Columbia, MoveOn.org, and General "Betray Us"

In a recent post, I argued that Columbia University did nothing "wrong" in inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. To the contrary, its invitation to this allegedly "cruel and petty dictator" was well within Columbia's fundamental mission as a university, which is not to "endorse" particular ideas as "right" or "wrong," but to promote a robust and lively and sometimes controversial exchange of views in order to promote the ultimate goal of education.

In this post, I want to draw a subtle but perhaps illuminating connection between the response of Columbia to its own decision to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to campus and the Senate's response to the recent MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times attacking General Petraeus.

Having invited to campus a highly provocative speaker whose views many faculty, students, alumni, and donors find offensive, what is a university to do? In such a situation, the university (and especially its president) is presented with a quandary. On the one hand, the university wants to celebrate its commitment to free speech and to congratulate itself on having the courage to invite such a speaker. On the other hand, it wants to mollify those who despise the speaker and who accuse the the institution of acting irresponsibly by seeming to dignify his views. No sensible university (or university president) wants faculty, students, alumni, and donors to be angry.

This was the dilemma facing Columbia President Lee Bollinger. Although I have great admiration for Mr. Bollinger for his courage and integrity in many other situations he has faced, including especially his leadership of the University of Michigan on the issue of affirmative action, I fear he mishandled the Ahmadinejad dilemma. It was certainly appropriate for Bollinger to introduce President Ahmadinejad and to take that opportunity, as he did, to explain why it was appropriate for Columbia to invite him.

But then Bollinger went further, and directly attacked Mr. Ahmadinejad, asserting that he is a "petty and cruel dictator" who denies the Holocaust, threatens to destroy Israel, promotes terrorism, and violates human rights. Some critics have criticized Bollinger for doing this because it was inhospitable and rude. But that misses the real objection, which is that Columbia University as an institution cannot legitimately take positions on such issues. Because a university must remain neutral on all matters of public policy that do not directly affect the university itself, it should not have a faculty vote, for example, on whether to condemn the war in Iraq, on whether Mr. Bush is a good President, or on whether Mr. Ahmadinejad violates human rights.

Of course, individual faculty members, students, staff, and alumni may state their own positions on such matters with complete freedom. But the university itself should not take such positions. The responsibility of a university is to facilitate debate and disagreement, not to stifle it by declaring an "official" university position. Whenever a university arrogates to itself the authority to "declare" certain positions to be "true" or "false," it necessarily chills the freedom of its faculty and students to take contrary -- officially disapproved -- positions. This should be anathema to any university.

Lee Bollinger is, of course, a member of the faculty as well as president of Columbia University. In his capacity as a faculty member, or in his capacity as an individual citizen, he is completely free to speak his own mind. But when he formally introduced Mr. Ahmadinejad, he was clearly speaking not as Lee Bollinger the professor or Lee Bollinger the citizen, but also as the Lee Bollinger the President of Columbia University. In that capacity, it was entirely inappropriate for him to suggest that Columbia has a party line on these matters. It is easy to see why Bollinger was tempted to do this in order to placate angry donors, alumni, faculty, and students, but he should have resisted the temptation. Columbia University as a university should have no views one way or the other about Mr. Ahmadinejad, period.

This brings me to the flap over MoveOn.org’s recent ad about "General Betray Us." The ad suggested that General Petraeus was “cooking the books for the White House” by presenting to the American public and to the Congress a misleading picture of the situation in Iraq. There is absolutely no question but that this statement was fully protected by the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court has often and clearly explained, the First Amendment embodies “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” The MoveOn.org ad is well within the bounds of this fundamental constitutional protection and well within the long tradition in this nation of challenging our public officials – military as well as civilian.

Nonetheless, the Senate, with the support of many Democrats, adopted a resolution solely for the purpose of condemning the MoveOn.org ad. The resolution states as its supposed “findings” that General Petraeus was unanimously confirmed by the Senate as Commanding General in Iraq, has a stellar education, has served multiple combat tours in Iraq, has taken “a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” and has “amassed a distinguished record of military service.” It then characterizes MoveOn.org as a “liberal activist group” and “strongly condemns” MoveOn.org’s ad for “attacking the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces.”

Just as it is not the business of Columbia University to declare some views “right” and other views “wrong,” it is not the business of the United States Senate to enact resolutions condemning the constitutionally protected expression of private citizens. To be sure, many of us sometimes find the constitutionally protected expression of others offensive. Some of us may despise speech that espouses racial inferiority; some of us may find odious speech calling abortion murder; some of us may dislike the views of presidential candidates on the issue of gay marriage; and some of us may be offended by claims that torture is sometimes moral. In this nation, we are all free as individuals to “condemn” the views with which we disagree, and individual senators, acting in their individual capacities, are similarly free to declare their distaste for certain expression.

