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University Administrators Bar Speakers
By Gwendolyn Bradley
Administrators at three universities canceled or postponed the speaking engagements of prominent liberals in the months leading up to last fall's elections. Officials at George Mason University and California State University-San Marcos canceled scheduled appearances by filmmaker Michael Moore, saying that paying Moore's $35,000 speaking fee was an inappropriate use of public money. In Virginia, conservative legislators had complained about the planned appearance at George Mason. In California, students raised money and brought Moore to a nearby off-campus location.
Conservative students and community members also protested Moore's appearances at other institutions, including the University of Minnesota and Utah Valley State College. In statements to the press, Moore noted that conservative speakers have appeared at the same institutions. At Utah Valley, president William Sederburg received 1,300 responses to the announcement that Moore had been invited to speak by the student government. Ninety percent of the responses were negative, Sederburg estimates, and of those, "two-thirds contained some degree of threat," such as threatening to reduce or stop making donations to the college, or to discourage students from enrolling at the college.
Sederburg, a former Republican state senator who disagrees with Moore's politics, expresses surprise at the volume and vitriolic tone of the responses. Despite the public outcry, Sederburg and the college's board of trustees supported the students' right to invite Moore. In a statement posted on the college Web site, the board said: "It is the proper role of academic institutions, and especially state institutions, to present different viewpoints for intellectual discussion. Board of Regents policy is explicit about protecting the academic community's right to 'invite and hear any person of their choosing.'" The administration did, however, require the students to invite a conservative speaker to provide a counterpoint to Moore.
The president of Florida Gulf Coast University postponed until after the presidential election an official invitation to Terry Tempest Williams, who had been scheduled to discuss with students her recent book, The Open Spaces of Democracy, on October 24. The book contains passages sharply critical of President George W. Bush's policies in this country and abroad. The university's president said that it would have been inappropriate to allow one-sided commentary on the eve of the election. Williams declined the president's invitation to speak on November 4, and instead addressed students in October, waiving her fee.
AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen wrote to the presidents of CSU-San Marcos and Florida Gulf Coast and George Mason universities, urging them to reconsider their decisions. "The AAUP has long held that an institution of higher learning should be free to invite or not invite whomever it wishes to speak on its campus," he wrote to George Mason's president. "Once an invitation has been extended, however, its withdrawal because of public displeasure with the speaker's views or status is inconsistent with the principle that a university is a place where all views can be heard and discussed."
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