Editorials
Chancellor Dirks Upholds a Berkeley Free Speech Tradition
U.C. Berkeley’s Chancellor Nicholas Dirks has been kind enough to spice up the imminent Free Speech Movement reunion which starts next week. You can get all the information about the innumerable talks, movies, panels, dinners and especially the new play about the FSM (by Joan Holden with music by Bruce Barthol and Daniel Savio, Mario’s son) here.
It’s a full plate of reminiscences and inspiration, but the part that the chancellor might enhance is the kickoff happy hour on Friday (for registered attendees only.) According to the published schedule: “the new(ish) Chancellor, Nicholas Dirks… will stop by for a few minutes.”
Why might that be big fun, if he’s not afraid to show up? Well, he’s been catching a fair amount of flack online and in the press since September 5. The focus is a smarmy memo he emailed that day, reprinted here in full:
Dear Campus Community,Well, no. Names that have come up in the discussion run the gamut from Rabelais to June Jordan. My personal fave among all the cited instances of powerful incivility is this one:
This Fall marks the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which made the right to free expression of ideas a signature issue for our campus, and indeed for universities around the world. Free speech is the cornerstone of our nation and society – which is precisely why the founders of the country made it the First Amendment to the Constitution. For a half century now, our University has been a symbol and embodiment of that ideal
As we honor this turning point in our history, it is important that we recognize the broader social context required in order for free speech to thrive. For free speech to have meaning it must not just be tolerated, it must also be heard, listened to, engaged and debated. Yet this is easier said than done, for the boundaries between protected and unprotected speech, between free speech and political advocacy, between the campus and the classroom, between debate and demagoguery, between freedom and responsibility, have never been fully settled. As a consequence, when issues are inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings, the commitment to free speech and expression can lead to division and divisiveness that undermine a community’s foundation. This fall, like every fall, there will be no shortage of issues to animate and engage us all. Our capacity to maintain that delicate balance between communal interests and free expression, between openness of thought and the requirements and disciplines of academic knowledge, will be tested anew.
Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin – the coin of open, democratic society.
Insofar as we wish to honor the ideal of Free Speech, therefore, we should do so by exercising it graciously. This is true not just of political speech on Sproul Plaza, but also in our everyday interactions with each other – in the classroom, in the office, and in the lab. Sincerely...Researching reaction to this pronouncement on the web has yielded a treasure trove of impassioned defenses of, yes, Free Speech, and a great variety of well-crafted explanations of just exactly how Dirks misses the point.
The favorite bête noire seems to be this paragraph:
Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin – the coin of open, democratic society.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.Strong stuff, definitely not courteous, not in the least respectful, is it? 25 extra points toward your final grade if you can identify the ungracious authors.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
Dirks’ email could be used as an example of bad writing in the classes we used to call disrespectfully Dumbbell English, if they still have those any more. The list of false dichotomies alone could provide two weeks of classroom analysis: ” boundaries between protected and unprotected speech, between free speech and political advocacy, between the campus and the classroom, between debate and demagoguery, between freedom and responsibility.”
What exactly does he mean by a boundary between free speech and political advocacy? What is political advocacy if not protected free speech? What could the boundary between the campus and the classroom signify? And so on.
But really, the whole thing is so juicy, it’s hard to choose the worst bits.
And another thread has been added to the discussion, as several critics have noted the suspicious coincidence of various recent appeals from civility from academic bureaucrats like Dirks and a firestorm which has arisen because the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign summarily discharged newly hired professor Steven Salaita for intemperate tweeting (on his personal account, on his own time during the summer) about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Here let it be noted that Salaita is the grandson of Palestinian refugees, but also that the language and tone of some of his tweets would not have been approved by the nuns at my convent school. For a full catalog of what he said and how he said it, see this post on the Mondoweiss blog.
(There’s controversy over whether Salaita was “fired” or never hired in the first place, because some commentators believe his appointment technically was not final until it was approved by the University’s board of trustees. My own analysis, from dim memories of what I learned in my contracts class thirty years ago in law school, is that he could sue the University for some sort of breach of contract, since duly authorized representatives of the university made him a bonafide offer which he accepted and acted on in good faith, unless their offer was clearly defined as conditional, a claim which I haven’t heard them make.)