But it is not a legitimate role for the Senate of the United States to pass formal resolutions condemning the expression of constitutionally protected views. Do the supporters of this resolution honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Senate officially to condemn those who question the integrity of Vice President Cheney, or the wisdom of Justice Scalia, or the candor of President Bush? Do they honestly believe that it would be appropriate for the Senate officially to condemn those who support campaign finance reform or greater gun regulation or an invasion of Iran?

Such expression, like MoveOn.org’s attack on General Petraeus, is not only protected by the First Amendment, but is essential to the functioning of a self-governing society. For the very same reasons that Columbia University should not declare particular ideas, perspectives, or positions “out of bounds,” so too the United States Senate should foster “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” public debate and not attempt to intimidate citizens by irresponsible public declarations of official condemnation. Such a tactic smacks of the excesses of the McCarthy Era.

Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned us exactly eighty years ago that “the freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth,” that “it is hazardous” in a self-governing society for the government “to discourage thought” and free expression, and that “the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.” Individual senators would have been perfectly within their rights to condemn the MoveOn.org ad, just as Mr. Bollinger would have been perfectly within his rights as an individual citizen or faculty member to condemn Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies. But neither President Bollinger nor the members of the Senate acted wisely or properly in conscripting the official voices of Columbia University and the United States Senate to declare a “politically correct” position for their university or their nation.

Comments

[Erasmussimo]

You write:

"I don't think there is one member of Congress who has said General Petraeus lied to either the House or the Senate."

How about the Speaker of the House? In her blog, Ms. Pelosi contrasts statements made by Mr. Petraeus with objectively established facts. She doesn't actually call Mr. Petraeus a liar; she merely demonstrates that his testimony is contradicted by many other sources.

Source: http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=736

You write, "Your thoughts on the matter are on the fringe of lunacy."

The National Security Network had a recent article entitled "Is General Petraeus's Data Misleading the American People?" and proceeds to present a great deal of information suggesting that he has in fact misled the American people.

Source: http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/195

Mr. Petraeus presented a graph showing that Iraqi civilian deaths had declined from a high of about 3000/month in December 2006 to about 1600/month in August 2007. But here's what other sources say:

"Figures from Iraqi government ministries point to far higher casualty numbers and show that this year, an average of 1,724 civilians a month have died in sectarian attacks, bombings and other war-related violence.

In February, the civilian death toll was 1,646. Last month, it was 1,773, according to numbers from officials in the ministries of Defense, Interior and Health, who cite morgue, hospital and police reports. It was the second straight month that casualties have increased since the security plan began."

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-surge4sep04,0,2280359,full.story?coll=la-home-center

So Mr. Petraeus' figures are contradicted by the figures from the Iraqi government. And don't start with this crap about the Iraqi government being a bunch of "loony liberals" -- they WANT the US military to remain Iraq and have every incentive to support Mr. Petraeus.

And by the way, the US military no longer includes car bombing deaths in its count of civilian casualties:

"Car bombs and other explosive devices have killed thousands of Iraqis in the past three years, but the administration doesn't include them in the casualty counts it has been citing as evidence that the surge of additional U.S. forces is beginning to defuse tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

President Bush explained why in a television interview on Tuesday. "If the standard of success is no car bombings or suicide bombings, we have just handed those who commit suicide bombings a huge victory," he told TV interviewer Charlie Rose."

Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/nancy_youssef/story/16047.html

And here's what the Associate Press had to say on August 25th:

"This year’s U.S. troop buildup has succeeded in bringing violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks around the country is running nearly double the pace from a year ago."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20440397/

And then there's the Washington Post story I cited earlier, with the headline "Experts Doubt Drop In Violence in Iraq
Military Statistics Called Into Question"

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/05/AR2007090502466_pf.html

And while we're at it, let's not forget that charges of deliberate under-reporting of civilian casualties are nothing new:

"The Bush administration routinely has underreported the level of violence in Iraq in order to disguise its policy failings, the Iraq Study Group report said Wednesday."

Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/reports/intelligence/story/15153.html

And here's some material from the Christian Science Monitor:

"Throngs of Iraqis were busily shopping for the weekend when a truck bomb and barrage of rockets ripped apart the market in central Karrada.

Iraqiya television and most Western media outlets reported that 25 were killed and 100 wounded in the July 26 attack, of which virtually no images were shown.

But less than a week later, the names of 92 dead and 127 wounded were posted on a list taped to a shuttered storefront. It was compiled by municipal and civil defense crews that led the rescue efforts.
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One Iraqi official confirmed that the government and the Ministries of Defense and Interior regularly "underreport" deadly acts of violence despite having all the data.
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The government has nonetheless taken several steps in recent months to control how acts of violence are reported.

