Letter to the Editor

What has happened to free speech at Duke?

On Wednesday, a student published a column condemning the Palestinian acts of violence on Israelis and gave his reasoning for the justification of settlements in Israeli occupied and unoccupied territories. The backlash was astounding. He was called racist, repulsive and a few of my Facebook friends couldn’t understand why the Chronicle would publish the column. 

Well, I do understand and am disappointed and worried that many of my “liberal” friends don’t.

College campuses have always been, and should always be, places of intellectual dialogue and banter. College campuses have been where people have discussed and argued U.S. and foreign policy like the Vietnam War, civil rights, women’s suffrage and how we should deal with affirmative action. Duke’s “progressive” activists now are trying to silence people who don’t agree with them. This is not activism; this is frankly regressive and reactionary.

Although I personally don’t agree with everything the writer said in his column, I am happy he decided to share his unpopular opinion in an environment that is often intimidating to do so.

As a campus community, we must be more open to listening to different opinions from our peers, and instead of simply admonishing them, we need to start engaging each other in more productive discourse. 

We should be embarrassed that our university culture has become so politically correct that we can’t act smartly when we find something that somebody said uncomfortable. In response to the editorial written by the Editorial Board yesterday, so what if the columnist is a privileged white male? Let's get more people to write against Israeli settlements in contested areas. Let's get a conversation going. I commend the Chronicle for publishing all kinds of material and encourage students with any opinion to get their voice heard, in accordance with the principles in the First Amendment.

Jane Kaufman