The auto de fe was a ceremony used by Spanish inquisitors to publicly display condemned heretics just before execution. The ceremony would involve parading the condemned about the town square before reading the charges aloud and executing the “guilty.” The ritual, which many believed ended with the Inquisition, is actually still being used in Medford, Mass. today.
Matt Schuster, a senior attending Tufts University, was found guilty of two counts of harassment and another two counts of “creating a hostile environment” on campus. Looking at the charges levied against Schuster and his accomplices, one would think that the Cambridge, Mass. native had been stalking a young lady or threatening the safety of another undergraduate. This, however, was not the case. Schuster and his peers were dragged before the Tufts’ Committee on Student Life for expressing conservative political values.
Schuster is the editor of the Primary Source, the second oldest conservative student publication in the country. Last year, however, the bi-weekly publication’s editorial board was fighting for its survival, rather than celebrating its 25th anniversary.
The first group of charges arose after Primary Source published an editorial critiquing Tufts’ affirmative action policy; two more counts were added to the indictment in April by the Muslim Students Association after the newspaper published “Islam — Arabic Translation: Submission,” an editorial condemning radical Islamic terrorism.
The Committee on Student Life, a panel consisting of four undergraduates and three professors, found the Primary Source guilty of all charges — it is worthy to note that three of these verdicts were decided by unanimous votes.
The grueling six-and-a-half hour hearing saw 16 witnesses testify against the student newspaper. The evidence used to convict the Primary Source consisted of these 16 students describing how “unwelcome” and “unsafe” they felt around the Tufts campus. According to Schuster, the star witness “told the committee that a local resident, unaffiliated with Tufts, said ‘Get out of Medford’ to her as she was walking off campus.” There was, of course, no witness to corroborate this student’s tale.
The university reasoned that this racist townie was obviously an avid reader of Primary Source, thus proving that he was under the influence of the editorial “Come All ye Black Folk” at the time of the incident. The authors of the editorial, a parody of the Christmas carol “Come All ye Faithful,” believed that the lyrics demonstrated the unfair assumptions that Tufts makes about minorities during the admissions process; the university thought that the tune would bring about the resurgence of Jim Crow.
In order to stave off the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan, the Committee on Student Life “mandated that the Primary Source include bylines on each editorial” and recommended that the university de-fund the publication. Bylines would help the university identify and punish those conservatives that threatened to poison the campus’ pure liberal soul — the same logic used during the Inquisition to justify the execution of heretics.
The threat to free speech at Tufts is by no means an isolated incident. In fact, the attempt to silence conservatism on campus is very much alive here in Ithaca. Just two years ago, the Student Assembly Finance Commission attempted to de-fund the Cornell American based on similar charges.
Campus liberals like to say that they are the ultimate guardians of the First Amendment. After all, liberal groups defended the St. Patrick’s Four after they poured blood on a military recruitment station in Ithaca. And flag burning is the cause célèbre for these free speech fanatics. When it comes to protecting a conservative publication’s right to free press, however, the “student ACLU at Tufts was less than willing to help,” according to Schuster.
This is why the Primary Source relied on outside help to save their publication. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a non-profit group that helps to defend academic freedom, brought the incident to the attention of the Boston Herald, New York Post, Washington Times and Fox News.
After several months of negative media attention, the Tufts Dean of Undergraduate Students James Glaser finally lifted the byline requirement saying, “Imposing such a provision on one publication in the context of a judicial decision can only be construed as punishment of unpopular speech.”
Although Dean Glaser upheld the guilty verdicts, he must be given some credit for recognizing the threat that such a provision poses to free speech. Not every university official feels the same way.
Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow cheered on the Liberal Inquisition, releasing this statement during the trial: “What is particularly troubling about the Source article is that yet again a discrete minority within our community has been singled out for ridicule. And once again, the article is unsigned.”
The outcome may have been (somewhat) just, but the process most certainly was not. The CSL wanted to use the trial to set an example: Conservative political opinions can land a student in front of the school’s highest judicial board.
The guilty verdicts say it loud and clear: “Get out of Medford.”
Bill McMorris is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at bmcmorris@cornellsun.com [1]. John Manetta Once Told Me appears alternate Wednesdays this semester.
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[1] mailto:bmcmorris@cornellsun.com