To the Editor:
I WAS IN COMPLETE agreement with 10 of the 27 contributors to your symposium (“Is Free Speech Under Threat in the United States?” July/August). I found the others to be, at the very least, misguided. The contributions of the two university presidents, Lee C. Bollinger of Columbia and Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago, were the most inaccurate. Their preening about the lack of problems on their campuses was off-putting and not credible. Particularly irksome was Mr. Bollinger’s bravado. Nicholas Lemann of Columbia University’s School of Journalism also trumpeted the supposed free speech on Columbia’s campus. He castigated President Trump for demonizing his enemies and sarcastically compared him unfavorably to Erdogan and Putin. He noted that outside Trump’s campaign rallies, many local police mishandled “bumptious protestors” who opposed him and his supporters. In truth, these “protestors” were violent rioters. Another Columbia professor, John McWhorter, deemed college campuses “the least racist spaces on the planet.” Tell that to whites and Asians—particularly males—who have sought positions in academia over the past several decades. Jonathan Rauch declared that free speech is always under attack, but “the really amazing thing is . . . how well we are doing.” This is wrong. No one today even mentions the advice of Eric Hoffer, “a working-class intellectual,” on how to handle the rioting students in the Sixties: police action to enforce the rule of law. It is still appropriate.
Stephen Karetzky
San Francisco, California
To the Editor:
I READ AND ENJOYED all 27 thoughtful contributions to your symposium on free speech. I was especially impressed by John McWhorter’s assessment that free speech does not necessarily include advocacy of slavery, genocide, and other evils, even as he skewers “modern social-justice warriors” for their efforts to limit free speech. He’s right, of course, but the question is why. The short and correct answer is that free countries and free speech go together. Our country had much progress to make before it could claim that its practices matched its principles, but the Founders’ bold assertions of equality, freedom, and government by consent was the necessary condition. However prudently tolerant we might be of doctrines at odds with our republican principles, when our country is actually threatened by the triumph of our enemies, a line must be drawn, not only in the sand but in our own minds. Public opinion can always do what law often does imperfectly: discredit the enemies of both free government and free speech.
Richard H. Reeb Jr.
Helendale, California
To the Editor:
LEE C. BOLLINGER’S contribution to this symposium would be rolling-on-the-floor funny were it not so serious. Does the 19th president of Columbia University really mean to tell us political discourse is alive and well and meeting the “standards of the academy” today? What standards? Ann Coulter’s talk gets cancelled. Ben Shapiro has to appear on campuses with armed guards, and another of your contributors—Ayaan Hirsi Ali—gets turned away from Brandeis. Everyone knows that the administrations of most of today’s college campuses are failing. The biggest outrage in universities is that people like Mr. Bollinger are letting this happen. And neither they nor the students who perpetrate these crimes face any consequences. If nothing is done, we surely face a bleak future.
George Townsend
Linden, New Jersey
