What I think Veronica Prout was trying to say in her article about Mahmoud Ahmedinajad is: Whitman should invite more conservative speakers, and when they come, we should treat them well. And I agree with her. But instead of just expressing that opinion, she tried incoherently to smear all liberals as intolerant hypocrites. Why?
She declares herself to be upset about the hypocrisy of liberals. Her first example is: Columbia invites Ahmedinajad to speak but does not allow ROTC to organize on campus because of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Now, I would like to submit that there may actually be a substantial difference between inviting a speaker who holds homophobic views and allowing a student organization to discriminate, in its membership policies, against homosexuals.
But perhaps she’s right. Perhaps Ahmedinajad should not have been invited, nor in fact should any speakers known to be homophobic, until ROTC is allowed back on campus. Or conversely, all forms and degrees of homophobia should be welcomed equally because as Veronica says, we should tolerate “ALL ideas.” Of course, Ahmedinajad is also a Holocaust denier. I certainly hope Columbia isn’t being hypocritical and keeping Aryan Nation from recruiting on campus.
Her second example is about treatment of conservative speakers. She’s right; it was hypocritical of Columbia students not to rush the stage and ruin the talk when Ahmedinajad spoke, since they had done so when Campus Republicans brought the Minuteman Project to campus. She ignores the likely difference in security levels given that Ahmedinajad is the PRESIDENT OF A COUNTRY. But in this case I hardly think her complaint is hypocrisy; I believe she’s upset that the Minuteman Project was thrown off the stage like that. Which point would she like to make?
She then broadens her argument and manages to make a semi-successful point. She cites the bad behavior of a handful of students at a handful of colleges and universities across the country where liberal students threw pies, etc. at conservative speakers after those speakers were invited to their campuses. She is right, to a point: Pie-throwing is rude and does discourage intelligent discourse.
I’m wondering, however, how on earth she manages to confine this accusation to liberals. I checked online, as I believe Prout did as well, and it’s true that the majority of results are articles complaining about liberal colleges. But I would like to see some statistics on how often the ultra-conservative colleges of this country invite speakers as liberal as Ann Coulter is conservative (and Ahmedinajad, for that matter, though he is not an American Republican). Somehow I have trouble imagining Eve Ensler or Michael Moore giving at Bob Jones University.
Prout is committing the sin she wrote about in her other article; she is using a few examples of bad behavior to stereotype all liberals, in a particularly insulting way. This is bad rhetoric and certainly doesn’t make me feel like engaging in edifying discussion with her.
But my real problem is with Prout’s statement, “If Whitman wants to become a college in the forefront of promoting diversity, it should practice what it preaches and demonstrate a true tolerance for ALL ideas.” Prout is clearly offended by Ahmedinajad’s blatant Holocaust denial and homophobia, and she is right to be. That’s the point.
We don’t have to tolerate all ideas, and in fact, we shouldn’t. Not all ideas are equal. If Congress passes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, it will be illegal to fire people for their sexual orientation, and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be against federal law. It’s about time. This once “ultra-liberal” idea has become mainstream. It has succeeded in the “arena of ideas,” which Prout thinks liberals are afraid of.
We have to be able to engage with and evaluate ideas before we decide to tolerate them. We don’t have to tolerate Holocaust denial, the idea that women are chattel or racism. We never run out of ideas, so it is okay to declare a few of them bankrupt. Whitman should welcome conservative speakers. But we, and Columbia, should feel free to place some standards on our own behavior (unlike Ann Coulter).
