September-October 2007

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Jimmy Carter, Palestinian Art, and Brandeis

Brandeis has been wrestling with how to respond  when expression is offensive but not hateful.

By Paul Jankowski

The principle, to my mind, is simple enough—to allow expression on campus when it is not hateful or defamatory or threatening, and to encourage it when it is civil and open-minded and of probable interest to some members of the community. The devil lies in the practice. What is the proper response to expression that falls short of hate but provokes offense among some or distaste among many? What right of regard, in such circumstances, do faculty and administrators have over student expression on campus? When does “advice” or “guidance” become in effect a form of gatekeeping and censorship? Is the right to speech outside the classroom substantially broader than inside, and if so is it akin to that beyond the campus, in the republic?

Campuses across the country now commonly face such questions, and Brandeis University is no exception. These questions can become particularly acute at Brandeis when feelings run high about the Middle East, because the university, although nonsectarian and open to all, has enjoyed strong ties to the Jewish community since its founding in 1948. But the Middle East has no monopoly over controversy at Brandeis. Here, as elsewhere, openness to a wide range of views on campus makes it almost inevitable that at some point, for some reason, with some justification, expression will meet with an angry response. Lengthy periods of calm can alternate with sudden eruptions of anger, when individual members of the community—students, faculty, or administrators—express outrage at the content of an exhibit, or the views of a visitor, or the tenor of a publication. If my own experience is anything to go by, we are learning to deal with these moments, learning to protect the right to free speech while ensuring a reasonably tranquil climate for open inquiry and controversy, and what we have learned so far is worth repeating and remembering, for on one point we all agree: these moments will recur.

Learning from Controversy

Broad basic rules have long existed. Different university regulations governing speech make both faculty and students responsible for maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect and for avoiding certain kinds of derogatory expression. The purpose is to favor the search for truth and to expand human knowledge, not to instill any kind of uniformity. On occasions in the past the university has not hesitated to enforce such restrictions—when, for example, the student newspaper published a racial slur in a sports column, or when a student radio station made disparaging allusions to Asian women. They had crossed the line.

But more commonly, I find, the quandary lies in identifying the line itself. Unequivocal cases, inviting a simple invocation of the written regulation, are rare and perhaps becoming rarer. More often, offense is taken in the absence of any clear-cut indication that the rules have been violated. Then students, faculty, and administrators start learning.

And this learning, unlike that in the classroom, does not always spring from the lips of the faculty. Recently, and very auspiciously, students have begun taking action themselves. When a student humor magazine published a spurious advertisement with derogatory depictions of African Americans, much discussion followed within the student body and inside student organizations. The editors resigned and apologized for the ad in response to an outcry from the student body. By general but not unanimous agreement, a line had been drawn. The sense of offense had been legitimate.

Offense is easily taken, in any quarter. The university has recently developed ties with a Palestinian university, appointed a Palestinian scholar to the university’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies, and invited the crown prince of Jordan to speak at commencement exercises. Some—among alumni, friends of the university, faculty, and students, mostly in the name of the university’s indirect connection to Israel—have objected, sometimes vehemently. Conversely, when the administration concluded that drawings in an exhibition last spring, Voices of Palestine, depicted Israel in a manner that urgently called for explanatory background information, and removed the exhibit when it felt the organizer did not comply, others from within the same constituencies objected, sometimes just as vehemently, in the name of free speech.

The lesson I learned: the taking of offense often expresses a legitimate right to differ, one that must be protected but that no group monopolizes, and that cannot alone become a valid ground for silencing speech or expression.

But when does the offensive cross the line into the hateful and invite legitimate suppression?

The controversy over the Voices of Palestine exhibition inevitably raised this issue. Some of the drawings made by Palestinian adolescents—such as one showing a snake coiled as the Star of David, or another showing the Palestinian flag in the shape of the state of Israel—could at first glance be deemed hateful by a reasonable observer. In the end, after much discussion, the committee appointed by the administration to examine the entire question concluded differently. But, more importantly, it drew two lessons in the process.

The lesson I learned: the hateful quality of an expression derives in large measure from the manner or context in which it is presented. Uttered or portrayed on its own, without explanation or attribution, it can indeed take on hateful and menacing dimensions. Presented as part of a study or an exhibition, it becomes an object of study rather than an act of hostility: an exhibition about anti-Semitism is not in itself anti-Semitic, as long as the exhibitor places the hateful material in its original context.

The lesson I learned: these are gray areas more often than black-and-white ones. They require judgments made by objective and rational members of the community whenever possible. Their objectivity and their rationality lie not in indifference to the matter of debate or dissension, but rather in silencing such views for the occasion and in asking solely whether the views expressed cross the line into menacing or defamatory or hateful speech. Such questions have long preoccupied faculty and administrators, and both the faculty senate and the Office of Student Life continue to play their part, even while exercising restraint in the interest of free speech and academic freedom alike. But controversies relating to speech and expression have lately arisen so frequently that Brandeis has created an Advisory Committee on Campus Events solely to consider them. Made up of representatives from the faculty, the administration, and the student body, the committee exists not to regulate in any way but to advise and provide counsel—about whether, for example, an expression has crossed the line into hate, or about whether a critic has been able to express a sense of “offense.”

High-Profile Speakers

The last consideration is still the subject of discussion. Exactly what rights do critics have? In January, former president Jimmy Carter visited Brandeis to talk about his book Palestine: Peace No  Apartheid, which sharply criticizes many of Israel’s policies in the occupied territories. Some objected, and invited a critic of Carter, Alan Dershowitz, to speak in the same room thirty minutes after the former president had left. In the eyes of some, the critics were exercising a right to free speech; in the eyes of others, they had transformed an event in a way its original organizers had never intended, and so infringed the others’ own right to speech. The question is still open, but it is exactly the sort that the university and its new advisory committee may expect to confront in the months and years to come.

By contrast, the university has proposed some procedural considerations to help define a “major event” and ways of organizing it. Carter’s visit, while a success in every way when it happened, had been organized in haste, and some lapses in communications between the faculty members who initiated the event and the administration that organized and financed it yielded yet another lesson. High-profile events of this sort, desirable as they are, hide procedural pitfalls, and one key to their success is foresight. Are the organizers expecting the president of the university to attend? Are significant costs involved? Will unusual security measures be needed? In encouraging such events, the university has also issued guidelines to plan them.

And it has encouraged such events. It has invited presidential candidates, among others, to visit the campus next fall to talk about the Middle East. Not that students or faculty need any encouragement: the flow of controversy and debate shows no sign of ebbing. Controversial speakers have come and gone in reasonable tranquility during the spring semester of 2007. Perhaps careful planning and innovations such as the Advisory Committee on Campus Events and  the administration’s guidelines have done something to marry controversy to civility. For my part, however, I have seen too much to settle into any premature sense of complacency, and to forget the words attributed to Michelangelo: Ancora imparo (“I am still learning”).

Paul Jankowski is Ray Ginger Professor of History and chair of the history department at Brandeis University.

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