Response to the Lewandowski Speech at the U of Chicago

BY ANTON FORD

Yesterday, John K. Wilson posted a critique about those opposed to having former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski speak at the University of Chicago. Wilson asked Anton Ford if he wished to respond. Below is his email, and below that is the letter that was sent to the Institute of Politics.

Dear John,

I am surprised that you were willing to publish a critique of a letter that, by your own admission, you hadn’t read. But the letter you requested is attached to this email.

You open your critique with a characterization of the letter that is false in every detail: “A group of student organizations wrote to the University of Chicago calling for Lewandowski to be banned from campus.”

First, the letter was not written by a group of student organizations, but by a group that included faculty, staff and other members of our community. At least one member of that group is a dues-paying member of the AAUP—namely, me.

Second, the letter was not written “to the University of Chicago”. Had you read the letter, you would have known that it was addressed to Robert Costas and David Axelrod, the individuals who were responsible for inviting Lewandowski to campus. The letter did not ask the University administration—or anyone with authority over the Costas and Axelrod—to do anything. It was addressed to Costas and Axelrod themselves. The letter asked them to rescind their invitation to Lewandowski, and to stop inviting Trump surrogates to campus. It argued that, in the circumstances, it was inappropriate to invite such people into our community.

Third, the letter did not call for Lewandowski to be “banned from campus.” Nor did it “demand censorship,” as you suggest elsewhere. To ask one party to refrain from inviting a second party to speak is neither to censor the first party, nor to ban the second. On the one hand, only someone with authority over Costas and Axelrod could censor them; but no such party was addressed by the letter, and the authors of the letter do not have that authority. On the other hand, Costas and Axelrod, to whom the letter is addressed, lack the authority to “ban” Lewandowski—or anyone else—from campus.

Some might find this overly subtle. But not you. You yourself have drawn the relevant kind of distinction. In an article in Inside Higher Ed you are quoted as saying: “People are free to ask that people not use slurs, and people are free to disagree and use them. I don’t see a request as a form of censorship. There’s a vast difference between a discussion about what’s appropriate and a demand for censorship.”

We—the authors of the letter, the ones you deem “misguided”—are free to ask people not to invite Trump surrogates to campus, and people are free to disagree and to invite them. A request is not a form of censorship. And it is not a ban. There’s a vast difference between a discussion about what’s appropriate and a demand for censorship or banning.

You are welcome to publish this email on your blog. I would be happy to debate you.

Sincerely,

Anton Ford
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Philosophy
University of Chicago

Text of the Letter:

February 13, 2017

To David Axelrod and Robert Costas,

It is our understanding that you have extended an invitation to Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, to speak at the Institute of Politics on Wednesday, February 15. We are writing to urge you to withdraw that invitation and to stop providing a platform to surrogates of the Trump administration.

We remind you that the phase of Trump’s campaign that Lewandowski managed was distinguished primarily by the demonization of Mexicans as criminals, rapists, killers and drug-dealers, by the proposal to create a registry for Muslim immigrants, by the courtship of right-wing extremists, by a stubborn refusal to distance itself from endorsements by the Ku Klux Klan—and of course, by the incident that led to Lewandowski’s own dismissal, his arrest for the assault of a journalist.

Lewandowski is not the first Trump surrogate to be invited to the Institute of Politics. Last month, Sean Spicer, Trump’s Press Secretary and Director of Communications, spoke in the same series. By hosting figures like Spicer and Lewandowski the Institute of Politics suggests that the ideas and ideologies they represent are debatable positions within the range of normal politics. Indeed, holding these events as closed-door, collegial “conversations” suggests that such positions are not only debatable, but legitimate and respectable. They are none of these things.

Nothing about a firm commitment to free expression obliges us open our doors to (much less to provide platforms for) those who incite hatred and violence against refugees, immigrants, and minorities—that is, against our students, teachers, co-workers and neighbors. Far from being obliged to welcome Lewandowski, we are obliged not to.

Trump’s rise to power has emboldened the most violent and reactionary elements of our society. Two days after the executive order banning travel for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, a right-wing terrorist murdered six Muslims and gravely injured several more as they prayed in a Quebec City mosque. Although the Muslim ban has been temporarily suspended, it may be reinstated; indeed, it may even be expanded to cover additional countries. In any case, it has already disrupted the lives and sense of security of millions of people, including our co-workers, students, teachers, neighbors and their families.

Muslims are not the only ones who find themselves vulnerable. In recent weeks, Jewish organizations across the country have been targeted repeatedly with bomb threats, and last Friday the Chicago Loop Synagogue had its window smashed and was vandalized with swastikas.

