WHEN NICE PEOPLE BURN BOOKS
Hentoff, Nat
When Nice People Burn Books BY NATHENTOFF It happened one splendid Sunday morning in a church. Not Jerry Falwell's Baptist sanctuary in Lynchburg, Virginia, but rather the First Unitarian Church...
...I reported this news of the singed holy spirit to a group of American Civil Liberties Union members in California, and one woman was furious...
...They wanted the head of the editor...
...If the high school administration had originally forbidden the wearing of the Klan costumes to the Hallowe'en assembly, it would have spared itself that part of the black student's lawsuit, but it would have set a precedent for censoring symbolic speech which would have shrunken First Amendment protections at Prairie High School...
...If that proves to be the case, those five student groups will surely move to terminate, if not defenestrate, those university officials...
...Some fifty members of the ninety-odd faculty and staff wrote a stiff letter to the Wabash Lecture Series Committee, which had displayed the exceedingly poor taste to invite Schlafly to speak on campus the next year...
...After that $1,000 award to the black student, the white kids who have been infected by Klan demonology will circulate their poison only among themselves, intensifying their sickness of spirit...
...In the spring of 1981, the college was riven with discord...
...What had this editor at Kent State done to win the enmity of so humanistic a grand alliance...
...Any niggers...
...Don't you understand it's just symbolic...
...Take the case of Phyllis Schlafly and Wabash College...
...And, raising a clenched fist while blowing kisses with his free hand, Cleaver left...
...a far-right attorney who travels the country, being highly paid to tell women to stay at home fulfilling traditional roles while sending their sons off to war...
...So a Palestinian kid couldn't wear a PLO outfit...
...In Madison, Cleaver never got to talk about his pilgrim's progress from the Black Panthers to the wondrously ecumenical Moonies...
...But do not get the wrong idea about these protesting faculty members: "We subscribe," they emphasized, "to the principles of free speech and free association, of course...
...Do you think Lenny Bruce could get many college bookings today...
...None that injure the feelings of another student...
...However, some of the wounded faculty took a long time to recover...
...They are: "gay students, black students, the undergraduate and graduate student governments, and a progressive student alliance...
...At me...
...Then there is the Ku Klan Klan...
...The moral of the story: If you don't like certain ideas, boycott them...
...Mirror, mirror on the wall...
...Also hurled into the purifying fire were works by Kierkegaard and Karl Barth...
...Campaigns to purge school libraries, for example, have been conducted by feminists as well as by Phyllis Schlafly...
...As all right-thinking people know, however, the First Amendment isn't just for anybody...
...Really, how can you stay married to someone who invited Phyllis Schlafly to this campus...
...Isn't that just like the Klan...
...service, pernicious ideas were burned at the altar...
...Such teaching is too late for Prairie High School...
...Why should I leave him...
...All too few liberal members of the Vassar faculty tried to educate their students about the purpose of a university, and indeed a good many faculty members joined in the protests against Buckley's coming...
...The congregation was much exalted: "As the last flame died in the pot, and the organ pealed, there was applause," Somerville wrote...
...He finally decided not to appear because, he told me, he didn't want to spoil the day for the parents...
...You start trying to deal with offensive costumes and you wind up with a blank space in the yearbook...
...Never mind...
...All the same, "it does not enhance our image as an all-male college to endorse a well-known sexist by inviting her to speak on our campus...
...During the current academic year, there were dismaying developments concerning freedom for bad ideas in the college press...
...That would have made news around the country, and there would have been collectively signed letters to the New York Review of Books and The Nation warning of the prowling dangers to free speech in the land...
...Or a Jewish kid couldn't come as Ariel Sharon, festooned with maps...
...The professor cleared her throat, and said to the other woman, "You are going to leave him, aren't you...
...My husband...
...It did occur to me, however, that if Eldridge Cleaver had not abandoned his secularist rage at the American Leviathan and had come to Madison as the still burning spear of black radicalism, the result might have been quite different if he had been shouted down that night by young apostles of the New Right...
...Aside from the ACLU's, how many amicus briefs do you think the Imperial Wizard is likely to get from liberal organizations devoted to academic freedom...
...One of them, a tenured professor, took aside at a social gathering the wife of a member of the lecture committee that had invited Schlafly...
...For a salubrious change, therefore, let us look at what is happening to freedom of speech and press in certain enclaves—some colleges, for instance—where the New Right has no clout at all...
...If the speaker appeals only to a "decreasing minority of American women and men," she's not worth the fee...
