INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM IN THE UNITED STATES

• First consider the invitation from Columbia University to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, to address a forum on the Columbia campus.  The forum consists of students and faculty, who presumably ask questions of the president.  For Ahmadinejad, this forum gives him respectability and legitimacy in the US and in the eyes of the world.  I totally support forums where ideas can be shared, discussed and challenged.  But I have a few questions:  Would Iran give this same respect and opportunity to the US president?  Would Columbia invite those who are pro-life to address the faculty on this important ethical issue?  Would it permit a forum to discuss the ethical value of the embryo?  The importance of the state of Israel?  Etc.?  It seems to me that giving Ahmadinejad this kind of exposure is playing into his public relations strategy.  There is no sincerity on his part to genuinely explore ideas that define the huge differences between Iran and the US.  He is seeking legitimacy and respect and Columbia is willingly complying with his desire.  There is a real difference between the exploration of ideas in a university forum and the promotion of a brutal dictator’s desire of legitimacy.  Apparently, Columbia University does not know the difference. 

• Second, what makes this situation at Columbia so incongruous is the reception of Donald Rumsfeld at Stanford University in California.  Rumsfeld has been appointed as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution on the Stanford campus.  This appointment is rekindling tension between the University, the conservative research body (the Hoover Institution) and the more liberal campus.  Some 2,000 professors, staff members, students and alumni have signed a petition protesting Rumsfeld’s appointment.  They oppose the appointment because of his leadership as Secretary of Defense during the Iraq war.  The petition reads:  “We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws, and care for the opinion, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed.”  It is strange indeed that the academy professes to explore intellectual freedom in all its dimensions but remains opposed to those on the right?  Does not the exploration of ideas on ideology and terrorism, which Rumsfeld will be addressing, include exploring positions with which you profoundly disagree?  Freedom of expression is for the left, but not for the right?  Although they are different institutions, what a study in contrast between Columbia and Stanford!  Both are premier universities in the US.  Both pride themselves in promoting academic freedom and the exploration of ideas.  The left at Columbia seems to have no foibles in inviting the head of a brutal, terrorist state, Iran, to address a university forum.  This is about the freedom of expression and academic freedom—the heart of the modern university.  The left at Stanford cannot tolerate a former Secretary of Defense, who has given three decades of his life to public service, visiting the Stanford campus two or three times a year to participate in a separate institution on the University’s campus?  In the true meaning of this overused term, this is unbelievable!  See Jonathan Glater’s news report in the New York Times (21 September 2007), p. A13.

• Third, consider the action of the federal Bureau of Prisons to purge the shelves of prison chapel libraries of all religious books and materials not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources.  This is rather shocking that the government is limiting inmates to a religious reading list determined by the government.  This seems to fly in the face of religious liberty and freedom.  The bureau has argued that this policy is necessary because most prisons do not catalog their library materials and therefore radical books that incite violence and hatred could end up on the shelves.  So, the bureau launched the Standardized Chapel Library Project, lists of books and materials—about 150 items for each of 20 religions or religious categories—which the Bureau wants on prison library shelves.  Prison chaplains were thereby ordered in the spring to remove everything not on the lists and place these items in storage.  There will be annual additions to the list.  Class action lawsuits have been filed by various organizations to protest this policy.  No matter how one looks at this, it is really outrageous.  The federal Bureau of Prisons understandably is concerned about things that could incite violence, but such a blanket policy where the government decides which books are approved and which are not seems unworkable and absurd.  Chaplains do not have the time to police such things and it seems a violation of any interpretation of human freedom within the US to have such a policy.  Prison Fellowship has been working hard to have this policy changed or amended.  It is both unreasonable and unworkable.  Government intrusion into such a basic right as the freedom to read a book in a prison library???!  See Laurie Goodstein’s news article in the New York Times (21 September 2007), p. A13.