In the midst of all this, Trump has announced that the federal anti-terrorism programs will stop tracking white supremacist organizations.

Since the beginning of Trump’s campaign, our own campus has been visited more than once by white supremacists. Most recently, on Monday, posters were hung across campus by a group called “Identity Europa” reading, “Let’s Become Great Again,” and, “Protect Your Heritage.” Shortly after the election, another group of Neo-Nazis hung posters of Hitler covered in swastikas on the door of the building that houses the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture and the Center for Gender and Sexuality. Two months before that, the David Horowitz Freedom Center—which is identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—hung posters around campus naming individual students involved in the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine and slandering them as “terrorists.”

The University administration has not taken any steps to prevent hate groups from organizing on campus. It has not even sought to inform the campus community that a dangerous pattern is emerging. That is bad enough. But to invite a parade of Trump surrogates is considerably worse. It sends a positive signal to white supremacists that they are welcome here. This exposes the most vulnerable members of our community to even greater risk. That is unacceptable.

U of C Resists

Graduate Students United

Students Working Against Prisons

UChicago Socialists (ISO)

Students for Justice in Palestine

MEChA de UChicago

7 thoughts on “Response to the Lewandowski Speech at the U of Chicago

  1. Banning Lewandowski would violate freedom of speech and imperil academic freedom; requesting that he be disinvited does not. In this case, I think a far more troubling issue is the requirement that the talk be “off the record,” which if nothing else exposes the hypocrisy of an administration that has so trumpeted its alleged opposition to “intellectual safe spaces.” Apparently, such spaces are perfectly fine for some (but maybe not all) invited speakers, but not for students.

  2. Anton—it’s true that I did not see the letter before critiquing what it said, and I did not know that it was a letter to the IOP rather than the administration. That’s unfortunate, but if I want to comment on an issue at the time it is happening, it’s necessary to be timely. And I was mostly commenting on the words from the letter (and from you in the Tribune) that were accurately quoted in context. I don’t know why U of C activists didn’t post the full letter (I looked everywhere for it, including the U of C Resists facebook page and searching for the quoted words), but it would have helped those of us who could only read InsideHigherEd’s inaccurate summary that it was “sent by student groups to the university” and the Chicago Tribune’s inaccurate summary that you were “urging school leaders to rescind the invitation.”

    However, my criticism of the quoted arguments is still accurate, and I still think you are wrong. You argue, “To ask one party to refrain from inviting a second party to speak is neither to censor the first party, nor to ban the second.”

    Yes, it is. You are calling for censorship. You are calling for speakers not to be invited to the University of Chicago by academic programs because you dislike their views. You’re not urging that better qualified speakers should be invited, but that it’s better to have no speaker than to allow a Trump flunky to talk.

    You argue, “A request is not a form of censorship. And it is not a ban. There’s a vast difference between a discussion about what’s appropriate and a demand for censorship or banning.”

    Unlike a request for someone not to use slurs, a request for a speaker not to be invited to speak at all is a form of censorship. It is an effort to have a speaker banned from the university (or in this case, it seems, perhaps anyone who supports Trump). The fact that you want censorship done by the people inviting political speakers rather than the administration doesn’t change the fundamental desire for censorship or the public pressure aimed at banning these speakers. You are embracing the belief of censors that symbolism matters more than intellectual engagement. You believe that a Trump supporter is a symbol of evil, and that merely speaking out against evil is insufficient, that you need to show how deeply committed you are by demanding that such a symbol not speak at all. As Steve Chapman points out, objecting to the debate of ideas as a mere “ceremony” that is “problematic” is deeply misguided.
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman/ct-corey-lewandowski-university-chicago-speech-perspec-0216-20170215-column.html

    If the IOP were only inviting Trump surrogates and excluding critics of Trump, then you might have a point to criticize them. But two people is not “a parade,” certainly not compared to the critics of Trump that the IOP has invited, and the call for IOP to ban all Trump surrogates is an extreme form of censorship.

    Let me give you an example: Suppose that David Horowitz wrote a public letter to the IOP calling upon them not to ever invite Black Lives Matter speakers to campus because of violence by people allegedly inspired by their protests. Would you agree that this would be a call for censorship? Would you agree that this would be an effort to silence voices on campus that Horowitz disagrees with? Would you agree that a program submitting to such demands would tend to have a chilling effect on anyone who might agree with Black Lives Matter activists?

