Quick Takes: Horowitz Disrupted at Emory, Deal in Works on ‘Fighting Sioux’ Name, Randolph Eliminates 5 Departments, International Rankings Questioned, N.J. Colleges Criticized, NCAA Punishes Ark., Court Win for Chapman, Deadlines Extended for Fire Region

Let him speak

kgotthardt, the last thing I want is another Horowitz (or Churchill or any of that ilk) debate however... I always enjoy your comments and am surprised at this one, which is so unlike your normal arguments in favor of free speech.

I am certainly no fan of Horowitz but I am even less of a fan of shouting a speaker — ANY speaker — down before that speaker can talk. It is not generally rude, it is almost ALWAYS rude, and immature and counterproductive and, well, just plain wrong.

You stated that at least he was invited but what good is an invitation if the school always people to shout down Tutu, or Horowitz or our Iranian friend? If the person speaks nonsense like the Iranian president, then good! Expose him. If he talks sense, then good also, we all learn that way. I know that you agree with me that free speach is not just for those whose views you share.

I feel very strongly that Univerisities should be places where views can be aired civily. What appears to have taken place at Emory is more suitable for Jerry Springer.

Perhaps you are right and a howowitz should have allowed responses but that should have been worked out before his visit — and that rule should not be applied just to him. Once invited, let all speakers speak to the end of their time allotment.

Right now Horowitz didn’t speak and probably ended winning this PR battle. Our Iranian friend spoke and looked like a fool.

stm60, at 7:50 am EDT on October 26, 2007

If the Nazi shoe fits....

Horowitz should not be surprised. After all, light disrupts darkness every morning.

It always amazes me how this racist bigot slanders, baits, and provokes decent people and then goes to the press with big brown tear-filled eyes, whining, “Why do they hate me?” Only an idiot keeps provoking people over and over again and then expresses feigned surprise when he’s slapped down...or an arch manipulator.

It’s all part of the show folk, its all part of the show. No doubt he’s writing another chapter of his version of Mein Kampf about his persecution by “evil liberals” after every pie in the face he so richly deserves.

But the best way to deal with this clown (and think clown as in Todd McFarlane’s “Spawn” a a minion of evil powers, as opposed to Bozo, who deserves no such association) is to laugh at his stupidity and walk away. Let him address his inbred, intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt, microscopic community unmolested. Then he will go home wondering what he did wrong. Silence works wonders.

He lives to bait you. Its what they pay him to do. Want him to go away? Ignore him!

There’s an old story about Martin Luther and the Devil. Once in the early morning before down, Luther was awakened by a loud persistent knocking at his door. Ho got up half asleep, opened the door, and there was the devil. “Oh. It’s only you.” Martin grumbled. He then closed the door in the devil’s face and went back to bed. Horowitz and his entourage of right wing has-beens really have nothing without the response of activists. Every mass manipulator knows this. Wake up academics! This methodology goes back to the 1920’s!

Sometimes, beyond a general answer or a well written letter to the editor in the university paper and/or a warning to certain students who display a zeal for his kind of racist bigotry and break school rules is sufficient. Activists need to learn that Horowitz’s highly paid position will be eliminated when no one shows up to hear his slander-fest except his clacks. Horowitz feeds on activists. They provide him with a platform, his paycheck, and a justification.

You have the power. Use it. His base will shrink more and more every day if you don’t feed the troll.

Diogenes, Some where, at 8:40 am EDT on October 26, 2007

“Fighting Sioux”

Many more people than just Native American rights groups believe that it is time to get rid of racist college mascots.

MD, at 9:30 am EDT on October 26, 2007

Mr Wilson Is Incorrect

I recommend to all here John K. Wilson’s book The Myth of Political Correctness. But I think he is incorrect in the post he makes above.

There are times when speakers should be forcibly stopped, certainly. There’s no absolute right to free speech.

But nobody forcibly stopped Horowitz.

Furthermore, Mr Wilson’s reference to “academic freedom” is misplaced. Horowitz is not a professor teaching a class, and so has no claim to “academic freedom” at all.

Most serious, though, is Mr Wilson’s McCarthyite red-baiting. Terms like “hard-core leftists” and “leftist idiots” are simply name-calling.

Suppose someone were to refer to Mr Wilson as a “hard-core liberal idiot” — what would that add to our understanding of his position?

Nothing? Then why does he do this?

Mr Wilson has fallen prey to Cold-War anticommunist thinking. He should be ashamed of himself.

First, because no one, “hard-core leftist” or otherwise, deprived Horowitz of any “right” he has.

Second, because “hard-core leftists” have done more good during the last century and a half than people of any other political inclination, and by a huge margin!