...The University of Wisconsin administration, through Dean of Students Paul Ginsberg, deplored the behavior of the campus totalitarians of the Left, and there was a fiercely denunciatory editorial in the Madison Capital Times: "These people lack even the most primitive appreciation of the Bill of Rights...
...Or write a column for a college newspaper...
...In any case, the rest of the editorial went on to claim that the proper use of student fees was for educational, not social, activities...
...Ambrose, St...
...And really, should such a man even be allowed visitation rights with the children...
...Nat Hentoff writes each month about music and occasionally about First Amendment issues...
...We did the same thing at our church two Sundays ago," she said...
...He had used impermissible words...
...A few years ago, William F. Buckley Jr., invited to be commencement speaker at Vassar, was told by student groups that he not only would be shouted down if he came but might also suffer some contusions...
...When it was all over, the chairman of the journalism department observed that the confrontation had actually reinforced respect for First Amendment rights on the University of New Mexico campus because infuriated students now knew they couldn't successfully insist on the firing of an editor because of what had been published...
...Symbolic speech, however, is like spoken or written speech...
...Klan members get the same reception that Martin Luther King Jr...
...Among his books is "The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America...
...Nigger...
...Bill Wilkerson, the Imperial Wizard of the particular Klan faction that has been barred from the University of Cincinnati, says he's going to sue on First Amendment grounds...
...But since Cleaver has long since taken up with bad companions, there is not much concern among those who used to raise bail for him as to whether he gets to speak freely or not...
...She was finally given her job back, pending a formal hearing, but she decided to quit...
...Censorship is like a greased pig...
...The stirring ceremony in Baltimore is just one more illustration that the spirit of the First Amendment is not being savaged only by malign forces of the Right, whether private or governmental...
...In opening statements," says the National On-Campus Report, "he employed words like 'queer' and 'nigger' to show that prejudice against any group is undesirable...
...There, an all-white jury awarded $1,000 to a black high school student after he had charged the Battle Ground School District (including Prairie High School) with discrimination...
...The faculty protesters complained that having the Sweetheart of the Right near the Wabash River would be "unfortunate and inappropriate...
...The lecture committee responded to the fifty deeply offended faculty members in a most unkind way...
...And watch out for the wise guy who comes dressed as that all-around pain-in-the-ass, Tom Paine...
...After ninety minutes of the din, Cleaver wrote on the blackboard, "I regret that the totalitarians have deprived us of our constitutional rights to free assembly and free speech...
...As Klan members have learned in recent months, both in Boston and in Washington, their First Amendment right peaceably to assemble— let alone actually to speak their minds—can only be exercised if they are prepared to be punched in the mouth...
...Yet, most liberal watchdogs of our freedom remain fixed on the Right as the enemy of free expression...
...Not a reactionary among them...
...And heaven forfend that anyone be invited whose beliefs are "inconsistent with those held by liberally educated persons...
...What about the resignations...
...It was originally printed in the school yearbook but, with the lawsuit and all, the picture was cut out of each yearbook before it was distributed...
...Somerville, religion editor of the Baltimore Sun, "Centuries of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Hindu writings were 'expurgated'— because of sections described as 'sexist.' "Touched off by a candle and consumed in a pot on a table in front of the altar were slips of paper containing 'patriarchal' excerpts from Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, the Koran, St...
...In the Humanities Building— Humanities—several hundred students and others outraged by Cleaver's apostasy shouted, stamped their feet, chanted "Sieg Heil," and otherwise prevented him from being heard...
...It is difficult to be a disciple of James Madison on campus these days...
...Any kikes...
...One of the ways of deciding who gets invited to a campus is the speaker's popularity...
...Then there was a free-speech war at Kent State University, as summarized in the November 12, 1982, issue of National On-Campus Report...
...I told this ACLU member that when the school board in Drake, North Dakota, threw thirty-four copies of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five into the furnace in 1973, it wasn't because the school was low on fuel...
...And those five influential cadres of students are after his head...
...The editor was not singling out the Kent Gay/Lesbian Foundation...
...The committee told the signers that "William Buckley would endorse your petition...
...He was opposed to any student organization using those fees for dances...
...Causing decent people to do dumb things...
...Furthermore, the authors wrote, "The point of view she represents is that of an ever-decreasing minority of American women and men, and is based in sexist mythology which promulgates beliefs inconsistent with those held by liberally educated persons, and this does not merit a forum at Wabash College under the sponsorship of our Lecture Series...
...The managing editor prudently resigned, but the protesters were not satisfied...
...Oh, they were free-will offerings...
...One of the claims was that the school had discriminated against this young man by permitting white students to wear Ku Klux Klan costumes to a Hallowe'en assembly...
