Free Speech and Responsibility

In a statement published in the Harvard Gazette on Nov. 21, the English department announced that it would renew its invitation to Tom Paulin to give a poetry reading at Harvard. In defending this decision, Harvard College Professor and Cabot Professor of English Lawrence Buell wrote, “the English department affirms its belief in the importance of free speech as a principle and practice in the academy,” adding, “while we in no sense endorse the extreme statements by Mr. Paulin that have occasioned concern in the Harvard community, we support a university environment that is host to a diversity of views.”

Let us take Buell and his colleagues at their word. What should we expect next? A distinguished lecture series in which racism, misogyny, and anti-gay discrimination are wrapped in eloquent, perhaps even persuasive, rhetoric? Are these also merely other “points of view” that could be defended in the name of “diversity” and tolerance? Surely not: speakers espousing such positions would never have been invited in the first place. Are some forms of hate speech more protected than others? Having suspended an unwise invitation, the English department inadvertently made Paulin’s presence into a free speech issue. But retreating behind a laudable commitment to the First Amendment does not absolve those who showed such poor judgment in the first place of their responsibility to condemn his anti-Semitic statements. To divorce poetry from politics would be to diminish the power of all language. By the same measure, however, the bland reassurances of the English department provide little comfort. Its actions have already lent credibility and prestige to the indefensible, to the point of presenting anti-Semitism as one more “point of view” among many.

Consider Paulin’s response to those who characterize his statements as anti-Semitic, made in the same interview in which he declared that settlers “should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them;” “I have utter contempt for them. They use this card of anti-Semitism. They fill newspapers with hate letters. They are useless people.” Those who dare to disagree with Paulin are “useless” and full of hatred? What is it that Mr. Paulin suggests we do with “useless people”? Should they too be shot and discarded like garbage on the trash-heap of history, as was done with Jews and others in concentration camps? If he is indeed a poet worth his salt, then surely he is aware of both the power and resonance of words, and, far from using them carelessly, brandishes them deliberately.

In a more recent statement, published in The New York Times on Nov. 28, Paulin ostensibly offers an apology for remarks that the poet himself recognizes are “deeply offensive to all right-thinking people.” I wish that were the end of the matter. His statement, however, only clouds the issue still further. For what does he apologize? Not for “whatever was said in my lengthy exchange”—an odd disclaimer for a poet who supposedly has a way with words—but rather for the fact that “my quoted remarks completely misrepresent my real views.” And what are his real views? “The need to oppose all forms of anti-Semitism” based on “a lifelong commitment to fighting racism in all its forms.” There, however, is the rub. Paulin compares Zionists to the SS, yet at the same time excoriates T.S. Eliot, Class of 1910, as anti-Semitic, professing himself a “Philo-Semite” for whom calls for Israel’s destruction are perfectly compatible with his self-proclaimed credentials as an opponent of anti-Semitism—this because, in his view, Zionism is tantamount to racism. Paulin declares: “You are either a Zionist or an anti-Zionist. Everyone who supports Israel is a Zionist.” This would be a meaningless statement, rather like saying “You are either a carnivore or a vegetarian. Everyone who eats meat is a carnivore,” were it not that for Paulin, Israel is a pariah state and any support for it a crime. In response to this kind of extremism, most Jews, regardless of their views on any peace plan, would respond by asking: with friends like this, who needs enemies?

Claiming that Paulin invokes tropes of anti-Semitism hardly suppresses his free speech rights. If anything, his status as an enfant terrible guarantees him publicity, prizes and platforms at prestigious universities. Paulin declares that there is a “conspiracy of silence” in Britain and that “the Blair government is a Zionist government.” If this classic anti-Semitic slur were correct, however, why is it that Paulin himself hasn’t been silenced? Whether right or wrong, charges of anti-Semitism do not suppress free-speech, any more than do charges of racism. Such charges are part of the hurly-burly of living in a free and open society in which speech, even the speech we hate, is protected. In this same spirit, however, now that Paulin may well come to campus, the English department should not retreat behind the facade of free speech, but should rather exercise the responsibility that this right imposes upon us all and declare themselves openly and forthrightly on the issues that have been raised.

Jeffrey F. Hamburger is a professor of the history of art and architecture.