S.A. Criticizes Review, Asks Univ. to Stop Further ‘Hate’
September 26, 2008 - 12:00amYesterday afternoon, the Student Assembly passed Resolution 6 criticizing the Cornell Review for causing “alienation and intimidation” and encouraged the Office of the Dean of Students to work with the S.A. to revise the Campus Code of Conduct to prevent further “hateful terminology.”
Initially, when the S.A. gathered at their weekly meeting yesterday, members were prepared to vote on a resolution that would ask the University to “revoke authorization and permission for the use of the ‘Cornell’ name” from the Cornell Review. Ultimately, many members of the S.A. felt that removing Cornell from the title would not do enough to make Cornell a more welcoming and inclusive campus. Therefore, the resolution was changed to ask the University to work with the S.A. in an ad-hoc committee.
It’s all in the name: Supporters of a resolution to work with the University to revise the Campus Code of Conduct speak before the Student Assembly yesterday evening. The resolution passed 17-4-0.
Prof. Steven Shiffrin, law, who specializes in first amendment rights, was the first to raise the idea that removing Cornell from the title would not do enough.
“I think the passage of [the resolution] would not do much harm but it would not do much good, either,” he said. He recommended amending the Campus Code of Conduct, adding that Cornell has a right to make its own judgment about freedom of speech.
S.A. Arts and Sciences Representative Asa Craig ’11, who spearheaded the amendment, was pleased with the outcome.
“I think that it was very responsible of the S.A. to not attack The Review but to take it as a lesson for what can be done for the future. I look forward to working with Dean Hubbell and other administration members to revise the Campus Code of Conduct to make sure that members of our community are safe from discrimination.”
Tony Miller, vice president of internal operations, disagreed.
He felt that the resolution was making The Review a “scapegoat” and that the Joint Assemblies Multicultural Committee, made up of members of the S.A. and University Assembly, is already in place, aiming to serve as “a collective voice of diversity.”
Cornell's sad decline
Ignorance on the part of students is understandable, though it's somewhat surprising that a selective institution like Cornell seems to have admitted the silly and obtuse young people who passed a resolution like the one described. Having a hopelessly confused or possibly merely fanatic law professor colluding in their strange behavior is rather less forgivable. Prof. Shiffrin doesn't seem to be capable of following the most elementary logic. Cornell, given its budgetary and historical connection with the state government of New York is essentially a public institution. As numerous specific cases have made unambiguously clear, public institutions are strictly bound to respect First Amendment standards of free speech. Therefore, even if it were prudent academic policy, Cornell has no right to restrict expression that some students find abusive and hateful; there are no exceptions in the First Amendment permitting the suppression of such speech, and that's that.
But, even more important, it is not prudent academic policy even to contemplate such restrictions. Universities are not sanctuaries for tender sensibilities, not even those of minorities who feel that there is an atmosphere of hostility to their cherished beliefs. All belief-systems, religious or otherwise, are fair game for criticism, satire, and mockery, even when these are expressed far more scornfully and nastily than was the case in the Reviews relatively mild sallies. If I think that Joseph Smith, or St. Paul or the prophet Mohamed (or Voltaire) was a vicious, raving loony whose admirers are massively deluded, I can say so, and the only recourse of those I offend is to call me a vicious, raving loony with equal immunity. This, and not some phony ethic of solicitude toward wounded feelings, is a significant part of what universities much teach. Indeed, the students who went running to the Student Assembly demanding punishment for those who assailed their cherished prejudices have, ipso facto, demonstrated that they are not emotionally sufficiently prepared to engage in the intellectual free-for-all that is central to serious inquiry. The same goes, alas, for the student representatives who indulged them. Perhaps they all might be advised to leave Cornell for a year or two until they come to terms with the fact that the world is full of all sorts of unkindness, and that the mealy-mouthed pieties of the Student Assembly will do nothing to mitigate that sad fact.
As for Prof. Shiffrin, perhaps he ought to find another line of work. He seems to regard the study of law as an instrument for exercising his self-righteous propensity for censorship.