...If Phyllis Schlafly is invited nonetheless, "we intend not to participate in any of the activities surrounding Ms...
...That presumably is why the administration of the University of Cincinnati has refused this year to allow the KKK to appear on campus...
...It's a rare picture...
...What should the criteria be for permissible costumes at a Hallowe'en assembly...
...Phyllis Schlafly did come to Wabash and she generated a great deal of discussion— most of it against her views—among members of the all-male student body...
...Schlafly's visit and will urge others to do the same...
...Queer...
...Lenny, walking on stage in a club, peering into the audience, and asking, "Any spies here tonight...
...The college is a small, well-regarded liberal arts institution in Crawfordsville, Indiana...
...Ah, but how had he gone about making his point...
...Cleaver says he'll try to speak again, but he doesn't know when...
...That burning was symbolic, too...
...Just like Lenny Bruce...
...And indeed, what a compelling opportunity the costumes present to teach about the Klan, to ask those white kids who wore Klan costumes what they know of the history of the Klan...
...Hard to confine...
...The dread Schlafly is "an ERA opponent...
...On October 4, 1981, midway through the 11 a.m...
...What an inspiring homily for the children attending services at a liberated church: They now know that the way to handle ideas they don't like is to set them on fire...
...Does the pulse of the First Amendment beat more vigorously in these places than where the Yahoos are...
...And long past time, too...
...Long live democracy...
...Well, consider what happened when Eldridge Cleaver came to Madison, Wisconsin, last October to savor the exhilarating openness of dialogue at the University of Wisconsin...
...The uproar had not abated, and who knew what would happen at her formal hearing before the Student Publications Board...
...As reported by Frank P.L...
...John Chrysostom, the Hindu Code of Manu V, an anonymous Chinese author, and the Old Testament...
...The managing editor of The Daily Lobo, the University of New Mexico's student newspaper, claimed in an editorial that Scholastic Aptitude Test scores show minority students to be academically inferior...
...Down with communism...
...He had written an editorial that said that a gay student group should not have access to student-fee money to sponsor a Hallowe'en dance...
...I subscribe to most of the journalism reviews around the country, but I saw no offer of support to those two beleaguered student editors in New Mexico from professional journalists who invoke the First Amendment at almost any public opportunity...
...Most are probably deeply concerned with the savaging of the free press in Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala, South Africa, and other such places...
...Five student groups at Kent State are vigorously attempting to get the editor of the student newspaper fired...
...This is an intriguing document by people steeped in the traditions of academic freedom...
...School administrators might say the best approach is to have no costumes at all...
...Indeed, the two pyres—in North Dakota and in Baltimore—were witnessing to the same lack of faith in the free exchange of ideas...
...By the way, in the trial, one offer of proof that the school district had been guilty of discrimination was a photograph of four white boys wearing Klan costumes to that Hallowe'en assembly...
...Not Jerry Falwell's Baptist sanctuary in Lynchburg, Virginia, but rather the First Unitarian Church in Baltimore...
...It is protected under the First Amendment...
...After all, he had not only taken up with bad companions...
...Augustine, St...
...Both were in the same feminist group on campus...
...I saw no letters on behalf of Buckley's free-speech rights in any of the usual liberal forums for such concerns...
...The brave Student Publications Board temporarily suspended her, although the chairman of the journalism department had claimed the suspension was a violation of her First Amendment rights...
...Rather than rebut his facile misiterpreta-tion of what those scores actually show— that class, not race, affects the results— black students and their sympathizers invaded the newspaper's office...
...That's the thing about censorship, whether good liberals or bad companions engage in it...
...Cleaver's soul is no longer on ice...
...But if there were real danger of physical confrontation in the school when a student wears a Klan costume, is the school so powerless that it can't prevent a fight...
...That way, there'll be no danger of disruption...
...So much for Dorothy Day, were she still with us...
...he was an original bad companion...
...No institution of higher learning, he told us on a visit here, should allow to be heard on its campus any position that it regards as detrimental or 'untrue.' "Apparently," the committee went on, "error is to be refuted not by rational persuasion, but by censorship...
...There will be no more Klan costumes in that school, and so no more Klan costumes to stimulate class discussion...
...The Klan also figures in a dismaying case from Vancouver, Washington...
...To get black and white kids talking about what the Klan represents, in history—and right now...
...it's throbbing instead with a religious conviction that is currently connected financially, and presumably theologically, to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church...
...and his associates used to receive in Bull Conner's Birmingham...
...The editor says that university officials have assured him, however, that he is protected at Kent State by the First Amendment...
Vol. 47 • February 1983 • No. 2
