Just when you think you’ve heard the last politically correct, holier-than-thou pronouncement coming out of our university campuses for a while, you open the morning’s newspaper and find more inanities. This morning’s two-minutes-outrage is a rant from campus professors, researchers and administrators criticizing Big Tobacco for giving – and universities for accepting – no-strings-attached grants for health-related research at Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and the University of Massachusetts. 

“Taking money from the tobacco industry to conduct scientific research is like the DA taking money from the Mafia to conduct investigations of crime,” Gregory Connolly, a prof at Harvard School of Public Health, is quoted by the Boston Globe as saying. Connolly may be an expert in his field, but he clearly is ill-informed about how the government funds its anti-Mafia investigations. In fact, state and local prosecutors rely on mob and other criminal money, collected through the asset forfeiture programs enacted in many jurisdictions, to run those investigations and otherwise fund law enforcement offices. Private ill-gotten gains are thus redirected into the law enforcement coffer, then subsequently turned around and aimed back at the criminal syndicates.

Of course, Mafia kingpins aren’t being generous or philanthropic when they “fund” activities that are clearly against their own self-interests through this process. By contrast, the Globe article shows that Big Tobacco is actually voluntarily forking over big bucks for health-related research – especially into those diseases that the companies’ products help cause in the first place. There’s a certain justice to this, no? Besides, what would Professor Connolly prefer Philip Morris do with the money instead of donating it to universities – add to its tobacco advertising budget?

Dr. Michael Siegel of B.U.’s School of Public Health fears that the tobacco companies will be “using the good name” of the various academic institutions. Isn’t that what virtually all donors are trying to do – and does Dr. Siegel propose that our colleges and universities do morality checks before accepting money from donors, much less before naming classrooms or even whole buildings after them? One can barely imagine how lists of alumni and other donors would quickly shrink. And, besides, whose test of morality would apply – Dr. Siegel’s?

One of the rare voices of sanity to come through this morass of pious bleating is that of researcher Rami Tzafriri of MIT. He defends his use of tobacco money “that does not compromise my independence.” It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that such sanity and honesty emanate from MIT, an institution still devoted to rational thought rather than to the latest intellectual and pseudo-political fashions of the day. (That’s why speech is freer at MIT than at most other academic institutions plagued by speech codes, but that’s a column for another day.) Academics at MIT are secure enough in their own professional scruples to understand that the source of their funds will not (at least in the case of no-strings-attached grants) compromise the methodologies or outcomes of their research. What does it say about the integrity of other schools’ faculties when professors start wringing their hands self-consciously, worrying about interference with research?

This interscholastic debate parallels a similar contretemps which broke out in the 1990’s at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). By that time the organization was experiencing severe tensions between, on the one hand, true-believer civil libertarians, and, on the other, those who wanted to turn the venerable organization into a “progressive” political group that would carry forward a political program rather than focus on free speech and other such liberty issues. (Such politicization would devastate the organization’s credibility as an honest broker for liberty. In fact, this battle continues today.) Then Executive Director Ira Glasser defended the group’s acceptance of no-strings-attached grants from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. Morton Mintz strongly criticized Glasser in a series of reports and articles, including a Nieman Report (PDF) and an article in The Progressive. One did not have to be cynical to realize why Big Tobacco would support the ACLU – the companies were dependent on the nation’s tradition of allowing people to harm themselves if they really want do, as well as on the free speech arguments in favor of “commercial speech” (read: tobacco advertising). But as long as the ACLU was in control of how the money was spent, Glasser rightly refused to knuckle under to the PC crowd.

Hey – if the universities decide to do investigations of the good moral character of their donors as well as the ways in which they made their fortunes, I’d like to volunteer to be on that committee. I can probably get material for a few truly awesome columns, if not a screenplay or two.

                                                                    Harvey Silverglate

            There is a common misconception that society pays a heavy price for allowing free speech – emotional harm to members of target groups, leakage of national security secrets, stuff like that. In truth, the substantial positives deriving from vigorous free speech are pretty clear, while the negatives are highly speculative and usually ideologically driven.

