VOTING DOWN IDEAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030093-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 2, 2010
• Sequence Number: 93
• Publication Date: May 6, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030093-5
ARTICLE p?FERPCD
ON P^hu T
NEW YORK TIMES
6 MAY .983
IN THE NA TION
Voting Down Ideas
By Tom Wicker
Where, if not on the college campus,
should ideas be openly and freely
heard and debated? Who, more than
students and faculty, should uphold
that ideal of the campus as an open
forum for all views?
Free expression is doubly dimin-
ished, therefore, by the actions of ro-
dent and faculty at Barnard and
Smith colleges in opposing for politi-
cal reasons the honors the two schools
had offered to Jeane Kirkpatrick, the
Reagan Administration's chief.de)h
gate to the United Nations.
Mrs. Kirkpatrick also was booed
and heckled oft the stage when she re-
cen'Jy tried to speak at the University
of California i` Berkeley. In view of
student and faculty opposition, she
has refused the Barnard and Smith
honors with the laconic, scathing ob-
servation that "a university or college
is in the most basic sense defined by
its faculty and students."
At Barnard, more than 1,000 suf-
dents had signed a petition protesting
a medal to be awarded Mrs. Kirkpat.
rick., a Barnard alum. The faculty
voted its disapproval of the award, 48
to lE.
At Smith, where student political
opposition already had led her to can-
oe) a scheduled commencement ad-
dress, an honorary doctorate was of.
fered her by school trustees. About
half the faculty then signed a petition
of disapproval.
There's no doubt why students and
faculty at both schools acted as they
did. Theirs is political opposition to an
idea - to Mn. Kirkpatrick's c mtru.
versiaJ views on Central American af.
fairs, apparently a large factor in the
Reagan Administration's policy to-
ward
onetwould argue that Mrs. Kirk.
Patrick is not distinguished as an
academician and as a writer in her
field. No one would argue that she is not
a woman of high ability and achieve.
meat, first in education, now in govern.
meat. No one would argue that she's too
controversial; colleges have awarded
countless honors to persons holding
views at least as hotly debated as bens.
Nor can it be argued twat academic
honors are so precious that they
should go only to the purest and the no
blest. Colleges and universities .rou-
ttnely hand them out to large donors,
to influential politicians, to important
trustees and to commencement
speakers, in lieu of a fee.
(At the University of Kentucky
there's even an old joke about a pro-
pose] to award a doctorate to one of
that state's great thoroughbred race
horses. "It would be," the uaivasity
president Le supposed to have said,
"the first rime we ever gave a degree
to a. hole horse. ")
No, the opposition to honors for Mrs.
Kirkpatrick is politico!. The opposi.
lion believes that her ideas are tmsuit-
able or inferior or immoral .or some-
thing, and therefore should not be
beard, or their author bo?oreed, at
Smith or Barnard. But what then be-
comes of the idea] of an open forum
for ideas? And should there be a
change in the political atmosphere,
what idea and what person might be
considered politically tmacceptab)e
next time?
Not too many years ago, the state
Legislature approved a ban on Com-
munist speakers at the University of
North Carolina. I and other gradu-
ates, together with faculty, adminis-
trators, students and many who had
no Connection with the university,
spoke, wrote and fought against that
so-called "speaker ban" until it was
lifted. I don't see much difference be-
tween the oxtiDAde of the Smith and
Barnard opposition and that of the
Legislature that voted the restriction ;
they both wanted certain ideas to be
banned tram the campus.
. Political debate, including opposition
to government policy, is the essence of
democracy; but so is free expression.
Students and faculty at Smith and Bar.
nard don't have to listen to Mrs. Kirk.
patrick 11 they don't want to; but they
don't have to stifle the speech or the
recognition of someone with a differing
view in order to express their own.
They can voce; they can make sure
their legislators know of their ovoosi-
lion to aid to the Salvadoran Army and
police, or to the C-IA-spoasared farm
in Nicaragua; they can take par. in
rallies, teach-ins, political activism.,
political campaigns.
That they acted as they did, however,
suggests one "Vietnam parallel" of
which even the Reagan Administration
should be wary - the likelihood of an STAT
outraged, embittered, sometimes into)-
erant opposition to its military ap-
proach to Central America.
As in the years of the Vietnam peace
movement, development of such an op-
position will only be fostered by an A&
miaisn ation that ciraimvmt Con. '
gress and a-borfamts consrmttional
procedures; that overstates its case
with doubtful "facts" and wed
claims about its clients and their
'.progress" toward democracy; that in-
vokes a so-caned "moral obligation"
and the "national honor" m the cause of
repressive and sometimes murderms
forces who cannon be disguised as
"good guys." o-?'treeoom fighte s "
Nothing is more divisive than.such
tactics, hence more self-defeating. In
a democracy, Presidents can't for
.long fight a war - even by proxy -
when the public and Congress won't
support it.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/02 : CIA-RDP90-00806R000100030093-5