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To the Administration and Board of Trustees of Shoreline Community College, It has taken a period longer than I might have wished to compose both my mind and a reply to the lamentable act of censorship recently imposed on this campus by an administrative organization that places public relations ahead of education and probity. Not that long ago, we, the faculty and classified staff, were assured by you that the Oertli adventures were not only legal but beneficial to Shoreline Community College. Now we are presented with an administrative "review" of a poster and flyers based on a nonexistent process by administrators who clearly misunderstand the purpose of a college while purporting to guide it. The purpose of any institution of higher education is to provide students with the widest possible variety of thoughts, ideas, theories and even prejudices that have been and are part of the intellectual world in which they live. Along with that responsibility goes the courage to support the dissemination of those ideas. Alas, the administration has failed to uphold the intellectual standards of a college by allowing the sensitivities of a dean to impose an act of censorship on our campus. Would you also prohibit the faculty from teaching Wagner or Celine or lecturing on them publicly because they were both viciously anti-Semitic? The fact that the dean involved is the Dean of Humanities makes your decision even less comprehensible inasmuch as it is the mission of the humanities to promulgate a variety of ideas, including those that are controversial. Indeed, the swastika is a potent symbol to many people, Jews, Nazis, skinheads, Native Americans and Hindus alike. And it is certainly true, as the Supreme Court has recently ruled concerning cross burning, that the use of a symbol of hatred and oppression is not a valid use of free speech when it is used to intimidate citizens. However, the court did not say that the use of offensive symbols was disallowed when used in other contexts, and for that we should all be thankful. The offense in question, a well-designed poster and flyers to be mailed as publicity for the school's production of "Cabaret," included in the design an incomplete swastika with a chorine atop it. This is, of course, entirely in keeping with the play, which dissects the end of the Weimar Republic's relative decadence and freedom and the seemingly inexorable rise of Nazism. That the dean or the administration found the design offensive is not an issue. However, acting to ban the flyers is an indictment of the very value a college is supposed to hold central to its mission: the unfettered and uncensored education of its students. To indulge in a "let's not offend anyone" position as a principle by which the college is to be run is an idea whose intellectual and moral bankruptcy should be clear: you cannot void offending people in the free exchange of ideas and positions, and to try is to condemn education to supporting the dominant ideology of the moment. Imagine, if you will, barring any symbol of Islam on campus after Sept. 11. It is time for the board of the College, the administration, and the dean to proffer the proper apologies and assurances that any future "policies" will not violate the First Amendment rights of faculty and students and that collegial, divisional and departmental reprisals for the exercise of those rights will not be tolerated. Anything less both admits to censorship and allows it to be rewarded by those whose purpose will be seen as the suppression of the free exchange of controversial ideas. Thanking you for your attention to this urgent matter, I am Most sincerely, John C. Pryor, Ph.D. P.S. Suggested reading: "Areopagitica" by John Milton; the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and the American Library Association's position of censorship. © 2003 Shoreline Community College™ |
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