You may wonder why we are sending you an essay, and not a check. While at CMU, we came to understand that you really only pay lip service to being a world-class University. We wanted an open society, with a free market of ideas. Justices Holmes and Brennan crafted a First Amendment that guarantees this in American society at large. When one unfetters speech, Darwinian magic happens, and bad ideas tend to lose out. But CMU behaves like a neurotic parent, perhaps well-meaning, but overprotective and above all fearful of intellectual upheaval. No one would dream of Hillary Rodham Clinton suing Newt Gingrich because he called her a bitch, yet at CMU calling a student politician a bitch almost got someone brought up on disciplinary charges. The situation has not deteriorated to the level of academic institutions abroad, say, where administrators control what appears in the student press. This may not be a reflection on our student press. While we can imagine Dean Murphy crooning at the Editor in Chief to manipulate the details of the latest scandal, we wouldn't expect him to zero the Tartan's accounts or send in Security. But the situation is nonetheless chilling. There is a climate here in which an accepted way to further one's goals is to intimidate those who oppose them. Such intimidation has two main sources. Warner Hall will act on its own, when it fears that something might offend someone somewhere. It will also act when asked to by student fanatics who lack the skills to defend their causes in public but know how to act oppressed. In an open society, such fanatics would have to brook opposition to their ideas, perhaps to their misfortune. At CMU, they run to Dean Murphy, who complies with their demands for judicial action against critical speech. Not that such actions typically succeed; the point is to shut people up by putting them at risk and wasting their time. The magic of a free market of ideas would seem to be worth a tip from people like us. However, we left home for a reason. If you care to read further, here is a casual retrospective on censorship at CMU. Sincerely, Anthropological Alumnae Censorship-Mindcontrol University, January 1995. Speech is Good, Except When it's Not The first case in our memory was the non-flag-burning in 1990 (possibly 1989). An art student had planned a performance for the Cut. She got permission from Security to burn cotton rectangles of a specified size, having taken all precautions necessary to avoid damage to people, things, and grass. As the performance began, however, Warner Hall got wind that one of these cotton rectangles was an American flag. Whereupon Security's permission was revoked and they were dispatched to shut it down before anything offensive happened. (Matt Ruben covered this extensively for the Student Union.) Applied Victim Theory: The Harassed Megalomaniac Less dramatic but more chilling are the proceedings of the University Disciplinary Committee. The UDC is, among other things, a political tool for student activists. Student Affairs will happily try charges of the kind that some states now have laws against. These laws give recourse to those who can't afford to defend nuisance libel suits brought in retaliation for inconvenient speech. A friend of ours got his in Spring 1994, during the debate over how big a budget increase the Graduate Student Organization should get. The plaintiff, a GSO activist, had threatened half a dozen people for advocating an amount that was too small. Dean Murphy knew of the threats and their political nature. Yet he failed to weigh the fact that demagogues get cranky when they lose. Rather than recommend that the plaintiff take a break from politics and perhaps visit the counseling center that he likes to advertise, Murphy proceeded to try charges of libel and harassment. The grounds: calling a politician a "megalomaniac". The problem is not with the UDC panels themselves. They are typically conscientious, and in this case there was no conviction. The problem is that publicly calling an elected official a megalomaniac can get one tried for libel and harassment. Worse, precedent is typically ignored, so a First Amendment can't even evolve at CMU through reasonable UDC judgements. Murphy's somewhat amazing indulgence of dervishes howling about apostasy has generated a climate in which people are afraid to criticize political figures and talk about unorthodox ideas. Censorship as the Object of Policy The more rabid fanatics study how to justify censorship in terms of policy. One of these testified in the case of the Harassed Megalomaniac. Her theory for that occasion was that bboards can be deemed "workspaces", namely forums where inconvenient speech can be censored. Even a bboard where lively political debate was the standard could be properly deemed a "workspace", overnight and retroactively as the need arose. (Jason Togyer covered the "workspace" theory for the Tartan, doing it justice simply by letting its advocates talk.) The mockery this makes of workplace etiquette falls into sharp relief when one considers that this same student responds to public political disagreements by initiating hostile private confrontations. A Dean of Students with a spine would remind these people that freedom of speech is a high priority for a University, and that competing at speech is more productive than the instinctive desire to hit those meanies in the mouth. This Rabid Fanatic also managed to censor at least one specific post from a bboard. Her alarmingly