            An item in today’s The Boston Globe tells us an awful lot about one enormous societal advantage of allowing free speech. Globe staffer Bryan Bender reports that for over a year a “Burlington-based Internet company hosted a website that taught its members how to outfit a suicide bomber” and other ugly lessons. Some national security fanatics are screaming about this, including a fellow named Yigal Carmon, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and founder of the Middle East Media Research Institute in Washington, who decries “the damage they are causing.”

But the Department of Homeland Security and various American intelligence agencies see the web site as a blessing. They’ve determined that in most cases it’s “preferable to keep such sites operating as a way of tracking the spread of radical Islam, rather than try to quell them one by one.”  Besides, says these government agencies, if these sites are taken down – assuming it would be constitutional to do so – the radicals will “just find another host.”

            So, at least someone in the American intelligence community recognizes that one benefit of allowing free speech is that it helps us know who hates us enough to call for violence against us. It’s like a gay student leader, undergraduate Jason Shepard, said in a speech that I heard him deliver a decade ago at the University of Wisconsin, where the Faculty Senate was debating whether to repeal the campus speech code that banned, among other things, speech denigrating gay students. Shepard pointed out to the would-be censors on the faculty that while he did not particularly enjoy being called “a queer,” he found it useful to know who viewed him that way, so that he knew on whom not to turn his back. Precisely!

The Shepard speech led the Faculty Senate to repeal the faculty’s speech code, the only example of which I’m aware where a faculty repealed, rather than installed, a speech code. The full story is told by Professor Donald Alexander Downs in his fascinating 2005 book, Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus (The Independent Institute).

A report by Boston Globe federal courts reporter Shelley Murphy is as interesting for what it omits as for what it reports.

The story involves what appears to be an allegation that Boston FBI Supervisory Agent Robert Callen either bullied, or harassed, or otherwise acted inappropriately toward an un-named “female federal prosecutor” at a meeting in the federal courthouse in 2006. Callen allegedly came up behind the unnamed prosecutor – who was assigned at the time to the Organized Crime Strike Force – put his arm around her in a headlock, and gave what the Globe article describes as “a Three Stooges-style noogie.”

This office incident – as anyone with an older brother can attest, undoubtedly one of the worst things that can be done to you at a tender young age – led to a year-long investigation and ultimately a recommendation that Callen and two other unnamed agents (let’s call them Curly and Larry) be fired. Of course, the “noogie” itself might not be the grounds for the dismissal recommendation. Rather, investigators from the FBI inspector general’s office concluded that Callen and the two other agents were not truthful when questioned about the incident.

Murphy reveals that her decision not to publish the name of the offended prosecutor was based on a request from Acting U.S. Attorney Michael K. Loucks. However, Murphy apparently learned the victim’s name for the story, and in fact reached the prosecutor, who “now handles drug cases,” by phone.

This instance of the Globe’s skittishness when it comes to publishing “sensitive” information comes on the heels of my recent Boston Phoenix Freedom Watch column. There, I complained about the Globe’s policy of not spelling out the actual four-letter words and other expletives involved in FCC censorship stories, where the actual words are crucial to the legal issues. So yet again I am astounded to see the Globe self-censor and sacrifice truth for style or political correctness – the refusal to publish the name of an alleged victim of harassment while naming the alleged harasser – an especially egregious violation of the public’s right to know since the alleged victim is a public servant and not an ordinary private citizen.

And, while we’re at it, there’s another aspect to the story that is troubling: When regular citizens are caught lying to the feds, the penalty is usually a “false statement” indictment under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001, which makes it a felony, punishable by five years in prison, to make a “material” misstatement to a federal official. Instead of being indicted, the three FBI agents are heading for mere dismissal even though they didn’t tell the truth when talking to investigators. This is just another aspect of the double standards that more and more characterize our culture.

We’re living in a Three Stooges world.

                                             Harvey Silverglate

I have two articles in the March 13, 2008 issue of the Boston Phoenix. In the first, Jan Wolfe and I criticize the ill-advised arrest of performance artist Milan Kohout and follow up on his case, which was dismissed in Massachusetts court. In the second article, I report on newspapers' annoying tendency to censor swear words even when those words are at the core of the story being reported.

