Two recent incidents on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus have raised the specter of anti-Semitism and brought to the fore questions regarding the line between free speech and good taste in a university environment.
On Feb. 12, one day before the student-government election, the most recent issue of the conservative student magazine The Carolina Review was distributed across campus. On the cover appeared a doctored photo of presidential candidate Aaron Nelson, who is Jewish. The picture portrayed him as a devil, complete with horns and a pitchfork.
Along with the picture was an article that criticized Nelson for his voting record, which The Review claimed was anti-Christian. The campus responded quickly to The Review's portrayal of Nelson, and 22 Jewish faculty members petitioned the UNC Chancellor Michael Hooker to censure the magazine, which he did.
A little more than a month later, 45 defaced books were discovered in the R.B. House Undergraduate Library. Swastikas and, in three cases the letters "KKK," were etched across the top of the books in black, felt-tipped marker. Although this event is believed to be entirely isolated from the Review incident, it added more fire to the already-tense atmosphere on campus.
In the aftermath of these two episodes, the ensuing discussion has revealed that the issues at hand are hardly clear-cut and reach far deeper than anti-Semitism alone.
The Nelson incident has received much greater attention on the UNC campus, as the issues it raises are more nuanced than the blatant anti-Semitism of the swastika incident and more pertinent to everyday campus life.
Although The Review has been harshly criticized for its depiction of Nelson, few people have actually called for the publication to be abolished. Instead, the debate has focused on the limits of free speech.
"People have got the right to stupid ideas and the minute we start to try to restrict the expression of stupid ideas, we are on an extremely slippery slope," said UNC-CH Dean of Students Fred Schroeder.
Nelson himself expressed similar opinions. "I absolutely do not think we should restrict speech," he said in a round-table discussion sponsored by the UNC student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. "I'm glad we did not have a hate speech code on this campus, and I hope we continue not to have one, because it is important that everyone express all of their views."
UNC graduate student Charlton Allen, publisher of The Review, defended his decision to print the picture of Nelson and said that it was not meant to be anti-Semitic.
"Our cartoonist lampooned [Nelson] as such because her perception was that Aaron was evil," he said. "Newspapers in the past few weeks have run cartoons lampooning public figures such as Gingrich, Pat Buchanan and even myself as "devils" with horns and pitchforks. Where's the public outcry over these cartoons?"
But Howard Brubaker, the former adviser to The Review, said he thought the cartoon was inappropriate and asked Allen not to print it. "Certainly, they had a right to. I just question the propriety of doing something like that, " he said. "There are a lot more conservative issues they could be addressing rather than criticizing a single individual. "
When Allen decided to print the picture anyway, Brubaker said that he resigned to demonstrate his opposition.
Allen, however, denied that Brubaker resigned, saying that he was replaced before the issue was printed due to his previous attempts to control The Review's content.
UNC law professors Paul Haskell and Daniel Pollitt have since stepped in to act as co-advisers to The Review. In a letter to The Daily Tar Heel published on April 1, they explained their decision to take on the position.
"It would be a shocking limitation upon the freedom of expression in this University if a controversial periodical were to be denied the opportunity to publish because of the inability to satisfy the technical requirement of a faculty advisor," the letter stated. "Freedom of expression is the essence of academic life.... The right to speak is not limited by the sensitivities of the audience. When rights are denied to any of us, we are all at risk."
The discussion prompted by the recent incident does not appear to be subsiding. Two weeks ago, The Daily Tar Heel published a cartoon alluding to The Review incident in which one person calls another "a big Jewish dork."
Although the staff development manager of The Tar Heel, Justin Williams, said that the cartoon was supposed to be "a tongue-in-cheek poke" at The Review, the parody nevertheless seems to have sparked another wave of controversy and evoked the kind of additional discussion that is often cited as the primary benefit of free expression.
"In an ideal world, for me, hate speech would be counteracted by more speech. If you disagree with something, say so," Review publisher Allen said during the Tar Heel round-table discussion. "When a power such as a university or the federal government decides, 'This idea is bad, and we're not going to allow it,' that is a critical issue that can destroy the freedoms that we all take for granted."
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