simple expedient was to harangue a Computing Services employee, with more theory, until he caved and agreed to remove it. The author of the post was never notified, nor were authorities who might be concerned with the implications of Computing Services taking editorial responsibility for bboard content. The post, and evidently the theory with it once its purpose was served, simply disappeared. Policy can be unwieldy, and we've seen it dispensed with. The late Eric Scott Jefferson, an undergraduate here, was pursued by Student Affairs directly in 1992 (possibly 1991), for his posts to womens-center.discussion. No "workspace" theory or other such excuse was invoked. His offense was simply giving offense. Naughty Bits as the Object of Warner Hall Masturbating Warner Hall's recent decision to attempt direct censorship of the Internet was well-discussed last term, by the Tartan, WRCT, and TIME Magazine, but some highlights are worth reviewing. In striking unity, Faculty Senate, Staff Council, and Student Government all picked up on the pathetic nature of Warner Hall's crusade against smut. The crusaders themselves are a relatively small crew sitting in oblivion atop the corporate ladder: Robert Mehrabian, CEO; Bill Arms, the Energizer Bunny of censors before his incompetence got him fired; Provost Paul Christiano, a fundamentalist Catholic with moral concerns; and Vice Provost Erwin Steinberg, the sympathetic administrative toady currently carrying the banner. Erwin Steinberg is such a caricature of an academic that if he didn't exist we would have to invent him. Here is an educator who teaches Ullyses, but doesn't understand that people like him once banned that, too; who supports the right to study "what is appropriate", but doesn't understand that hedges like "what is appropriate" give him away. (His remarks are on record in the WRCT public affairs archive.) To try legitimize his censorship policy, Erwin set up a review committee. And to guarantee the outcome, he chairs the committee and picks its members. One of these, in a fitting irony, is the Rabid Fanatic from the defense team of the Harassed Megalomaniac. On Erwin's committee, she represents the cause of free speech. Thus the committee will endorse the current policy, or perhaps some variation disguised in a theory proving in policy terms that censorship is necessary, inevitable, and justified. The Theory and the Practice of Political Correctness Cartoons, one might think from reading any newspaper, are protected speech. At CMU, it's not so clear. Last term, a cartoon appeared in the Student Union lampooning a trendy political archetype. The artist, "Kandice Korn", apparently chose a pseudonym. This was wise, given the case of the Harassed Megalomaniac. It was also fortuitous: on publication of the cartoon, someone reading herself into the archetype consulted Student Affairs about filing disciplinary charges, on grounds that the cartoon constituted harassment based on religion and sexual orientation. Student Affairs apparently agreed that cartoons could constitute unprotected speech. As Murphy once put it, "Mockery, that twisting of the knife, is reprehensible", though where he learned this we don't know - certainly not from the world's political artists. In the end, this little witch hunt failed when the instigator couldn't wring a name out of the Union staff. This example points to the crux of political correctness, an idea that is meaningful despite the trite and hyperbolic use of the term by the right wing. In a politically-correct environment, anyone can find a protected class of which to proclaim him- or herself a member, and can use protection under this class as an offensive weapon against any speech that he or she objects to. It seems to be a trend, for example, for activists with a plateful of their own causes to pose as queer and to exploit the political identity and judicial protection thus provided. For telltale markings, look for the designation "bisexual". This provides the necessary cover for political queers who wish to avoid the corporeal inconvenience of closeted heterosexuality. A politically-correct environment thus has three essential components: (1) fanatic young activists with mediocre intellects; (2) curious observers; and (3) an overprotective parental authority. The mediocre intellects consume ideological packages - censorship feminism, fundamentalist religion, or perhaps the generic goal of the bureaucrat to increase his or her budget. Such packages represent neat bundles of goals, reasons, and rhetorical symbolism. Though which package a fanatic embraces is largely a matter of circumstance, once the goal is set the trajectory in pursuit of it is ballistic. But curious observers may question the goal and decide to get in the way. The fanatic may then choose to defend the goal, but in the end can simply resort to proclaiming harassment. To make this claim unimpeachable, one need only hint at some connection between opposition to the goal and one's protected status, as with the suggestion that opposition to the GSO budget increase was actually just sexist opposition to the woman who championed it. The parental authority, with no appreciation for the consequences, will prosecute criticism as speech crime, or something else if speech crime is especially hard to construe. One consequence of political correctness is that the original purposes of protecting a class fade into the background as posers import their own goals and conflicts. An example