Word: paulin
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Three days of angry letters to the editor and accusations of censorship later, the department had a change of heart and re-invited Paulin. Why? As Marquand Professor of English Peter Sacks told The Boston Globe, “Free speech was a principle that needed upholding here. This was a clear affirmation that the department stood strongly by the First Amendment...
...talking about the controversy as though it were about free speech misses the mark. The question whether Paulin has the right to speak here is very different from the question whether he should speak here. Similarly, the question whether the English department has the right to invite him is very different from the question whether it should invite...
...would make sense to talk about rights if Harvard’s administration had overturned the invitation, or set down regulations on what Paulin may say when he comes. The right to free speech protects people from being silenced by official power. Harvard Law School, for example, is tossing around the idea of a campus speech code, and free speech activists would find an excellent cause for themselves by taking a stroll north of the Science Center...
...things he says, the English department shouldn’t have invited him—not that it didn’t have the right to do so, or that the University should step into the fray. Moreover, the English department chose of its own accord to un-invite Paulin and then to re-invite him. If public criticism had anything to do with these decisions, that says more about the department’s lack of backbone than about any real limitations on free speech...
...interesting that those who are susceptible to getting chilled always manage to speak their minds anyway? So it is that Professor of Psychology Patrick Cavanagh, who signed the anti-Israeli divestment petition that Summers criticized earlier this year, can write a letter to The Crimson about the Paulin flap and tell “Ayatollah Summers” that his “bigotry is showing.” Those do not sound like the words of a chilled man. Nor does Paulin seem to have suffered much hypothermia, as his friends report that he will likely accept the English...