1ST AMENDMENT TRAMPLED ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

By: Nat Hentoff Our Columnist Urges Support For SPLC


Much was made in the media of Brown University students --
infuriated by David Horowitz's ad against reparations for slavery
in The Brown Daily Herald -- stealing a press run of 4,000
copies. Many copies of The Daily Californian, the student
newspaper of the University of California at Berkeley, also were
plundered. And at other student papers that ran the ad,
demonstrators invaded the offices, demanding the instant
resignation of editors, among other actions.

Missing from this reporting was the fact that contempt for the
right to publish, and the corollary rights of readers, has been
commonplace on college campuses for more than a decade. Around
the country, the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) in Arlington,
Va., lists 205 such thefts -- sometimes including the burning of
the newspapers -- since it began compiling statistics in 1993.

I've covered many of these attacks in the tradition -- unknown to
these marauders -- of destruction of abolitionist newspapers
before the Civil War, including the murder of Elijah Parish
Lovejoy, editor of the Alton (Ill.) Observer.
Twice, at prestigious Cornell University, many copies of the
conservative Cornell Review were stolen -- first because
of a parody of Ebonics (Black English) and later in indignant
response to a syndicated pro-life editorial cartoon.

Cornell's dean of students initially told me that the first theft
never happened, but I told him I had a photograph of a group of
vigilantes standing beside a bonfire fueled by the Cornell
Review. Standing alongside them was this very dean of
students. He didn't appear to be restraining them. And a
spokeswoman for the university insisted that the pillaging was
simply "a form of free expression."

When I was invited by Cornell's American studies department to
speak there on -- of all subjects -- the First Amendment, I
asked, at a faculty luncheon, why the professors, including First
Amendment scholars at Cornell's law school, had been silent.
There was more silence, except from a blustering public-relations
administrator. As I was leaving, a dean took me aside and said
softly, "I'm glad you said that -- because I can't."

With few exceptions, faculty members and administrators at
colleges -- where these acts of theft and arson have been
committed by future professors, legislators, and journalists --
have kept their peace for fear of being called racist or
antediluvian. When I once asked a Brown University professor,
whose writings I admired, why he hadn't spoken out, he said
curtly, "I keep my classroom a place of free inquiry."

Also neglected in news reports of the fierce responses to the
Horowitz ad was that there are many college and high-school
editors of student newspapers who exemplify what U.S. Supreme
Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. told me he hoped would
happen among students, from elementary schools all the way up.
These student editors -- battling censors in the administration
as well as other students -- have, in Brennan's words, "taken the
words of the First Amendment off the page and into their lives."

Indeed, in speaking at high schools and colleges, I almost
invariably find that nearly the only students knowledgeable about
the First Amendment are reporters and editors of student papers
because they are on the front lines. And they've asked me why the
professional press so seldom covers their commitment to freedom
of the press.

Some grown-up newspaper editors tell me that the publisher of a
paper, the administration in schools, has the right to decide
what can be printed. But, in public schools and colleges, this
publisher is an agent of the state, and the First Amendment kicks
in.

Providing valuable support to "Brennan's Legions" is the Student
Press Law Center, directed by Mark Goodman, who should get a
special Pulitzer citation. The center provides free legal advice
to beleaguered student journalists -- including by phone when
immediately needed -- and its SPLC Report, staffed by college
journalists, provides news of relevant court cases and decisions
as well as other First Amendment news and trends on campuses.
There is also "LegalAlert," a monthly e-mail update on what's
happening in media law. And its 269-page "Law of the Student
Press" is a continually useful handbook.

Among financial supporters of the SPLC are the Chicago Tribune
Foundation, the Freedom Forum, the John S. and James L. Knight
Foundation, the Philip L. Graham Fund, and the Scripps Howard
Foundation.

With more funds, the SPLC could expand its services by setting up
a 24-hour hotline; hold more conferences and workshops for
student journalists and advisers; and insure that any student who
needs a lawyer can get one, pro bono. It has an attorney referral
service, but the SPLC's small staff doesn't have the time to
enlist as many lawyers, especially in rural areas, who would be
willing to sign on.

As Justice Anthony M. Kennedy has said, "The Constitution needs
renewal and understanding each generation, or else it's not going
to last."



Nat Hentoff is a writer for The Village Voice. His
"Getting It Right" column appears monthly in E&P.



Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.