By Ron Feemster
Who sets free-speech
policy at the City College of
New York? Is it Matthew
Goldstein, chancellor of the City University
of New York? The CUNY board of
trustees? Or the New York Post, a scrappy
tabloid owned by the conservative
Australian media baron, Rupert Murdoch?
During the weeks after a terrorism teach-in
at CCNY last October, students, faculty
and free speech advocates could never
be sure.
The City College teach-in, attended by
200 students and faculty, was one of hundreds
around the country last fall, where
university communities grappled with terrorism,
Islamic fundamentalism and the
direction of U.S. foreign policy. In New
York City alone, during the weeks between
the September 11 attacks and the onset of
bombing in Afghanistan, more than a
dozen similar events were held, including
forums at Columbia University, NYU and
New School University, as well as other
City University campuses.
Most of these events blended personal
testimony from rescue workers and survivors
with cram courses on Wahabi fundamentalism,
Pashtun warlords and Afghan
history. At CCNY, a student recounted his
experience as an emergency medical technician
at "ground zero." A Muslim woman
shared her fear and horror at the attacks.
Other speakers harped on the role of the
United States in arming the Afghan rebels
who battled Soviet invaders in the 1980s
and then, after U.S. aid was withdrawn,
became part of terrorist forces, including
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. Similar
political themes sounded at Columbia and
Hunter College, a CUNY campus.
The New York Post stitched the nowfamiliar
idea that U.S. military policy
contributed to the growth of Al Qaeda into
an attack on City College, portraying the
teach-in as an anti-American "hatefest" at
which professors "blamed" the United
States for the terrorist attacks. Although
the news story acknowledged that some
participants defended American policies,
the paper as a whole lashed out at the
school.
Under the headline "Once-Proud Campus
a Breeding Ground for Idiots," columnist
Andrea Peyser called CCNY professors
"too blind, stupid or intellectually
dishonest to tell the difference between the
divisive war in Vietnam and the coming
war against terrorism that's uniting Americans."
The following day, in an editorial, the
paper retracted its call for increased public
funding for CUNY.
At noon on October 3, with the Post's
criticism still fresh on the newsstand,
CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein delivered
a speech to the Center for Educational
Innovation and Public Education
Association at the Harvard Club in midtown
Manhattan. In remarks that he later
lifted from his talk and released as an official
statement on the teach-in, Goldstein
took the CCNY speakers to task. His
words echoed Peyser's column.
"I have no sympathy for the voices of
those who seek to justify or make lame
excuses for the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon with arguments
based on ideological or historical circumstances,"
Goldstein said. Two paragraphs
later, the chancellor offered a lukewarm
defense of free speech: "One of the challenges
now before us is to maintain our
determination, resolve and solidarity without
compromising the free exchange of
ideas." The CUNY Board of Trustees,
which had originally considered a stronger
statement branding the event "seditious,"
adopted Goldstein's statement as a resolution
at the October 22 board meeting.
On campus, Goldstein's remarks—and
the trustees' endorsement of them—were
widely regarded as betrayal. "It's one thing
for the Post to distort the event and attack
it," said Steve London, vice president of
professional staff council, the union that
sponsored the teach-in. "But it is very disappointing
that the chancellor's views
would be shaped by disinformation and
distortion."
Peyser says her take on the event was
anything but a distortion: "There were
other voices," she said. "But the ones who
were not with the program got shouted
down."The columnist said she got a thankyou
call from an army reservist who left in
disgust when he realized his call for a
strong military response to the attacks
would not be heard.
Many on campus who believe that the
chancellor bought the Post's spin on the
teach-in also think that the Post picked on
CCNY instead of wealthier private institutions
like Columbia or NYU. "The New
York Post was targeting a working-class
college with a high proportion of minorities,"
London said. "The panelists included
people who supported and who opposed
military action.This was just an attempt to
question the patriotism of the working
class."
As the academic home of Leonard Jeffries,
a black social scientist who taught that
intelligence is determined in part by the
amount of melanin in a person's skin,
CCNY has been an easy target for the Post
in the past. And one can never underestimate
the tabloid's love of a shocking
expression. Less than two weeks earlier, in
a column on "America-bashing," Peyser
called CNN correspondent
Christiane
Amanpour a "war
slut." Rupert Murdoch
apologized personally
after Amanpour
complained.
Did the CUNY
chancellor allow the
media—specifically
the Post—to set his
agenda? Finding out
is not easy. Goldstein
declined repeated invitations
to be interviewed
for this article.
His staff claims that
he spoke with people
on the CCNY campus
before his
remarks, but declined
to say whom. London
knows of no organizers
or participants in the teach-in who
spoke with the chancellor before he issued
his statement. "The chancellor's schedule
and contacts are private," said Michael
Arena,a CUNY spokesman.
Two months after the teach-in, the
CUNY media relations department was
sending reporters three "quotes" from participants
at the event, such as, "We have to
redefine terrorism to include what the U.S.
government does." Unfortunately, the news
release contains no attribution for these
remarks, and no clue about who reported
them. Nor was Goldstein's staff saying
when he became aware of these remarks.
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City University Chancellor Matthew
Goldstein criticized faculty members who “make lame excuses for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” |
"The chancellor was ill-informed," said
Gary Benenson, an engineering professor
and union chapter chair who helped
organize the event. "The leaders of an
academic institution ought to explore the
issues before they make public statements.
As a result of the Post article and the
statements of the chancellor and trustees,
five people got death threats. I think the
chancellor was complicit in that."
Among the professors who got threatening
calls and e-mail was Walter Daum,
who describes himself as the "resident
revolutionary of the math department."He
thinks the Post—and the chancellor—just
missed the point. "I don't know anyone
who wasn't horrified and didn't condemn
the attacks," he said. "At the same time I
felt the U.S. government was in the wrong
on many policy issues.A university teach-in
ought to be the proper place to say that."
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| City College math professor Walter Daum received
threatening calls and e-mails after opposing U.S. policy at a campus teach-in. |
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The Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education agrees with Daum. But as freespeech
advocates, they are quick to defend
the newspaper's right to denounce the
teach-in. "I applaud all voices, whether
attacking or praising," said Thor L.
Halvorssen, executive director of FIRE. In
the next breath, he blasted Goldstein for
"gutless careerism" and "responding to
whichever way the wind blows hardest. If
we used political expediency as a criterion,"
he said, "we would be banning any
and all speech."
Halvorssen, whose organization
receives funds from sources as diverse as
the American Civil Liberties Union and
the Heritage Foundation, said that during
the 1990s, the most frequent victims of
anti-free speech movements have been
organizations on the religious right. Since
September 11, the pendulum has begun to
swing back to the left.
What Halvorssen objects to in the
CUNY case is not that Goldstein
expressed his opinion, but that he chose to
do so from an institutional pulpit.
"Goldstein and the CUNY trustees
created an atmosphere on campus that
chilled discussion of faculty and students
by letting everyone know that CUNY had
a view."
