Word: speech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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While Bok argues, with merit, that hecklers have the right to communicate their disapproval of a speech, he makes a useful analogy to suggest that this right exists only in so far as it does not interfere with a "speaker's ability to communicate and the rights of other members of the audience to listen," Bok invokes the maxim: "Your freedom to swing your first stops at the point of my nose." Bok could have gone further; absent is perhaps the most potent argument against the hecklers--that the democracy they epitomize is one in which the loudest voices prevail...
...quite rightly takes up the issue of the celebrated Pi Eta Club newsletter, which depicted women in almost the lewdest, most sexist language imaginable, as a case study in which free speech must be extended to even the most offensive of communications. He goes on at length about why he issued a strong public denunciation of the letter, and how this denunciation, rather than inhibiting free speech, is part and parcel of the market-place of ideas to which free speech is supposed to contribute...
...good. But why does Bok stop, both rhetorically and in actions, at this ugly incident? At the beginning of his letter, he mentions in passing several other examples of violations of free speech at Harvard, but with the exception of the Pi Eta incident, he fails to return to them. No harsh words are reserved for those Jewish students who disrupted a speech last year by a representative of the P.L.O. nor does Bok directly condemn members of the Black Law Students Association who did not allow Jewish students to question a P.L.O. official at a symposium of their...
...point is not that Bok should take every opportunity to hammer away at injustice in the world, but that he must be timely, and he must be consistent. The moment so come down hard on violations of free speech is not in a letter--no matter how eloquently written--a year after the fact, but directly after the violations occur...
This imperative becomes all the more urgent if the critic, as Bok has done, gives the appearance of being picky about what he is going to criticize. What is singular about the Pi Eta incident in the free speech arena? Why action here and not in other similar instances where a voice of moral leadership was called for? Why didn't Bok take the initiative and use the Weinberger and the P.L.O. incidents to vent his spleen on the necessity of free speech...