Tuesday, January 14, 2003

"The First Amendment belongs to no single group or ideology, but that message is often difficult to implement even at the University of California, Berkeley."


Old Words on War Stirring a New Dispute at Berkeley
In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression, university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech and her opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq.

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open."

Berkeley officials said the quotations could be construed as a political statement by the university in opposition to United States policy toward Iraq. Candace S. Falk, the director of the project and author of the appeal, acknowledged that the excerpts were selected because of their present-day resonance. But Dr. Falk said they reflected Goldman's views, not the university's policies.

Robert M. Price, the associate vice chancellor for research, said, "It wasn't from nowhere that these quotes randomly happened to fall on the page." Dr. Falk "was making a political point, and that is inappropriate in an official university solicitation," he said.

Dr. Price edited the fund-raising appeal, striking the two quotations. A third quotation — "the most violent element in society is ignorance" — was not removed. "We didn't think that was political," Dr. Price said. About 400 of the altered solicitation letters were mailed late last month.

The university's action has infuriated Dr. Falk and her small staff, who work out of a cramped former dentist's office a few blocks from campus. It has also raised concerns among scholars at similar documentary editing projects about academic freedom and free speech.

It was at Berkeley in 1964 that the free speech movement got its start when the administration tried to limit the political activities of students.

"I feel this is not the way the university either should or wants to operate," said Robert H. Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project, another documentary editing project at Berkeley. "We just got through creating the Free Speech Cafe on campus, and we have a free speech archive. How many times does this have to happen at Berkeley before they learn?"

Roger Bruns, the acting executive director at the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is part of the National Archives in Washington, said he had never heard of a university objecting to a documentary editing project using quotations from its subject. The commission provides financing for 40 such projects, including some for the Goldman Project.

"If it were repeated a number of times, it would have a chilling effect," Mr. Bruns said.

In protest, Dr. Falk withheld the revised solicitation from most people on the project's mailing list of 3,000. She then had an alternative mailing printed at her own expense.

"You can't work on the Emma Goldman Papers Project and fold on something like this," said Dr. Falk, who sent out 60 of the new solicitations last week. "We just had to find a way to get this out."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/education/14BERK.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

No comments:

Post a Comment

con·cept