is the Lesbian Avenger who dated the Student Body President (a boy). With credo "Fight the Power!", she engaged the Power in close quarters until she and he had a spat over his deficient radicalism. At that point it became useful to out herself as a heterosexual, so she could beatify herself a survivor of heterosexual domestic abuse. As a result, the gay and lesbian activist discourse was penetrated and divided by a trumped-up, high-profile conflict over an issue that is not even particularly salient, compared to issues like gay marriage and healthy nurturing of gay children. A second consequence is that lampooning or otherwise attacking such posers, in the interest of restoring freshness and relevance to the general discourse, becomes incorrect and hence impossible. Applied Victim Theory: The Direct Action Diva Student Affairs seems bent on allowing CMU to become the politically-correct hell that the right wing fantasizes about, where due process is expendable when somebody says the wrong thing. This past December, a Direct Action Diva brought disciplinary charges against her boyfriend. It began with a series of political arguments, in which the defendant's original sin was to conceive both of himself and of Camille Paglia as feminists. (The defendant has a penis, hence cannot be a feminist. Camille Paglia is simply incorrect, though not as incorrect as, say, Mussolini or Katie Roiphe.) And while cases that would not stand in court can be won in a UDC, as the Harassed Megalomaniac pointed out in one of her threats, misconceiving feminism is a weak case by any standard. To bolster it, Diva trumped up a tussle she had with Defendant, turning it into reckless endangerment, battery, and several other felonies. This is not the first time this particular Diva has trumped up charges to prove a political point. She was advisor to the Harassed Megalomaniac; the advisor serves as lay counsel during a UDC hearing. Sexual harassment hadn't been included in the official charges, presumably because there was no evidence, but this didn't stop Diva and plaintiff from trying to construe it. Diva brought to the hearing a stack of books on feminist theory and sexual harassment, and the plaintiff floated the idea as a trial balloon. Had the panel been curious or sympathetic, an appropriate theory was no doubt handy. The panel was not sympathetic, and sexual harassment failed to stick. Despite this failure to be credible, Diva set out to prove her point in the campus media. Writing in a space paid for by GSO, she toiled to find a subtext of sexism in a political conflict. The result was breathtaking. In a zero-gravity leap of faith, a reference to the victim in her story as "having an axe to grind" invoked a certain "battleaxe archetype" of literary theory (and was hence sexist). Similarly, the adjective "smallminded" invoked "the days when men weighed women's brains to prove they were inferior". Whether or not a given comment was actually about the victim didn't matter, so long as there was an archetype handy; thus, the victim had been depicted as a "witch" because someone had "cast spells" on a third person. Most intricate - and when a man was called a "selfish mentally-retarded quisling", Diva was silent. Quisling had a penis, and got what he deserved. The woman was the victim, by Hera, and it would be proved! When Diva herself became a victim, by virtue of a political spat with her boyfriend, her purpose automatically became his destruction. Trumping up the quarrel for the UDC was not enough. So she approached Defendant's previous girlfriend, convincing her that the bondage scenes she had played out with Defendant four months previously were not consensual after all. Under Diva's patient hand, Previous Girlfriend forgot all about having been awarded the dog collar and other bondage toys during arbitration of her break-up with Defendant. Hand in hand, Diva and Previous Girlfriend went to Murphy together, to press a laundry list of felony charges that implied rape but never actually came out and said it. Murphy, typically the depth of understanding, failed to plum the allegations to see whether they represented a vendetta of some kind, or whether they demanded the attention of a court of law. He could have sent these people either to a mediator or to the police, but perhaps that would have made him vulnerable to allegations of insensitivity, the primordial incorrectness. And perhaps it would have been more work than sluffing off the entire business to a UDC panel. So he acquiesced to trying felonies in a system not equipped to deliver due process. Beyond the contempt this shows for the rights of the defendant, pumping trumped-up domestic-abuse allegations through a Kangaroo Court system will not help society come to perceive domestic abuse as a problem to be taken seriously. Murphy overlooked another detail, namely that Diva's alleged incident occurred off campus, out of CMU's jurisdiction. (Remember this, next time you have a dispute with anyone anywhere and discover that he or she is affiliated with CMU. While court is expensive and rigorous, a UDC is just a phone call away. Reach out and touch someone!) Murphy then conspired with the plaintiffs to arrange two consecutive trials, violating the usual UDC procedure of hearing all manner of scarcely-related charges together. This satisfied Diva: two consecutive convictions would justify expulsion of the accused. And rather than let anyone cool off, Murphy rushed the first trial through during