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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Censorship has no place at Brandeis
Letters to the Editor | 1/13/09
Posted online at 11:39 PM EST on 1/12/09
/ Last updated at 12:42 AM EST on 1/12/09
To the Editor:
In response to your editorial "Don't invite censorship" (Dec. 9 issue): Well, lots of changes have been made since the time I arrived on campus 54 years ago along with a couple hundred other first-years, including Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Abbie Hoffman and Marty Peretz to name but three who went on to enter the world of speech. It would seem we had more freedom back then than some on campus want now. It is inexplicable that there are students yearning for protection who do not realize they are their own best protectors.
How can that be so? How can we have traveled so far that the election of a black president and the efforts of a Jew to become vice president are accepted with equanimity, but the voices in the wilderness crying out for rights of expression are still so narrowly cherished? I am a latecomer to the JuicyCampus issue, but I find it incomprehensible that there is even one single voice on this campus calling for censorship. Every single person who ever entered this place of learning before you left it in your care with the near-certainty that free speech would never be a problem. We laughed at the idea of three chapels, but not a person in that class, then or now, would have allowed them to be destroyed as by calling for one or both Christian edifices to be torn down.
Letty founded Ms. magazine; Marty owns the New Republic and is its editor in chief; Abbie is dead following a lifelong flight from arbitrary bigotry and hatred of those who are different. And I did not risk my life in the Mississippi of the '60s only to hear voices at the place every one of us loved calling for such outrageous limits. Not one of these people-and they are all politically different-not one of them nor I would ever have accepted the idea that some of the First Amendment does not deserve 100 percent of our intergenerational protection.
I suppose I could be out of step, but I would hate to think so. I cannot believe that anyone, including me, is wasting print, space and speech on this absurd, upside-down issue. Next May, I will return to campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my graduation. Brandeis University taught me how vital the 18th century was to the preservation of my 20th-century ideals. My 21st-century ideals and rights deserve no less attention. The Justice's position on this issue is beyond right. All of the First Amendment rights are worthy of and require our vigilance. I?hope that nothing less will ever be satisfactory.
-Ed Hamada '59
In response to your editorial "Don't invite censorship" (Dec. 9 issue): Well, lots of changes have been made since the time I arrived on campus 54 years ago along with a couple hundred other first-years, including Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Abbie Hoffman and Marty Peretz to name but three who went on to enter the world of speech. It would seem we had more freedom back then than some on campus want now. It is inexplicable that there are students yearning for protection who do not realize they are their own best protectors.
How can that be so? How can we have traveled so far that the election of a black president and the efforts of a Jew to become vice president are accepted with equanimity, but the voices in the wilderness crying out for rights of expression are still so narrowly cherished? I am a latecomer to the JuicyCampus issue, but I find it incomprehensible that there is even one single voice on this campus calling for censorship. Every single person who ever entered this place of learning before you left it in your care with the near-certainty that free speech would never be a problem. We laughed at the idea of three chapels, but not a person in that class, then or now, would have allowed them to be destroyed as by calling for one or both Christian edifices to be torn down.
Letty founded Ms. magazine; Marty owns the New Republic and is its editor in chief; Abbie is dead following a lifelong flight from arbitrary bigotry and hatred of those who are different. And I did not risk my life in the Mississippi of the '60s only to hear voices at the place every one of us loved calling for such outrageous limits. Not one of these people-and they are all politically different-not one of them nor I would ever have accepted the idea that some of the First Amendment does not deserve 100 percent of our intergenerational protection.
I suppose I could be out of step, but I would hate to think so. I cannot believe that anyone, including me, is wasting print, space and speech on this absurd, upside-down issue. Next May, I will return to campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of my graduation. Brandeis University taught me how vital the 18th century was to the preservation of my 20th-century ideals. My 21st-century ideals and rights deserve no less attention. The Justice's position on this issue is beyond right. All of the First Amendment rights are worthy of and require our vigilance. I?hope that nothing less will ever be satisfactory.
-Ed Hamada '59
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Andy
posted 1/18/09 @ 3:17 AM EST
free speech not hate speech
boo--bee
posted 3/10/09 @ 7:19 AM EST
i dont get it
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