In May, it barred photojournalists and TV crews from bomb scenes. Earlier, it prohibited hospitals and the Ministry of Health from sharing any toll figures with the media. The government has, on several occasions, publicly chastised the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq and nongovernmental organizations for using tolls compiled by media in their reports."

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0803/p07s02-woiq.html?page=1

So, it appears that the "loony left" must include the government of Iraq, the Associated Press, McClatchy Newspapers, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Iraq Study Group, the National Security Network, and the Christian Science Monitor. Gee, the loony left is getting bigger and bigger all the time. ;-)

So, would you care to retract your statement about my thoughts here being on the fringe of lunacy?

[james]

The University system in the United States has already established that it is more than willing to limit and even repress speech on its campuses. A few examples: Unequal application of campus speech codes (the codes them selves are often unconstitutional University of Tennessee), attempting to expel a student for posting an ethnically insensitive flyer (Cal Polly), forcing the organizers of a peaceful Jewish student protest to apologize for the violence committed by the Palestinian students’ counter protest (University of San Francisco).

[Frederick Hamilton]

Eras, this today from Breitbart news source, thought you might like to know:

US military losses in Iraq for September stood at 70 on Sunday, the lowest monthly figure since July last year, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.
The figure also marks the fourth consecutive drop in the monthly death toll following a high of 121 in May. June saw 93 deaths, July 82 and August 79. The monthly toll in July 2006 was 53.

Two US soldiers were killed on Saturday in separate incidents, pushing the overall toll of American losses since the March 2003 invasion to 3,801.

A surge in US troop numbers saw an extra 28,500 personnel deployed from mid-February, mainly in Baghdad and the neighbouring province of Anbar, although commanders said most were not in combat positions until May.

US commanders say the strategy is starting to work and that levels of violence are dropping, allowing for a possible drawdown of the 160,000 or so troops now deployed.

"The trend is certainly in the right direction," US military spokesman Rear Admiral Mark Fox told a press conference in Baghdad.

"The surge unquestionably is what has been the catalyst that has created the opportunity to have more forces operating in more places at the same time and to deny Al-Qaeda and the extremists safe-haven and to take away sanctuaries."

The highest monthly toll was 137 in November 2004 when a US-led force stormed the insurgent bastion of Fallujah in fierce house-to-house fighting. Of the 137 dead, 126 were killed in action.

In April 2004, the second deadliest month since the invasion for US military personnel, 135 troops died. The month marked a turning point in the war with uprisings in Fallujah in the predominantly Sunni west, and in Shiite cities south of Baghdad."

Or as the Op-Ed piece in the NY Times titled by the two Brookings analysts: "A War we Might Win".

And of course we won't win if the Democrats have their way.

[Erasmussimo]

Mr. Hamilton, you are changing the subject. You called me a reprobate, despicable, loony, and a liar for asserting that Mr. Petraeu's statements are not accurate. I provided an enormous amount of evidence to support my claim. I then asked if you cared to retract your accusations. You have not answered my question. Please do so.

[Frederick Hamilton]

Eras,
Anyone who calls General Petraeus a liar is all of the above. You want to change your tune about General Petraeus being a liar and I'll retract my characterazations of you. I believe General Petraeus is due the respect you say you are due. Those that don't support the war in Iraq can present respectful arguments. You and MoveOn.org don't believe in that approach. You get the response that disrespect generates. Sorry.

As far as changing the subject, you were claiming the casualty numbers are being cooked and it is a fact that the September American military fatalities are the lowest since July 2006. Of the 62, 41 were combat related and 21 were accidental and non combat related. Are those lies also?

[Erasmussimo]

Mr. Hamilton, I confine my conversations to gentleman (and gentlewomen). I am therefore blacklisting you.

[Frederick Hamilton]

Eras,
Whatever. I guess it's good LAK didn't go after you or my remarks would pale in comparison. But so be it. Again, I think it is General Petraeus who deserves not to be called a liar. Ergo I'll wear your "blacklist" of me with pride in defending the commander of our troops in the field. I think I'll have the tropps admiration also in defending their leader.

Peace

[Jack Whorton]

Thank you!

[Steve]

Columbia University claims they are America’s best and brightest?

Did you see the way they applauded Ahmadenijad?

They are just a bunch of filthy Little Eichmanns.

Too bad that Cho Seung-hui didn’t go to Columbia University!

[lam]

libel: a written or oral defamatory statement or representation that conveys an unjustly unfavorable impression b (1) : a statement or representation published without just cause and tending to expose another to public contempt (2) : defamation of a person by written or representational means (3) : the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures (4) : the act, tort, or crime of publishing such a libel