Our Ms. Brooks
It's been a long week for most of us, but it's Friday, and that means Rosa Brooks has a new column up in the Los Angeles Times. This week her subject is President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University and the "brave" introductory remarks of this prestigious institution's president.
Imagine the scene: As angry protesters march outside, a nation's unpopular president prepares to address students and faculty at a prestigious university. Introducing the president, the head of the university is bluntly critical of his guest speaker: "You, quite simply, [are] ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. . . . I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer [our] questions . . . I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes so much of what you say and do. . . . Your preposterous and belligerent statements . . . led to your party's defeat in the [last] elections."
Unfazed, the president rises to begin his speech. His sometimes bizarre remarks generate hoots of derision. But he plows on civilly, though he ducks and weaves when faced with critical questions from the audience.
When the clock runs out, many are dissatisfied with his answers. But everyone applauds the courageous head of the university, who wasn't afraid to speak truth to power, and everyone praises the student protesters, who exemplified the democratic values of dissent and free expression.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if something like that could happen in our country?
Her point is that it didn't take all that much courage to greet the president of a country against which the current US administration is building a case for war.
Sorry, no. "Free speech at its best" is when someone really does speak truth to power, and power stops blathering long enough to engage with inconvenient ideas. If an Iranian professor, inside Iran, had said what Bollinger said to Ahmadinejad, that would have been brave.
Or -- stay with me here -- if Bollinger had invited President Bush to Columbia and made those same unvarnished remarks to him, and Bush had toughed it out and struggled to answer half a dozen unfiltered, critical questions from an audience not made up of his handpicked supporters . . . . Well, that too would have been free speech at its best.
Unfortunately, that's not the kind of thing you're likely to see in America. [Emphasis added]
Of course, Mr. Bush would never find himself in front of anything but a handpicked audience, one that would never challenge him with difficult, even hostile questions. It wouldn't be prudent.
Sadly, Ms. Brooks is right: this was not a case of "free speech at its best," merely just one more dog-and-pony show calculated to catapult the propaganda. What is sad is that it occurred at one of the leading educational institutions in the US.
Imagine the scene: As angry protesters march outside, a nation's unpopular president prepares to address students and faculty at a prestigious university. Introducing the president, the head of the university is bluntly critical of his guest speaker: "You, quite simply, [are] ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated. . . . I doubt you will have the intellectual courage to answer [our] questions . . . I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes so much of what you say and do. . . . Your preposterous and belligerent statements . . . led to your party's defeat in the [last] elections."
Unfazed, the president rises to begin his speech. His sometimes bizarre remarks generate hoots of derision. But he plows on civilly, though he ducks and weaves when faced with critical questions from the audience.
When the clock runs out, many are dissatisfied with his answers. But everyone applauds the courageous head of the university, who wasn't afraid to speak truth to power, and everyone praises the student protesters, who exemplified the democratic values of dissent and free expression.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if something like that could happen in our country?
Her point is that it didn't take all that much courage to greet the president of a country against which the current US administration is building a case for war.
Sorry, no. "Free speech at its best" is when someone really does speak truth to power, and power stops blathering long enough to engage with inconvenient ideas. If an Iranian professor, inside Iran, had said what Bollinger said to Ahmadinejad, that would have been brave.
Or -- stay with me here -- if Bollinger had invited President Bush to Columbia and made those same unvarnished remarks to him, and Bush had toughed it out and struggled to answer half a dozen unfiltered, critical questions from an audience not made up of his handpicked supporters . . . . Well, that too would have been free speech at its best.
Unfortunately, that's not the kind of thing you're likely to see in America. [Emphasis added]
Of course, Mr. Bush would never find himself in front of anything but a handpicked audience, one that would never challenge him with difficult, even hostile questions. It wouldn't be prudent.
Sadly, Ms. Brooks is right: this was not a case of "free speech at its best," merely just one more dog-and-pony show calculated to catapult the propaganda. What is sad is that it occurred at one of the leading educational institutions in the US.
Labels: First Amendment, Iran
posted by Diane at 4:03 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home