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State of the Profession: Academic Freedom Grade Report
By Martin D. Snyder
Free speech, whether in or out of the classroom, can offend. It can hurt as well. Indeed, many in the Anchorage community, especially Native women, were outraged and humiliated by the publication last spring of the poem "Indian Girls" by University of Alaska faculty member Linda McCarriston. The poem, an indictment of Native American men who abuse young girls, was decried for its alleged insensitivity and lack of understanding. Some accused the author of perpetuating ethnic stereotypes, others of engaging in racist hate speech.
Whatever the merits of such criticisms, there can be no doubt that the indignation of Native women was real, and that their pride and self-esteem were badly damaged. In calling for the university to apologize and to sanction McCarriston, however, they endangered the author's freedom of speech.
In response to protests from the campus and Anchorage communities, university administrators issued equivocating statements, suggesting, on the one hand, that McCarriston's academic freedom needed to be protected and, on the other, that something was amiss that called for investigation. Far from settling the affair, administrative doublespeak so aggravated tensions that the president of the University of Alaska, Mark R. Hamilton, needed to intervene. In a decidedly unambiguous memorandum, Hamilton called on administrators to be clear in their defense of free speech. "Attempts to assuage anger or to demonstrate concern by qualifying our support for free speech serve to cloud what must be a clear message. Noting that, for example, 'the university supports the right of free speech, but I have asked Dean X or Provost Y to investigate the circumstances,' is unacceptable."
Hamilton's vigorous defense of academic free speech is conspicuously unusual these days. Consider a simultaneous controversy at Florida Atlantic University. A campus performance of Terrence McNally's controversial play Corpus Christi prompted some state legislators to threaten retaliation against the school's budget. The play, which opened on Broadway in 1998, reenacts the story of Jesus in modern Texas. In McNally's version, a Christ-like homosexual character named Joshua is killed by a gang of gay bashers. The Catholic League for Religious Civil Rights alerted Florida legislators to the impending production.
Reacting to legislators' demands for an explanation, FAU's president, Anthony Catanese, told the offended legislators, who had neither seen nor read the play, that he shared their concerns but was unable to cancel the production. In a prepared statement, Catanese said, "The faculty of the theater department made a decision to stage this play under the principles of academic freedom that have been a bulwark of higher education in the United States for many decades." He added, however, that he would not go to see the play (a personal, not an academic, decision) and would advise others who might be offended to avoid it. Finally, he announced that he would convene a committee of "senior scholars" to review policies and procedures for such controversial events "without compromising free expression on campus." According to Catanese, the appointment of a review committee "should be in no way interpreted as wimping out." The president of the Catholic League urged the legislature to watch the committee's actions closely.
Catanese's handling of the FAU controversy stands in marked contrast to that of his Alaskan colleague. In fact, Catanese attempted to perform the very sort of verbal legerdemain that Hamilton ordered his administrators to eschew. Most critically, he left ambiguous his willingness to resist external pressure groups and the use of political position to enforce censorship.
Controversies such as those in Alaska and Florida are undoubtedly painful. The temptation in such situations to equivocate and to placate is great. Yet, the greater good always derives from the unambiguous defense of free speech. There is no tenet more central to the principles and policies of the AAUP. Of course, there may be unexpected, collateral benefits to the exercise of free speech. As one Anchorage resident suggested, there is reason for comfort in the fact that the controversy over "Indian Girls" caused the community "to talk about poetry as if it really matters in our lives. When was the last time anyone can remember that happening?" When indeed?
Martin Snyder is AAUP program director for academic freedom and governance.
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