winter break, just a few days before Christmas. When Defendant said he would be going home for break and would therefore be unavailable, Murphy threatened to file charges himself for, of all things, "Failing to agree to a reasonable request by an administrator". Defendant finally hired a lawyer, who asked Murphy to direct all communication to him and to stop harassing Defendant. Murphy refused, ordering Defendant to continue to respond to direct communication. Defendant then discovered that as a rule Murphy refuses to release tapes and transcripts of UDC hearings, even for appeals. The promise in the Student Handbook that tapes and transcripts "may be requested" is apparently a deliberate attempt to mislead parties to the disciplinary process into thinking they have a chance at due process. Murphy seems to have violated due process systematically, in the course of helping one person make it essentially impossible for another to remain here at CMU, let alone get the education he is paying for. With both the Diva and the Harassed Megalomaniac, he ignored the fact that they are political monomaniacs, needing to destroy anyone they have classified as the enemy. Student Affairs seems to have let its disciplinary system degenerate into a mere tactic, though if the picture presented here is substantially incorrect or incomplete, then by all means let it be corrected and completed. The situation cries out for a public accounting. Respect only Meaningless Titles The final incident in our memory is a particularly pure example of the cramped view that Warner Hall takes of academic freedom. When the First Church of Christ, Abortionist was formed as a student organization, Murphy went after them immediately. The grounds: their name might give offense. An administrator who is offended by the name of a student group should find employment outside academia. One can't pretend to pay even lip service to the notion of academic freedom, and simultaneously harass students for giving their political and religious group a name that reflects its political and religious purpose. Murphy's hounding of FCCA was also blatantly hypocritical. He had just opened a branch office here for a national evangelical organization. Paid national delegates now work from this office to penetrate CMU with news of the Risen Lord. In this case, Murphy refused to consider the offense given. Anyone who is secular, or of another faith, should be offended that CMU is sponsoring a nationally-run fundamentalist operation, and that this operation takes up space at the expense of groups that are not only secular but student-run. It might have been predicted that the PC fanatics on Student Senate, such as the Harassed Megalomaniac (who in her oppressed capacity was both GSO President and Student Senator), ardently opposed FCCA's application for non-funded recognition. As an intellectual novelty, FCCA violates orthodox views on abortion, sex, and breeding. Fanatics are ultimately slaves to orthodoxy, and any straying from familiar discourse probably strikes at the very core of their being. In Loco Parentis, Summa Cum Laude December 1994 was the 30th anniversary of the free speech movement, which started when student groups from across the political spectrum at UC Berkeley asked to be allowed to make their ideas available to their peers. On this anniversary, almost to the day, Warner Hall decided to censor a communications medium with undreamed-of potential for democratizing speech. The urge to censor is so generic and innate that people can't see the extent to which they embrace it. Some of these people run CMU. Steinberg is blind to his own hypocrisy, and Murphy sees vindictiveness and thin-skinnedness as appropriate traits for political activists. Some of these people are students who will leave here with worse myopia and paranoia and less curiosity and detachment than they arrived with. Mock or offend them, and automatically become the power to be fought by any means necessary. The alliance between these and the administrators who comply with them is a crime against education. Without minimizing the role of the fanatics, the fault ultimately lies with the administration. Murphy, for example, should be ashamed that he let a disgruntled and paranoid student politician shut down a public debate that she was losing. And he should be sued, if not fired, for handling the recent case of the Diva in a manner guaranteed to fail to deliver due process. In both cases, he lost a chance to teach some life skills to people who can't cope with opposition to their ideas. Steinberg, if he had any dignity, would roll back his attempts at censorship and retire, and make his boss Christiano find some other minion to do the dirty work. It's incredible that an institution calling itself a University would participate in squashing any word or cartoon or bit-stream that gives, or may give, offense. Institutional censorship sets a terrible standard, but perhaps the greatest damage comes from people censoring themselves because of the risk associated with asking the wrong questions in the wrong tone. Beyond all this, CMU may have thrown a catastrophic rock into the pond. At this nascent stage of the Internet's legal history, CMU has done exactly the wrong thing by censoring the Internet on a whim. We may see the ripples for the rest of our productive lives. Meanwhile, as various Kangaroo Courts gear up for the new term, a bitterness begins to linger, and a desire to put CMU well behind us begins to grow.