This is a story about Thursday, March 22, 2001.
For those of us who truly love The Chronicle--I think that's most people who work there--we could not spend so many unpaid hours at this paper without believing that we write with the noblest and best intentions.
Journalists are inculcated to believe in our godlike objectivity, to see every conflict as a battle of opposing yet valid interests. Our perspective is often described as a lens, something we focus on the facts that we consider most relevant, motivating and entertaining to our readers.
When The Chronicle itself became the subject of controversy, I found myself without a lens to look through.
Just before spring break, we received the now-infamous anti-reparations advertisement by David Horowitz. None of our department heads I spoke to agreed with its message. But as journalists, we believed it did not protect our community to hide obnoxious opinions from it, and we supported a policy that made our paper as open as possible to all viewpoints. We voted unanimously to run the ad the Monday after break.
At midnight Wednesday, I was working on Recess. My office was quiet, save my cursing the Macintosh operating system. My birthday was Thursday; I wanted the magazine done early.
My office was just inside The Chronicle door, so I was the first to see the demonstrators arrive. Many were faces I knew. Some were impassive, some seemed amused, some angry.
I remember Greg Pessin, our editor, telling fellow students that they were in a private office and would have to leave. People seated all over the layout room, reporters still filing stories as if nothing were going on. Pessin and Vice President for Institutional Equity Sally Dickson, arguing about whether she was appearing as a protester or an administrator.
Within 12 hours, there had been protests and demands, followed by a frantic discussion among our staff. As fellow editors and I were drafting our response to the demonstrators' demands, a Chronicle reporter was outside, covering this story like any other. Suddenly, we were not only the recorders of controversy, but the objects.
I have never been more proud of a piece of writing than the response we wrote. We invoked the landmark First Amendment case New York Times v. Sullivan, which arose out of an advertisement placed by a civil rights group. We talked about the spirit of free speech, about our commitment to ideological diversity. We pored over every sentence, fought for every word. We read the response aloud in the office. People cheered.
The Duke Student Movement didn't feel the same. In fact, one representative called our response "legalese."
Most of the ensuing week went like that. All of us were frustrated. We were one of the most progressive organizations on campus; in most editorials, our views and those of the movement were in agreement. In some ways, the debate was mere intellectual warfare, a battle of ideals and semantics. But the signs that proclaimed The Chronicle "racist" didn't feel like rhetoric. Just as the movement believed the ad was a personal attack, so, too, seemed their response. I wasn't just upset because our beleaguered editor was spending even longer nights in the office. I was upset because we couldn't make people understand why it was critical to our ideals to let a voice, no matter how offensive, be heard.
I was ashamed to read, in The Chronicle this year, the assertion that, "I always thought The Chronicle was racist." I was more ashamed that our writer didn't even challenge the statement. It reminded me that even our finest writing couldn't advocate our position well enough.
I studied the reparations movement in one of my law school classes. Many of the course materials revolved around reaction to the ad. There were the persuasive "Ten Reasons" in response by prominent black leaders; there was John Hope Franklin's eloquent essay that appeared in these very pages. For better or worse, The Chronicle became part of a debate that needed to be had. Although we ended up making enemies out of people who should be our friends, I still believe we did what was right and consistent with our values.
We stood upon an ideal that has rescued the oppressed, toppled corrupt officials and changed this nation's history. To me, freedom of speech is no legalistic construct but a principle I live by. I am fortunate to live in a nation that believes in protecting its most vociferous critics, where small words can sow the seeds of change.
Worried then whether going to law school was the right decision, I realized that, if nothing else, law school would teach me how to defend free speech with a proficiency to match my passion--and that it very much needed defenders.
Law school has also taught me something else: Justice, diversity and tolerance don't mean the same thing to everyone. Because those of us with a voice generally assume the mantle of defining them, we must understand our definitions well enough to defend them when challenged.
I didn't get to have fun on that birthday, but I learned something more important: Journalism is not something you do, but something you are. You cannot be successful at it if you are not a believer. I saw how far my colleagues and I would go for our beliefs. I discovered, in a time of strife, what it means to be part of a newspaper that isn't afraid of its mission. I have never been more proud of an organization, or of myself.
Jonas Blank, Trinity '01, is a former editor of Recess.
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