"At Yale, if we stand for anything, we stand for the free expression of ideas."
--Yale political science professor Steven Smith
Does Yale in fact stand for free expression, or indeed for anything at all, apart from an undue sense of its own importance? These questions are very much up in the air after this month's release of a controversial book censored by Yale authorities, coupled with the author's return to the scene of the crime.
By now most WEEKLY STANDARD readers are aware of the ongoing dispute triggered by Yale's unprecedented, last-minute decision to strip all illustrations, including the relevant cartoon images of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, from a scholarly work on the 2005-2006 Danish "cartoons crisis" (see Christopher Caldwell's "Might Makes Right: Yale University Press blinks," September 7, 2009 and his "Drawing Conclusions: A Danish political scientist revisits the cartoon controversy," October 19, 2009). Never mind that the book had been eagerly solicited, exhaustively vetted, and previously approved in its entirety. For reasons we will explore, Yale's most senior officials belatedly reneged on their previous commitment and ambushed the author with this ultimatum: no illustrations--or no book.
Earlier this month, author Jytte Klausen, a Brandeis political science professor and a Danish native, spoke at Yale in an appearance timed to coincide with the early release of the bowdlerized version of The Cartoons the Shook the World (originally slated for November). Yet by one of those coincidences that bedevil large institutions--where the left hand almost never knows what the right is doing--Klausen's appearance was almost completely upstaged by one of her own protagonists, the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Perhaps one of the lessons of this dispute is that cartoonists (rather than tenured academics) are really the unacknowledged legislators of the world, at least in the eyes of undergraduates and street mobs.
It was Westergaard's appearance before a small, invitation-only gathering that drew national attention and provoked the noisiest challenge to free expression on the Yale campus. Yet for all Westergaard's notoriety--his was the dispute's iconic image provocatively featuring Mohammed with a turban made to resemble a bomb--his appearance drew only about 15 well-behaved protestors at an off-campus site chosen for security reasons. In fact, a visitor to the main campus--like this alumnus--would have been entirely unaware of this event except for the debate carried on in the news and opinion columns of the Yale Daily News.
To call what took place a debate, however, would be a stretch. An unscientific walkabout survey of undergraduate opinion found widespread awareness of the controversy, along with equally widespread indifference about the larger stakes as measured against more personal and immediate concerns. For all the support expressed for free expression in theory, there was also the complacent assumption that actually defending free expression is somebody else's job. The upshot is that one view was represented and went mostly unchallenged, except perhaps in private conversations.
What passed for debate in the public forum proceeded along entirely predictable lines set by the prevailing orthodoxies of identity politics, on the one hand, and of the therapeutic culture, on the other. Rather than arguments based on logic and fact designed to persuade, there were instead expressions of hurt feelings meant to silence and shame, along with demands for protection from uncomfortable or inconvenient points of view. Consider these representative remarks, with key phrases underscored to minimize repetition.
The Muslim Student Association pronounced itself "deeply hurt and offended." "As an institution purportedly committed to making our campus an educational environment where all students feel equally comfortable, we"--who? Yale or the MSA?--"feel that by hosting [Westergaard] Yale is undermining its commitment to creating a nurturing learning environment by failing to recognize the religious and racial sensitivity of this issue."