The critics’ online analyses of what’s bad about the Dirks email, plus the extensive unravelling of the Salaita case, could be combined into a rhetoric textbook. Among them are many examples of fine exposition. Here’s a reading list of some of the best, in no particular order, and I urge you to click on every one of them if you’re a fan of free speech:
http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/policing-civility.html
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/reading-salaita-illinois-1#tweet1
http://blog.historians.org/2014/09/letter-to-university-of-illinois-chancellor-regarding-salaita/
http://www.chroniclecareers.com/article/Pleas-for-Civility-Meet/148715/
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/9106/uc-berkeleys-new-chancellor-endorses-the-falsehood
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/untangling-salaita-case
http://reclaimuc.blogspot.com/2014/09/from-free-speech-movement-to-reign-of.html
The last word should go to the Free Speech Movement, whose veterans have weighed in today in a letter which is a model of clarity and purpose:
Dear Chancellor Dirks,
The Free Speech Movement Archives and the Organizing Committee for the FSM 50th Anniversary would like to thank you for generously supporting our efforts to commemorate the Free Speech Movement, and to keep the memory of those events alive. We look forward to seeing you at our reunion. In the spirit of civil discourse, we would like to bring to your attention some history regarding the question of what the Free Speech Movement was about, what we won, and what it means for the campus today. In your letter to the campus community of Friday, September 5th you said, “… the boundaries between protected speech and unprotected speech, between free speech and political advocacy, between debate and demagoguery… have never been fully settled.” In fact, these questions were fully settled. On December 8th, 1964, the Berkeley Academic Senate adopted a resolution stating that: “the content of speech or advocacy shall not be restricted by the University.” This resolution was then reinforced by the Regent’s resolution of December 14th which stated: “Henceforth University regulations will not go beyond the purview of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” In celebrating the half century that the UC Berkeley campus has been “a symbol and embodiment” of the idea of free speech, you are proudly and properly referring to the outcome produced by the Free Speech Movement in the fall of 1964. Your statement seems to miss the central point. The struggle of the FSM was all about the right to political advocacy on campus. The UC Administration of that time insisted it would not permit speech on campus advocating student participation in off-campus demonstrations that might lead to arrests. The African-American civil rights movement was then at its height and students rejected these restrictions. This attempt to restrict our rights produced the Free Speech Movement.And a footnote should go to Carol Denney, who is fond of saying that the reason U.C. Berkeley is the traditional home of the Free Speech Movement is that the Cal bureaucracy has so often tried to suppress speech it doesn’t like. From that point of view, we should all thank Chancellor Nicolas Dirks for upholding (so far only in concept) a proud Berkeley tradition.It is precisely the right to speech on subjects that are divisive, controversial, and capable of arousing strong feelings that we fought for in 1964. . . From the roof of the police car blockaded in Sproul Plaza, we heard a song written by a UC graduate (BA, MA, PhD) Malvina Reynolds that summed up our feelings toward the UC Administration and others who were then trying to reign-in the civil rights movement. The song was titled, “It Isn’t Nice”.
“It isn’t nice to block the doorways, it isn’t nice to go to jail!/
There are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail./
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice, you told us once you told us twice/
But if that’s freedom’s price, we don’t mind.”
We note that the charge of “uncivility” was used by Chancellor Phyllis Wise of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, to justify the discharge of Professor Steve Salaita. For this reason, many now read the call for civility in your letter as a potential threat.
We understand you have issued no regulation nor taken any steps to restrict political advocacy or “uncivil” speech on the Berkeley Campus. Nonetheless, we are concerned that your call for “civility” may have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech by Berkeley faculty and students. We therefore encourage you to clarify the intent of your letter while continuing to uphold and affirm the proud traditions established on the Berkeley Campus fifty years ago.
Sincerely yours,
The Board of Directors of the Free Speech Movement Archives, and the50th Anniversary Organizing Committee:
Lee Felsenstein, Gar Smith, Anita Medal, Bettina Aptheker, Susan Druding, Barbara Garson, Jackie Goldberg, Lynne Hollander Savio, Jack Radey, Barbara Stack, Steve Lustig, Karen McLellan, Mike Smith, Dana MacDermott, Jack Weinberg, Margy Wilkinson
