In rallying to the staffers’ defense, conservatives have called the case a clear-cut matter of freedom of speech and have charged that the students — “sacrificial lambs,” according to Feder — were booted for their conservative views.
Hardly. Given the long and strained relationship between Cole and the Review, Baldwin and company must have foreseen his reaction Although they claim they were acting as journalists doing their constitutionally anointed job, the reality is they were also Dartmouth students, under obligation to abide by Dartmouth’s rather strict rules of conduct. And the same Review staffers who now say their First Amendment rights were violated got into this mess while begging the college to clean up Cole’s “toilet mouth” — without noting that this would violate his free-speech rights.
The pen-lashing the college took in the conservative press was to be expected. Freedman’s speech, however, seems to have taken both the Review and the right by surprise. Finally, someone in the college is refusing to let the school be sullied by a handful of well-connected kids who use the First Amendment as a shield behind which they proffer sexist and racist hatemongering. Rather than threatening the Review’s right to publish, Dartmouth is at last answering the voice that has mocked it for so long. As the National Review gleefully cheered in an early endorsement of the campus tabloid, “Let the battle rage.”
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The Boston Phoenix has been covering the trends and events that shape our times since 1966. These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Dan Peleschuk, Ian Sands, and Eva Wolchover.
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Topics:
Flashbacks
, Politics, Political Policy, Ivy League, More
, Politics, Political Policy, Ivy League, Racial Issues, Social Issues, Racism and Bigotry, Constitutional Law, First Amendment Rights, Law, Martin Luther King Jr., Less