“Hard-core liberals", to say nothing of “hard-core conservatives", are responsible for, among other things, the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

I urge Mr Wilson to rethink his position on these matters.

Grover Furr, at 9:45 am EDT on October 26, 2007

Let Horowitz Speak?

John Wilson,

Arrest the protesters? Ok, they may have shown a little immaturity in just heckling and yelling instead of doing something a little more constructive (like fill the audience and then all turn their backs while he speaks, leaving him with no one to listen) but to arrest someone for heckling and yelling? No, that would be both wrong, illegal (free speech actually goes two ways), and about as counterproductive as just arresting Horowitz because he’s a bad person who says hateful, evil, disappointing things (as much as most people would be in favor of it).

mkr, at 10:15 am EDT on October 26, 2007

If you think Horowitz or anyone else is wrong let them speak. Let them put thier ideas out there. Challange them on ideas and facts. Don’t scream at them and shut them up. The only reason not to let someone you disagree with speak is because they might be correct.

The Seminoles in south Florida think they are being paid a tribute by FSU. Perhaps they are right.

Wesley, the cure is always more free speech, at 12:50 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

Another quote from Emory Wheel

Grover Furr claims that Horowitz was not denied the right to speak at Emory and quotes a report by Salvador Rizzo of the event in the newspaper Emory Wheel.

And yet, the very first paragraph of Rizzo’s report reads, “Conservative commentator David Horowitz was forced to cut short his speech on ‘Islamo-Fascism’ in the face of repeated interruptions, heckling and catcalls from some audience members in a packed lecture room at White Hall on Wednesday.” If Furr wants to cite Rizzo’s report, fine, but it is disingenuous to do it so selectively.

Jack Olson, at 12:55 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

There is a problem

I read the linked articles concerning the Horowitz talk at Emory and I have read the comments concerning this event on Insidehighered.com and frankly there is a real problem here.

There is no absolute right to silence people by screaming and shouting. If you do that in a theater a concert hall or a classroom you get removed. It is amazing to me that there are people writing in who essentially claim a right to silence people with whom they disagree.

What is in some ways more distressing is that people seem to think the appropriate response is to fill the audience and turn around to show disrespect. Without even listening to what Horowitz has to say, they feel that it is essential to register their condemnation.

In the first place he is talking about subjects which while they may admit of different interpretations, there are events that are matters of fact. There is a conflict in the world between extremists like al qaeda and turning one’s back on a discussion of the conflict isn’t going to make it go away.

Even if you think that American foreign policy is the root cause of the resentment that fuels the conflict it should be clear that it is reasonable for someone to think otherwise.

If you disagree with Horowitz and wish to pursuade others to do likewise it seems incumbent upon you to be clear about what he is saying. Much of the criticism of Horowitz is a lot of ad hominem invective without actually addressing his arguments. And if there is any place where the appropriate form of disagreement is through reasoned argument it is at a university.

It is reasonable for people with unpopular causes to claim the right to be heard. It is irrational for them to demand the right to silence others.

Jonathan Cohen, Professor of Mathematics at DePaul University, at 1:00 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

On the Right to Shout Down Others

Jonathan Cohen hits the nail right on the head. For several decades, leftists have been arguing simultaneously that, since they are right, they should have the right to silence others, while others, being wrong, should never be able to silence them. This mental slight-of-hand allows them to express outrage when people try to control the most out-of-control, fraudulent members of their clique (think Ward Churchill), while nodding approvingly when Horowitz is shouted down.

Professor Cohen is so eminently reasonable in what he says that it is difficult to imagine anyone disagreeing. But then, we have abundant evidence right here that many members of our academy are far from reasonable. And it is *their* total lack of respect for anyone but themselves that has the academy in such deep trouble.

My university’s student-controlled Speaker’s Committee is paying Valerie Plame a huge sum to come here and promote her book next week. Opinions on Plame vary. I see her as a blatant opportunist, and her husband as a rather slimy fellow, given to obvious falsehoods. Others see them as heroes. I can guarantee you that, should a team of Young Republicans show up next week and drown out Valerie, you would hear Diogenes and others voicing deep concern and outrage. Subtle distinctions about who is an academic (and therefore entitled to academic freedom) would disappear as if by magic. What amazes me is that leftists actually think people cannot see through this.

Stubbornly Rational, at 3:31 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

Defending Myself, and Horowitz

I should clarify some things I wrote. First, the “arrest” part I had talked about would only happen if someone refused to stop heckling and then refused to leave (see below). Second, my critique of “hard-core leftists” who heckle is accurate. They were leftists. I certainly am not condemning all leftists (most of whom disagree with shouting down speakers), just as I am not condemning all conservatives when I use the term to criticize Horowitz and his repressive allies.

