\doc\web\98\10\leo.txt
To:             	Arthur Hu <arthurhu@halcyon.com>
From:           	John Leo <JLeo@usnews.com>
Subject:        	Columbia the Censor
Copies to:      	<gardend@aol.com>
Date sent:      	Wed, 18 Nov 1998 18:54:54 -0500


   Arthur--This is my  New York Daily News column for today, November 18.
You might want to send it around.


                  Best,
                     John Leo             


Universities keep telling us how committed they are to freedom
of speech. But once the politically correct people start howling about the
wrong sort of speakers, administrators usually fall in line and to find a
way to cancel or discourage the talks.
   This happened to me  Saturday at Columbia University, and it happened
   to
conservative author Dinesh D'Souza and six other speakers. We were invited
to talk at Columbia's Faculty House by Accuracy in Academia, an offshoot
of the conservative media watchdog group Accuracy in Media. We ended up
off-campus, speaking to a tiny crowd on a sidewalk, surrounded by cops and
protestors. 
  As I walked up, one of the protestors recognized me and silently mouthed
the words, "I'm sorry." So at least one person on the left figured out
that there was something wrong with the way Columbia treats dissenters.
   Our Saturday speeches were scheduled to follow a Friday night
invitation-only dinner talk by Ward Connelly. He was the leader of the
successful referendums against racial and gender preferences in
Calfifornia and Washington State, so the campus thought police were
naturally angry that he was allowed to speak. Letters to the campus
newspaper, The Spectator, warned darkly that the "racists" were coming
where they didn't belong.
    Connerly's speech, and the whole two-day event, had been scheduled
    since
August, and Accuracy in Academia had paid a quite high fee for use of the
hall. Seven hours before Connerly's speech, Columbia decided that the
group had to pay an extra $3100, immediately, for beefed-up security
protection. Late charges like this are a conventional way of stopping
incorrect speech, but someone produced a credit card and the surprise fee
was paid.
  A crowd of 250 protestors showed up at Faculty House denouncing Connerly
as a bigot and an Uncle Tom. One demonstrator shouted, "Let's force our
way in," or words to that effect. Nobody tried, but the protestor's shout
became the source of a lot of official concerns about safety for the
speakers and their audience the next day.
   These safety concerns ended up pushing the Saturday speakers off
   campus.
University officials said they had no idea that Accuracy in Media had
invited college students from around the New York area. What would happen
if 700 or 800 people, perhaps many of them disruptive, showed up to fill a
200-person hall? A hand-wringing session was held at the home of
Columbia's president, George Rupp.
  Did the University decide to move the event to a larger hall, or simply
give the speakers a bullhorn and let them speak to a standing crowd in
Columbia's enormous quadrangle? No. That would have made sense. Instead,
Columbia decided it would cut the crowd at Faculty House down to size by
banning everyone who didn't have Columbia I.D. Unsurprisingly, Accuracy in
Academia said "No thanks." It would have meant stiffing all non-Columbia
invitees, perhaps two-thirds of the crowd. Since they concluded that they
were being manipulated by an unprincipled administration, they moved the
talks to a sidewalk off campus as a protest.
  The demonstrators understood that a form of censorship had just been
imposed. That's why they chanted lines that included "Ha, Ha, you're
outside," and carried signs that said "Access denied--we win." 
 As it happens, my speech was going to be about the lack of free
 expression
on the modern politically correct campus--how colleges learn to use speech
codes, conduct codes and sexual harassment rules to intimidate and silence
dissenters. It didn't need many changes to fit Columbia's tawdry treatment
of Accuracy in Academia. I said that the crowd was witnessing a
sophisticated version of the heckler's veto--using safety concerns to
squelch unwanted speech. If I'm wrong about this, and if Columbia and its
president turn out to believe in free speech after all, they can show it
by making sure that Accuracy in Academia is invited back on campus, minus
the rule changes, the extra fee and the heckler's veto.