I also published an op-ed in the March 15, 2008 issue of the Boston Globe, in which I describe how vague and easily pliable federal statutes have created a situation in which the Department of Justice can concoct a novella-length federal indictment out of disgraced ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer's meeting a prostitute in a Washington, D.C. hotel room. Spitzer's vulnerability to federal prosecution, I argue, is part of a larger trend in federal law enforcement that has surprised defendants who have landed in trouble for acts, unlike the act of prostitution in Spitzer’s case, that they reasonably did not believe were intuitively criminal.

My column in this week’s Boston Phoenix criticized newspapers – and other media outlets that are not subject to the “broadcast indecency” rules of the Federal Communications Commission – for voluntarily “bleeping” out expletives in news stories where the controversial words are central to the story. Why, I asked, do newspapers shy away from full disclosure when the reader’s knowledge of the precise words at issue is essential to understanding what is at stake in the story? Fundamentally, my column attacked the politically-correct circumlocutions engaged in as part of our culture’s obsession with not offending – even at the risk of speaking inaccurately or incompletely.

The evening of the very day that my column appeared, I gave a lecture at Brandeis University about the importance of free speech in higher education. (Anyone wishing to hear the speech may access it here.) In my talk, I emphasized one of the very arguments that I had made in my column – that the use of racial and gender-related and other such epithets, in the context of a discussion where the words themselves are integral to the issue or problem being discussed, should not be evaded simply to avoid offending or shocking ‘polite’ readers. As a meta-discussion of the propriety of using ‘impolite’ words, my speech naturally did feature a few of them in a fully appropriate and relevant context.

But during the Q&A, a Brandeis undergraduate stood up and asked me to apologize for using, as he delicately put it, “the N-word” during my talk. I was taken aback, not because I was embarrassed for having used a disturbing word during my speech, but because an intelligent student – Brandeis is not an insignificant institution of higher learning – obviously was so brainwashed by politically correct diversity counselors, sensitivity trainers, and a small army of speech police in the administration, that he didn’t quite get the point of my speech. It was fine, of course, for him to disagree with my thesis, but for him to have actually expected me to apologize for following my own advice was quite startling. The academy today, so awash in censorship, will never cease to amaze and concern me.

                                    --- Harvey Silverglate

The Boston Globe reported this morning that although Attorney General Michael Mukasey will still speak at this year's Boston College Law School commencement, the school has decided that it would nonetheless "deny Mukasey the Founder's Medal," which celebrates "traditions of professionalism, scholarship, and service which the Law School seeks to instill in its students." Some students had protested against the decision to honor Mukasey, in part "because his position on waterboarding conflicts with the university's Jesuit mission." (Incidentially, would the students and faculty members who are up in arms in defense of BC's 'Jesuit mission' be equally upset having a speaker from Planned Parenthood, Death with Dignity, or Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders -- all of which advocate legal and social positions at odds with Catholic theology?)

Retaining Mukasey as the speaker while not bestowing an honor upon him has the effect of defanging the criticisms of campus activists who are opposed to the viewpoint espoused by the speaker. Indeed, by disaggregating the symbolic function of the invitation (giving him the Founder's Medal arguably puts the law school's imprimatur on Mukasey's views) from the expressive function of the invitation (exposing law students to the highest-ranking lawyer in the Executive Branch), Boston College has made it so no one can claim that the school is ratifying Mukasey's views. Instead, it becomes clear that those who still object to Mukasey's speech simply do not like the idea of hearing speech they disagree with.

Update: The story was originally broken by student reporters at BC Law school's eagleionline.com, which the Globe report failed to mention. Gotta give credit where credit's due.

