from his office unrelated to Manhattanville—denouncing the acts and demanding “tolerance and mutual respect ... [in] our diverse community.”

Few will deny how harsh of a fall it was for our University. Toward that end, President Bollinger’s responses were appropriate. The problem, unfortunately, is that the hate-filled incidents of last semester gradually dropped this free-flowing intellectual academy to its knees, to the point that a rather innocuous incident, like Monday’s discovery in Hewitt, can be blown so far out of proportion as to risk harming the great free speech experiment that is the American university. Reacting without contemplation, fearing the start of a sequel to the fall, was not the way to go. In today’s world, when our very thoughts are under attack and our civil liberties are subject to degradation, at our unique university in our unique city, such brash judgment is too dangerous to accept. Of course, it is impossible to avoid the fact that the institutions of our academic acropolis are in the midst of vast fund-raising drives. They may feel obligated, especially following the tumultuous fall term, to quell any objectionable speech—fearful of a political relations nightmare­—to appease wealthy, conservative donors.

This brings us back to President Shapiro’s e-mail, which I fear, especially after last semester, could become a commonplace reaction to even the slightest questionable speech. Here at Columbia, we desire the New England town common but resign ourselves to a Village Green Preservation Society out of fear that our fine academic image could be tarnished at any moment. For generations, this has been one of the most difficult struggles of the private university.

President Bollinger, one of the nation’s leading free speech scholars, must grapple with this very complicated issue on a daily basis. Most former students of his undergraduate course on the Freedom of Speech and Press would likely agree that the best response to bad speech is simply better speech. Ultimately, truth will arise. It is likely that in his deepest convictions, President Bollinger believes this about Columbia. There’s never been anything wrong with a little heated debate.

In her e-mail, President Shapiro noted that the incident in Hewitt could be used as “an opportunity ... to commit to a positive and open exchange of thoughts and ideas.” While this surely goes to the heart of free speech, the fact remains that the incident was first written off as “racist ... blatant bias ... [targeting] feminism.” True or not, that’s what a pressured administrator quickly conveyed to her students and, as a result, any subsequent opinion must automatically fall in the shadow of this established administrative tone. Deep down, I hope others share in this feeling of absurdity toward President Shapiro’s reactionary language. It was removed from intellectual thought and instead aimed at protecting what’s recognized to be correct while ignoring the great potential in civilly examining something radically different. As appalling as it may be to encounter such ideas, in this community, it is far worse to hastily condemn.

Jarid Maged is a student in the school of General Studies studying political science. Frozen in the Ninth Circle runs alternate Fridays. Specopinion@columbia.edu