How leftists 'debate'
Jeff Jacoby
Jewish World Review May 3, 1999 /17 Iyar, 5759
ANOTHER BLAST OF LEFTIST INTOLERANCE for Ward Connerly: The remarkable man
who led the fight to abolish racial preferences in California was invited to
speak about civil rights at the University of Texas Law School a few weeks
back. Connerly is normally an eloquent orator, but he had no hope of
winning hearts and minds in Austin on March 8. A gang of bullies, the
self-styled Anti-Racist Organizing Committee, turned out to prevent him from
being heard.
They resorted to the usual thuggish tactics, yelling insults, pounding the
walls, stomping their feet, waving placards. One poster demanded: "Protect
Free Speech -- Shut Connerly Up!"
This goonish behavior had been advertised well in advance. For days before
Connerly's appearance, AROC had distributed flyers egging students to "shout
him down." On the day he arrived, a columnist in the campus paper urged
students to show that Connerly's "rhetoric will not be tolerated," noting
that "at other universities, fed-up students have forced him off stage."
Time and again, this is how liberals debate: not by joining the
conversation, but by stifling it.
Michael Sharlot, the law school dean, introduced the program with a stern
warning that mob censorship would not be tolerated. The police, he said,
would eject anyone who tried to silence Connerly. But that was just for
show.
The disruption began as soon as Sharlot finished, and he did nothing to stop
the hecklers. Nobody was ejected. The mob got its way. Connerly's message
was drowned out.
At least he's used to it. Connerly has been getting this treatment ever
since the Proposition 209 campaign three years ago. He has been labeled an
Uncle Tom, a Ku Klux Klansman, a traitor to his race, an ethnic "cleanser".
It's vile, but it no longer shocks him.
By contrast, Jay Strader and Berin Szoka, two freshmen at Duke University,
have just had the shock of their lives.
Duke has been debating whether to establish a major in Hindi, a language
widely spoken (though far from universal) in India. The call for a Hindi
major has more to do with multicultural cheerleading than with actual
student demand; Duke already offers four sections of Hindi instruction, and
72 percent of the available seats go begging.
Proponents argue for a Hindi major not on academic grounds, but as a vehicle
for "diversity" and for "welcoming" Indian students. A letter to the
Chronicle, Duke's campus daily, declared that "by not implementing a Hindi
major, this university is ... perpetuating racism and white supremacy." A
Chronicle editorial endorsed the major as a way to foster an "accommodating
climate for Hindu culture" and "provide Hindi professors with job security."
After watching the action for a while, Strader and Szoka weighed in with
letters of their own.
Strader contrasted Hindi with statistics, another field in which Duke does
not offer a major. "Consider the relative usefulness of each subject: The
former is a language spoken in a Third World country overwrought by disease
and poverty, while the latter is a science of proven, inestimable value in
all branches of industry and science." A bit strident, to be sure (and he
meant overrun, not "overwrought"), but clearly relevant and well within the
bounds of campus discourse.
Strader's letter triggered a flurry of rebuttals, most of which sprinkled
him with ad hominem insults -- "ignorant," "blatantly racist,"
"disgusting" -- while praising India's rich and important culture.
Szoka's letter, a week later, came to Strader's defense, and took on the
multiculturalists full-tilt.
"The values of the West -- the power of reason, the sanctity of individual
rights, and the unfettered pursuit of happiness -- are superior to the
values of a primitive, impoverished country like India," he wrote. "Were it
not for the British, whatever 'ancient traditions and rich culture' existed
before their arrival would be enjoyed only by the very top of India's feudal
caste system." There was more in that vein, highly provocative stuff, a
biting retort in the tradition of anti-egalitarian polemicists from H. L.
Mencken to William A. Henry 3d.
Of course Szoka expected a response; he and Strader are excited by
intellectual combat and unafraid of jabbing sacred cows. What they didn't
expect was hate mail, physical confrontations, and death threats.
"If we ever see you out of your room . . ., WE WILL BEAT YOU WITHIN ONE INCH
OF YOUR LIFE and step on you like the little shit that you are," one e-mail
to Szoka warned. Another advised: "Be particularly careful when showing
your face around campus for a while. It might not be a bad idea to bring
some sort of a mask or protection." Vandals broke into Strader's room and
wrote on his computer: "We're going to kick your ass -- Mother India."
Szoka says three students came to his room and threatened to beat him;
Strader was likewise menaced.
The freshmen found themselves likened to Nazis, cursed with four-letter
words, and repeatedly denounced as racists. They've turned the threats over
to the police -- "After Littleton," Szoka says, "you have to take them
seriously" -- but what jolted them most was the realization that their
opponents have no interest in arguing. They had imagined that at a
university anything was open to debate, even -- or especially - the axioms
of political correctness.
Now they are disabused. "It seems like people don't care about ideas here,"
Strader says. "All they care about is protecting their racial or ethnic
turf. That wasn't what I expected when I came to college."
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