Harvard speaker censored on campus 02-03

This situation is fairly reminiscent of Ward Churchill here at EWU.

(q) Harvard University: Harvard rescinded an invitation for a poetry reading to poet Tom Paulin because he was quoted in April 2002 in Al-Ahram Weekly saying about Jewish settlers on the West Bank: “They should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.” In a 2001 poem, Paulin referred to the Israeli army as "the Zionist SS." He also said, "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all." Paulin declared, "My quoted remarks completely misrepresent my real views. For that, I apologise."

After consulting with Harvard president Lawrence Summers (who on Sept. 17, 2002 had denounced anyone urging divestment from Israel as “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent”), the English department and Paulin mutually agreed to cancel the Dec. 14, 2002 lecture, to which Summers proclaimed, “I believe the department has come to the appropriate decision."

Harvard Law School professors Charles Fried, Alan Dershowitz, and Laurence Tribe wrote a letter declaring, “What is truly dangerous is the precedent of withdrawing an invitation because a speaker would cause, in the words of English department chair Lawrence Buell, 'consternation and divisiveness.'” Harvard’s English department voted on Nov. 19, 2002 to reinstate the poetry reading.

(Harvard Crimson, Nov. 13, 2002; Boston Globe, Nov. 18, 2002; New York Times, Nov. 21, 2002; Nov. 23, 2002; Guardian, Nov. 22, 2002; New Yorker, Jan. 27, 2003; Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 21, 2002)

COMMENT: Although urging death upon certain people in foreign countries is deplorable, it is neither unusual nor illegal. Should a speaker be banned for having urging the death of Saddam Hussein?

http://collegefreedom.org/03speak.htm