    Now, it may be the case that you personally don’t wish to have the university administration intervene to ban speakers, and I believe you don’t. But that’s certainly not stated in the letter, which calls for the administration to take “steps” to prevent hate groups that logically could include banning Trump supporters from campus, since Trump is blamed for encouraging hate groups.

    I would certainly encourage this coalition of groups to clarify that they oppose any censorship by the administration, and to demand retractions from the media outlets who reported otherwise.

    But I also would encourage you and the other activists who signed this letter to reconsider your tactics. This public call for censorship did not work (the IOP could not give in to censorship), it will not stop hate groups (in fact, it mostly emboldens white supremacists by confirming their delusion that they are an oppressed group), it alienates potential supporters who were unwilling to attend a protest aimed at censorship, and it distracts from the message of Trump’s evil by making censorship of a speaker the central issue.

    • Censorship is a form of coercion. Our letter was not coercive. It was not addressed to anyone with the authority to force Costas and Axelrod to do anything. It was addressed to Costas and Axelrod themselves. They were the ones who had issued the invitations. Our letter appealed to their reason and to their sense of decency—to no avail, as it turns out. One could complain that the argument of our letter was weak and unpersuasive, but one cannot complain that it infringed on anyone’s liberty. If Costas and Axelrod ought to have considered the potential effects of their action—and surely they ought to have (as anyone ought to)—then it cannot have been objectionable to urge them to revisit their decision in light of effects that may have escaped their notice.

      It was open to Costas and Axelrod to explain why they did not find our argument persuasive. For example, they could have denied that there is a robust causal connection between Trump’s rise to power and the spike in hate crimes. They could have denied that inviting a series of Trump surrogates would embolden the white supremacists who are now organizing on our campus. They could have denied that such invitations would further isolate the members of our community who are already under threat. Alternatively, they could have granted all those claims: they could have argued that the intellectual value of their planned event was so significant that it outweighed such lamentable consequences.

      Instead responding to criticism with argument, they cried, “Censorship!” In doing so, they showed how unaccustomed they are to the kind of “rigorous debate” that the University of Chicago claims to prize.

      Your claim that we were trying to censor Costas and Axelrod by articulating our objections to their action is as absurd as the idea that YOU are now trying to censor ME by articulating your objections to my action. When you have an objection to something I am doing, you are free to say so—privately or publicly. I am free to respond (or not) to the substance of your objection, and to change (or not) what I do. When you articulate an objection to what I am doing in order to persuade me to stop doing it, you are not thereby forcing me to stop doing it. Nor are you thereby calling on someone else—e.g. my boss, or my government—to force me to stop doing it. You might even object to someone forcing to me to stop doing it. There is nothing coercive about using an argument to persuade someone to stop doing something. And where no one is being coerced, no one is being censored.

      • Anton, I think the error you’re making is the claim that when you seek to persuade someone of something, it’s never coercive or censorship. But it is when it involves a third party. You’re not persuading Corey Lewandowski; you’re trying to ban him from campus by persuading everyone to disinvite him. Suppose someone came to me and said I shouldn’t have invited you to write a guest post for AcademeBlog and I should disinvite you and delete your post and ban you from AcademeBlog. And I would respond, no that’s wrong, that would be censorship. And then it was explained to me that since this was merely an effort to persuade me to ban you from AcademeBlog, it can’t be censorship because it’s persuasive and not coercive. I think banning you from AcademeBlog would be coercive and censorship. Do you disagree?

  3. Saying that something is “false in every detail” is an extraordinary claim. Let’s look at the evidence:
    A call “to stop providing a platform to surrogates of the Trump administration” sounds like a ban.
    “Far from being obliged to welcome Lewandowski, we are obliged not to” sounds like a ban.

    To be clear, I am using the following definitions:
    Stop = prevent (an action or event) from happening.
    Obligation = an act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound.
    Ban = an official or legal prohibition.

    The evidence suggests that your proposal was, indeed, for a ban.

    It would be wise for those who are against “alternative facts” to communicate clearly, using clearly defined terms.

    • You advise me to communicate clearly, and to use clearly defined terms. I tried to do that in my reply to the original post. But let me try again with the definitions you provide. A ban is an official or legal prohibition. Our letter did not call for an official or legal prohibition. Therefore, it did not call for a ban.

      • Thank you for the clarification. If I understand correctly, the letter invokes a moral (but not official or legal) prohibition against inviting certain individuals to speak. The characterization was false in this detail because it did not properly distinguish between a moral and a legal (or official) prohibition.

        If this is a correct reading, replacing “banned” by “morally prohibited” would correct this error.

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