Logical Analysis

I have a beef with the The Sun. I find its editorials slanted. Fortunately for The Sun, this is perfectly fine. Journalism needs to be unbiased. Op-ed doesn’t. Alright, so The Sun’s journalistic credentials are intact (for the moment), but what about its views? Are they perhaps misguided?

I offer you two examples to illustrate my ‘beef.’ The first is an editorial from Nov. 29, 2006. This was shortly after Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel came to speak at Cornell. It read like this: “Despite talk of large protests outside the event, it seems that most of the would-be attendees took a more constructive approach: they came inside to seize the unique opportunity to question the ‘objectionable’ Israeli official.”

The second is an editorial from this past Monday concerning (a much better publicized) visit to Columbia University of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “We want Columbia to hear you speak anyway. We want the rest of America, even those who can’t find Iran on a map, to scrutinize your beliefs and pick them apart. We believe in intellectual discourse no matter how much we can’t stand you.”

So let’s partake in a logical analysis of these two quotes. Logically, they say the exact same thing:

1. You are about to (or already did) speak in America

2. There are people who disagree with you

3. You still ought to speak

And of course, in a big sappy conclusion, we reason number three follows from number two thanks to our democratic belief in free speech.

If this were a math course, the discussion ends here. In math, it’s all about the logic. But in editorials it’s all about, well, editorializing (replace z with s for sophisticated British feel).

So the first quote is a bit less loaded. Nonetheless there is this use of quotations around the word “objectionable” (kinda like I just did). What do these quotation marks imply? Is Peres not objectionable? Is he only “‘quote unquote’ objectionable” or equivalently “supposedly objectionable?” As pointed out in The Sun, itself, Peres was a geopolitical and economic supporter of apartheid in South Africa, who was quoted saying, “Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples.” Is this racism and ethnic hatred not objectionable?

What about policies closer to home? Peres was elected partially on his platform of extending settlements into the West Bank, a United Nations-opposed plan whose eventual execution involved bulldozing Palestinian homes and the inequitable distribution of the West Bank’s already limited water supply. Is this only pseudo objectionable? I suppose this editorial did indeed achieve its goal of editorializing. I’m only left to wonder if it did so justly.

Moving on to our second quotation. It’s not too hard to find the slant, somewhere between “pick [your views] apart” and “we can’t stand you” lies the subtle implication that we differ strongly with the Iranian “president” (supposedly president since he was popularly elected from a not-so-populous pool of candidates, hand selected by the unelected Supreme Islamic Leader). And the difference in opinion is of course unquestionably legitimate. Denying the Holocaust despite its obvious physical evidence and implications, calling for the destruction of a nation (and by extension its innocent civilian occupants), executing dissident academics … the list goes on and on.

But no matter the order of magnitude, and no matter how personally charged we may feel, understand that these two cases are logically identical. Both men have committed human rights violations and both are morally tarnished. Indeed also, both have a base of fervent support — people who see them as heroes. We can see from these editorials that one of these men has vehement support on East Hill. The other man seems to lack similar support.

In my naïve little world of sunshine and rainbows, both men would be sent to The Hague to face the world’s harsh moral critiquing, and ultimately, sentencing. Both men would get equal editorials telling them flatly and plainly, “We do not agree with you, but we shall let you speak your mind, and when you are through prepare for a Helen Thomas-style rip down.”

Sometimes enlightened American college students can be just as dogmatic and partially blinded as the brainwashed residents of an oil-rich radical nation. No matter how strong our beliefs and how heated our emotions, our response should remain consistent: invite these leaders to our universities, let them speak and let them take our questions. When the discussion has ceased, let the world court decide the verdict. When we ignore these leaders, and instead elect to use blind force, we merely end up stuck between Iraq and a hard place (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

In a way, I’m very much jealous of Columbia students, who thanks to their geographic proximity to the United Nations, were given the opportunity to question a ruthless leader’s actions in a forum completely unavailable to even senior level officials within Iran. Perhaps Columbia feels such forums are the perfect way to erode the psychotic reasoning of the world’s worst leaders — the perfect way to force upon them logical analysis. I think our own leader could use a heavy dose of that stuff.

Munier Salem ’10 is a designer at The Sun. He can be contacted at mas335@cornell.edu [1]. Guest Room appears periodically.