I know how convicted terrorist Laura Whitehorn feels. I, too, feel misunderstood. Granted we are misunderstood for different reasons. I even doubt that we could understand each other. However, regardless of how we are misunderstood, the fact remains: People just don't understand what we are about.
My case is peculiar. I am part of a group, the Duke Conservative Union, which has criticized Whitehorn's speaking engagement at Duke. But few people have listened to our actual complaints. To our surprise, we have received the attention of national media, much of it favorable. Yet most people, on campus and off, drew their own quick conclusions, for better or worse, as soon as we vocalized opposition. Thus the DCU has been accused of being against "free speech" (Whitehorn in The Herald Sun), "hypocritical" (letter in The Chronicle) and even "a tad overwrought" (by our supporters at The Wall Street Journal). The question: Are these accusations grounded, and if not, what do they misunderstand?
First, some history on how this whole scandal came about: Some DCU members were surfing the web and discovered the John Hope Franklin Center's spring lecture series. Scrolling down the posted speaker biographies, they came upon one Laura Whitehorn, described as an "anti-imperialist activist" and "political prisoner." Further research revealed that far from being a political prisoner, Whitehorn spent 14 years in jail for her role in bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1983. Her "anti-imperialist" activism included links to a number of violent terrorist groups active in the early 1980s. The advertisement of her lecture was fundamentally dishonest and what most people would call a downright lie. After the DCU leaked the story to The Wall Street Journal, the John Hope Franklin Center updated its website to reflect a more accurate biography. The question remained, however: Why did the sponsors want to hide the truth in the first place?
The answer to that question seems at least partially transparent. It is scandalous to host a convicted and unrepentant terrorist while the nation is in a war against terrorism. For those who do not share Whitehorn's radical leftist and revolutionary agenda (and here we must wonder about members of the sponsoring programs), Duke's sponsorship of her appears to belie an absolutely perverse set of values. These are values that the sponsors do not want the public to discover and thus the deceptive misinformation. In response to this agenda of dishonesty, the DCU continued its truth in advertising media campaign. Inspired by the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant," this campaign simply aimed to make public the violent history of this speaker and to question the funding, values and institutionalized programs that bring her to Duke. It countered speech with more speech.
As soon as this message hit the national stage, however, many tried to twist subtly it for their own ends. Duke News Service released a statement contending that Whitehorn's speaking engagement demonstrated the University's commitment to academic freedom. Fox News ran a segment that excluded my statement "We aren't calling for censorship" but included my provocative question "Would someone who's bombed abortion clinics be welcome on campus?" Both statements from Duke and Fox are true, but both miss the fundamental point of the DCU's campaign. Such statements attempt to couch this debate in terms that fundamentally misrepresent its concerns. Nothing has been more deceptive than the attempt by many to turn the Whitehorn lecture into a free speech issue.
No one is challenging the University's legal right to sponsor Whitehorn's talk. Duke departments can pay the most violent nut-balls in the world to speak, and, as long as they have no pending warrants, the First Amendment will and should protect them. Those who attack the DCU's campaign on free speech grounds are deploying a strawman, and deliberately so. What the DCU has done is question the justification for Whitehorn's talk, the sources of funding that support it and its relationship to the priorities of the sponsors. The DCU has made sure that Whitehorn's unrepentant past is known in all its awful glory and in doing so has epitomized the concept of free speech. This campaign has had two very specific aims: informing those who support Duke about how their money is spent and making those who sponsor Whitehorn publicly defend their bizarre values.
The first aim regards simple economics. For better or worse (probably worse), Duke University is run as a business. We aggressively solicit contributions from alumni and recently succeeded in a $2 billion capital campaign. Those who contribute to Duke have a right to know how Duke uses its money. If the activities of the institution undermine the priorities of donors why should they continue to contribute? Perhaps donors will exercise more oversight and control over how their money is spent in the future. Some critics have suggested that if programs like African and African American Studies end up with less money to sponsor people like Whitehorn, this would be tantamount to the censorship of speech. Such people must presume that Whitehorn and her ilk simply have a "right" to a certain amount of support from universities. This is fallacious, for if, when people learn who she is, those who write the checks decide they no longer want to pay her, that decision is wholly and rightfully the prerogative of the consumers.
The second aim regards the values of the people who are sponsoring Whitehorn. Can they explain how Ms. Whitehorn's goals reflect their own? Leon Dunkley made the dubious statement that Whitehorn was invited "with the same amount of integrity that the Conservative Union has when it brings a speaker to campus." Well not quite, as the DCU has never sponsored a convicted felon and lied about her background. But if Dunkley is really serious, then I can't wait for him and others to defend Whitehorn like the DCU defended David Horowitz. The DCU, for example, agreed with Horowitz's position on reparations and did not abhor his past. Conversely however, the DCU would never invite David Duke to speak on tax policy, no matter how sound his tax views might be. The reason is obvious: As an unrepentant former KKK member, David Duke is a moral monster and anathema to everything for which genuine conservatives stand. Is Whitehorn's record of terrorism likewise anathema to the values of her Duke sponsors? Will they, unlike her, disavow her past, or do they consider it a badge of honor?
There are still those who want to whitewash Whitehorn's past and pretend that the "terrorist" label is exaggerated. I have a feeling that what most people currently know about Whitehorn is only the tip of the iceberg. Still, Charles Payne, chair of AAAS, contends, "When people hear the word "terrorist," they stop thinking." People also stop thinking when they hear the word "racist," which is what a number of AAAS faculty called Horowitz. The difference is that while Horowitz was not a racist, Whitehorn is a terrorist, and thus the label is absolutely appropriate.
What should be obvious from this and other campus debates is that free speech doesn't mean you can't challenge what other people say. Furthermore, the undisputed fact that Whitehorn has a constitutional right to free speech is not, in itself, a justification for spending University funds to sponsor her at Duke. Those who champion free speech can consistently say, "While Laura Whitehorn has a legal right to speak, those who are sponsoring her thereby appear to hold a perverse set of values of which any decent human being should be ashamed and, as such, should be called to account for their true priorities." Why is this thought so hard to understand?
Bill English is a Trinity senior. His column appears every other Monday.
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