Commentary in the Los Angeles Yimes, November 8 2001
Los Angeles Times Commentary, November 8, 2001
Robert Jensen is a professor at the University of Texas, but if a gaggle of irate Texans get their way, he won't be for long. He's one of a handful of academics who are protesting the war in Afghanistan and have been denouncing it loudly at campus rallies. He's gone so far as to call the United States a terrorist nation and to opine that our conflict abroad is a "war of lies ... the culmination of a decade of U.S. aggression."
As Gregg Easterbrook reported earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, a letter-writing campaign is calling for the university to fire Jensen. Other campuses are similarly aflame. New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser recently denounced the City College of New York as "a breeding ground for idiots" after several faculty members voiced similar anti-American opinions.
Conservative pundits have pounced on this issue with a vengeance, arguing that while the 1st Amendment gives professors such as Jensen the right to say what they like, it doesn't shield them from the consequences of saying it. This is true sometimes but not always. What really matters is whether the consequences are incidental or severe.
Incidental consequences are often unpleasant; the kinds of reactions you can expect when you say something asinine or unpopular in public. People ostracize you, write letters denouncing you, call you an idiot, as Peyser did the New York professors. This is fair play. After all, the critic has a right to free speech as well.
Severe consequences are something else altogether. They include things such as putting a gun to the speaker's head or threatening the speaker's livelihood. Firing professors such as Jensen for things they say at antiwar rallies falls into this category. You can fire a professor because he's a bad or unqualified teacher, but you shouldn't be able to fire him because he expresses unpopular views. Otherwise, the 1st Amendment would be meaningless. After all, how free can your speech be if your job is in peril if you say the wrong thing?
Yanking advertisements from network television shows should also be unconstitutional. This happened recently to Bill Maher, host of the late-night talk show "Politically Incorrect," after he said a few politically incorrect things about the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack.
Why do I believe that rescinding ad revenue constitute censorship? Don't advertisers have the right to advertise when and where they please? Because Maher's show depends on advertising money for its survival, the advertisers were not just registering their discontent (they could have done that in a written statement), they were knowingly jeopardizing the show and thereby attempting to silence the speaker by forcing him off the air.
Of course, there is no law that prevents advertisers from revoking their support for shows. But if we are going to remain true to the spirit of the 1st Amendment, we should pass one. A show's livelihood should not depend on its purveyance of correct speech, even when we're at war. Advertisers should be forced, by contract, to commit their advertisements for a specified amount of time, regardless of what happens on a show. Either that or the networks should use a small portion of all advertising revenues for an insurance fund to cover pullouts. Otherwise Madison Avenue is, in effect, playing Big Brother.
Denouncing someone for his views is kosher. But intimidation and coercion--including the kind of economic coercion that threatens jobs and livelihoods--are censorship, however you spin it.
Norah Vincent is a freelance journalist who lives in New York City. E-mail: [email protected]
Copyright Norah Vincent, 2001
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