Grover Furr is right to recommend my book (and its sequel, Patriotic Correctness, due out in December). Unfortunately, he’s wrong about everything else: I cannot imagine a case where “speakers should be forcibly stopped.” Academic freedom means freedom throughout a college, not merely the freedom of professors when teaching. Calling left-wingers left-wing is not “anticommunist” thinking. Describing people as left-wing or right-wing is not name-calling. And saying that “there’s no absolute right to free speech” can be used to justify any suppression of free speech. Free speech must include the silencing of heckling that has the design and effect of stopping free speech.

Sometimes there’s a fine line between protected heckling and illegitimately shouting down a speaker. Obviously, a certain amount of heckling must be tolerated as part of free speech (even if it’s annoying). However, if the heckling is so persistent that it’s interrupting every sentence and making it essentially impossible to hear, then it can be prohibited. Note that heckling refers only to interrupting a speaker with loudly spoken words that compete with the speaker’s words; responses such as cheering, applauding, booing, or hissing are fully permissable (unless it goes on loudly for a while and is designed to stop the speech). Also, shouting out statements or questions is perfectly legitimate (albeit annoying) during times when a speaker is not trying to speak: e.g., during an introduction or ending of a speech, or when a speaker is being cheered for a statement, or when a speaker encourages heckling.

The procedure a campus should follow is this: 1) a general warning to the audience not to heckle; 2) specific warnings to individuals not to heckle, ideally an initial warning and then a final warning; 3) removal of an individual who refuses to stop heckling; 4) arrest of an individual who refuses to be removed.

Unfortunately, I don’t think any college has this level of detail in its policies, which means that

I am troubled by the fact that an Emory administrator ordered everyone to sit down, which caused the final protest that led to the event to end. I believe that standing up during a speech falls into the category of annoying, but not punishable (unless it’s a movie or something where full visual access is essential). Standing up during a speech is rude, but it’s not disruptive in the way that constant heckling is. You can hear a speaker perfectly well even if someone is standing. I was very upset a few years ago when the University of Chicago removed a student from a Horowitz lecture for the crime of “disruption” by standing. The only exception I can see is that if someone sitting behind a standing protester objects, the standee should move to somewhere else in the room.

The proper response of Emory officials now should be to invite Horowitz to return for another speech, at the university’s expense.

John K. Wilson, collegefreedom.org, at 4:40 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

Universities in Decline

Although John Wilson suggests that “the proper response of Emory officials now should be to invite Horowitz to return for another speech, at the university’s expense,” we can be absolutely sure that such will not occur.

As an outsider and a non-academic, Horowitz has demonstrated that political advocacy and a social reformist agenda have transcended academic scholarship in many universities. That he dares to expose as intellectual degeneration what many professors consider their scared duty should be obvious by now.

Anyone who doubts the accuracy of Horowitz’s criticisms should simply re-read this article and the comments it has generated.,

Chuck, at 11:10 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

Chapman and the guilds

The self-regulation of higher ed by guilds made up of their own top administrators — this is the reason the FCA claims failed.

HEA 1992 put the guilds in the drivers seat, and even when, as in this case, faculty see federal fraud, all that WASC has to do it point to Chapman’s accreditation status to end discussion.

Further attesting to this high-level of self-regulation (which Spellings attempted to modify this past summer, but was stopped) is the fact that the guilds are given responsibility for determining PPA compliance, AND NO ONE ELSE — even when WASC is wrong.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever shown that HE accreditation is an effective and reliable process of institutional assessment — in fact, the studies that I have seen suggest quite the reverse.

That the American people allow such a self-serving system to leak their tax dollars so copiously all over the institutions (short classes, even skipped classes, are ubiquitous) attests, I think, to their stupidity. They deserve the system we now have, just like they deserve the politicians that they elect.

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 11:15 pm EDT on October 26, 2007

Political Correctness

The idea that “allowing” Ann Coulter, George W. Bush, David Horowitz, et al to speak on American campuses would raise the intellectual level of the debate is pretty funny when you think about it. Of course these well-known intellectuals should be allowed to speak, but we ought to remember that they seek to impose their own “political correctness” on the academic community that Jack Olsen is so intent on protecting from immature students and their “political correctness.”

Ann Arc, at 12:20 am EDT on October 28, 2007

A question for Ann..

Ms. Arc, is this the same George Bush you want to have run my medical system?

MedU, at 10:45 am EDT on October 28, 2007