October 16, 2006
Free Speech, and the Paranoid Style in American Politics Posted by Joshua Zeitz at 05:00 PM EST It’s a curious thing that John Steele Gordon professes so much concern over the state of free speech on America’s college campuses. This, from a man who just recently denigrated the critical analysis of works of art, be they paintings, novels, other texts, films or dramatic performances. It’s been a long time since Mr. Gordon was a student, but surely he knows that critical analysis is the core principle of a liberal arts education. Without it, we could just shutter up all of our humanities and social sciences departments, as well as many physical and natural science departments, and call it a day.
Despite his seeming disinterest in the core idea behind the liberal arts education, Mr. Gordon seems genuinely vexed about the campus free-speech issue. In his fantasy world, American conservatives are a beleaguered force, subject to the constant repression that left-wingers and liberals inflict on any person who dares utter a center-right opinion. Sure, conservatives currently control the federal judiciary, both houses of Congress, and the Presidency (and, with it, tens of thousands of powerful Executive Branch positions); of course, Fox News leads the other cable news networks by a mile in both ratings and advertising; yes, right-wing talk radio attracts tens of millions of listeners, while its liberal counterpart, Air America, has just filed for bankruptcy protection. But it’s conservatives who are really marginalized in the United States.
Mr. Gordon has changed the terms of this debate so many times that I can no longer count them on one hand. But now he insists that I muster up some evidence that left-wing speakers are also subject to thuggish abuse on college campuses. In his Fox News fantasy world, where the faith-based approach to life always trumps the reality-based approach, no such incidents exist. In the real world, they do.
The following tidbit is clipped from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 25, 2003: “Chris Hedges, the veteran New York Times war correspondent, was just warming to his subject in a commencement address at Rockford College in Illinois last Saturday when the catcalls and booing began. The ruckus got so loud that Rockford College President Paul Pribbenow took the microphone to remind the audience that ‘one of the wonders of a liberal arts college is its deeply held commitment to academic freedom and the decision to listen to each other’s opinions.’ But the moment Hedges resumed speaking, a woman shouted, ‘You’ve already ruined our graduation. Please don’t ruin it any more.’ Hedges continued gamely, only to have his microphone cut twice. He sped through the rest of the speech, finishing amid a chorus of boos, cheers, shouts and foghorn blasts.”
Hedge’s speech was deeply critical of George Bush and the war in Iraq.
Then there is Rep. Lacy Clay (D., Mo.), whom conservative students shouted down and threatened when he delivered a staunchly antiwar speech at a St. Louis-area college this spring. According to some reports, Clay had to be escorted off the stage for his own safety.
Or the episode at Hofstra University in 2004, when conservative students jeered and booed the novelist E. L. Doctorow, who incorporated antiwar themes in his commencement speech. The heckling prevented Doctorow from delivering his remarks, prompting the university’s president, Stuart Rabinowitz, to call on the crowd to cease and desist, and to allow Doctorow to complete his talk.
One might add that the nation’s most conservative institutions of higher learning don’t even allow liberal or left-wing figures to speak on their campuses, thus saving their students the trouble of heckling.
In the end analysis, there is no army of left-wing thugs trampling over the rights of conservative Americans, on college campuses or elsewhere. There is only a loud minority of college students, left, right, and center, behaving idiotically and out-shouting the vast majority who are truly fair-minded and curious. Such has been my experience as a college instructor, in any event.
Mr. Gordon’s fantasy world is eerily similar to that which Richard Hofstadter described in his famous collection of essays, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. It’s filled with a sense of permanent victimization and a fierce anti-intellectual strain (e.g., “I like my frogs live”). One can somewhat empathize with a John Bircher in 1962 who felt marginalized by the larger culture. But today’s conservatives are so remarkably well-entrenched that their cries of social disenfranchisement don’t ring as hollow as they ring hilarious.
(Moreover, to bring this all back to our AmericanHeritage.com family, Mr. Gordon is way too smart, too well-read, and too deft a writer to pull off the anti-intellectual game convincingly. I just don’t believe him.)
I eagerly await Mr. Gordon’s response, in which he’ll probably explain why it was perfectly acceptable and even patriotic to shout down Doctorow, Hedges, and Clay, and why, as a white male, a Christian, and a conservative, he feels marginalized.
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