Writing for the Los Angeles Times (and carried in the Boston Globe), the usually very informative David Savage is a perfect example of the aggravating and puzzling trend whereby newspapers, ranging from national to regional, fail to report adequately on certain stories because stylistic conventions lead them to self-censor. Savage notes that the Federal Communications Commission is asking the Supreme Court to remove a temporary stay order, imposed last year by a federal appellate court, which put on hold the FCC’s decision to impose heavy fines on radio and television broadcasters for “isolated or fleeting expletives.” These banned utterances are dirty or otherwise offensive words that are not scripted, but that slip out accidentally or without advanced planning by the stations or networks.

While Savage’s article is well-intentioned, it’s maddeningly incomplete. When news reports published in venerable publications like the LA Times cover important issues of censorship – or other pressure to avoid the use of allegedly ‘offensive,’ ‘obscene,’ or simply politically incorrect language – those same news outlets’ refusal to repeat the language at issue deprives the public of an opportunity to judge the content and reasonableness of the censorship. Savage writes that “Rock singer Bono uttered an expletive on a live NBC show when accepting a Golden Globe Award in 2003 for best original song. So did Cher after receiving a Billboard Music Award for career achievement on Fox TV a year earlier.”

How are lay readers – or even broadcasters and their on-air guests – to understand the extent to which censorship continues to pervade the broadcast media if they aren’t told the precise offensive language in question? It has always vexed and puzzled me that the news media, traditionally at the vanguard of the fight for free speech rights, engages in such extensive self-censorship when reporting content that is precisely at the heart of censorship battles. It not only fails to inform news readers, but plays into the government’s assumption that it would somehow injure tender ears and eyes to run into a dreaded four-letter word now and then in the public square. As they used to say in my high school locker room: Fuck that shit!

I am reminded of my law school days, from 1964 to 1967, when we studied common law crimes. There was an ancient common law statute outlawing “the abominable and detestable crime against nature.” Though I was still a young buck at the time, I wasn’t born yesterday; I knew that it had something to do with outlawing some kind of disfavored sexual practice. I just couldn’t figure out precisely what practice the statute prohibited. Was it sodomy (oral or anal intercourse) or bestiality (making it with your favorite sheep or other alluring pet), or some other variation of the varieties of outlets for human physical passion? I did some research and found that the “crime against nature” statute had been challenged by a criminal defendant who claimed it was unconstitutionally vague. Under his theory, the wording of the law did not give citizens adequately clear notice as to what practice had been prohibited as a serious sex crime. One court rejected that defendant’s objection by claiming that the term was quite clear and that everyone knows what it refers to – without, of course, describing the offending practice.

Soon after I graduated law school, I argued my first case before Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court. The street vendors of an “alternative newspaper,” published under the name AVATAR by the Fort Hill Community in Roxbury, had been arrested for selling an issue that boasted a centerfold with only four words, writ in extra-large type: FUCK, SHIT, CUNT, PISS. The issue had been published precisely in order to challenge the prudes who had threatened to arrest street vendors and close down the paper – which was, of course, also inconveniently critical of local government bodies, the Boston Police, and the Cambridge Police. The cops who targeted the AVATAR vendors wanted to be sure that their efforts would be successful, so in addition to busting dozens of street vendors for selling the issue to adults, they also arranged for several teenaged sons of police officers to buy the paper from five vendors. I took those five cases to the SJC, which overturned the convictions on the grounds that publishing those four words did not constitute purveying obscenity to minors. The court wrote that while “its authors seem to take pride in the rediscovery of certain four letter words old in Chaucer’s day,” they nonetheless had to find that “this rather sad publication is not obscene.” Note that the court failed, or refused, to repeat the words published in AVATAR. This meant that the published opinion by the highest state court in Massachusetts gave readers no guidance as to what words were constitutionally protected.

We can’t force the courts to describe in detail that which no respectable jurist wishes to utter (at least in a published court opinion), even if those descriptions would provide a useful gloss on state law. But the media have a different role to play – that of providing the public with enough information so that we can be effective rulers of our democratic society – meaning that newspapers should stop acting likes prudes and start doing their job, informing the public rather than “protecting” our delicate sensibilities. It’s time to stop circumventing the publication of sexual and racial and other “forbidden” terms. It’s time to make it respectable once again to report the news in all of its informative – and sometimes tasteless – color.

                                                                                Harvey Silverglate