Berkeley censors Emma Goldman (fwd)

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               ANDRE    GUNDER      FRANK

Senior Fellow                                      Residence
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Web-page:csf.colorado.edu/agfrank/     e-mail:franka@fiu.edu

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Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 17:51:20 +0100
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@MNET.FR>
Reply-To: Discussions on the Socialist Register and its articles
    <SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YorkU.CA>
To: SOCIALIST-REGISTER@YORKU.CA
Subject: Berkeley censors Emma Goldman

The New York Times
January 14, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/14/education/14BERK.html?ex=1043553356&ei=1&en=4a2d42c425d3289c

Old Words on War Stirring a New Dispute at Berkeley
By DEAN E. MURPHY

BERKELEY, Calif., Jan. 13 - In her own day, the
Russian-born anarchist Emma Goldman roused emotions
including considerable fear with her advocacy of radical
causes like organized labor, atheism, sexual freedom and
opposition to military conscription.

"Emma Goldman is a woman of great ability and personal
magnetism, and her persuasive powers are such to make her
an exceedingly dangerous woman," Francis Caffey, the United
States attorney in New York, wrote in 1917.

Goldman died in 1940, more than two decades after being
deported to Russia with other anarchists in the United
States who opposed World War I. Now her words are the
source of deep consternation once again, this time at the
University of California, which has housed Goldman's papers
for the past 23 years.

In an unusual showdown over freedom of expression,
university officials have refused to allow a fund-raising
appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed
because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of
free speech and her opposition to war. The university
deemed the topics too political as the country prepares for
possible military action against Iraq.

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on
people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their
voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to
the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on
them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech
advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in
darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers
lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born
citizens dare not speak in the open."

Berkeley officials said the quotations could be construed
as a political statement by the university in opposition to
United States policy toward Iraq. Candace S. Falk, the
director of the project and author of the appeal,
acknowledged that the excerpts were selected because of
their present-day resonance. But Dr. Falk said they
reflected Goldman's views, not the university's policies.

Robert M. Price, the associate vice chancellor for
research, said, "It wasn't from nowhere that these quotes
randomly happened to fall on the page." Dr. Falk "was
making a political point, and that is inappropriate in an
official university solicitation," he said.

Dr. Price edited the fund-raising appeal, striking the two
quotations. A third quotation - "the most violent element
in society is ignorance" - was not removed. "We didn't
think that was political," Dr. Price said. About 400 of the
altered solicitation letters were mailed late last month.

The university's action has infuriated Dr. Falk and her
small staff, who work out of a cramped former dentist's
office a few blocks from campus. It has also raised
concerns among scholars at similar documentary editing
projects about academic freedom and free speech.

It was at Berkeley in 1964 that the free speech movement
got its start when the administration tried to limit the
political activities of students.

"I feel this is not the way the university either should or
wants to operate," said Robert H. Hirst, general editor of
the Mark Twain Project, another documentary editing project
at Berkeley. "We just got through creating the Free Speech
Cafe on campus, and we have a free speech archive. How many
times does this have to happen at Berkeley before they
learn?"

Roger Bruns, the acting executive director at the National
Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is
part of the National Archives in Washington, said he had
never heard of a university objecting to a documentary
editing project using quotations from its subject. The
commission provides financing for 40 such projects,
including some for the Goldman Project.

"If it were repeated a number of times, it would have a
chilling effect," Mr. Bruns said.

In protest, Dr. Falk withheld the revised solicitation from
most people on the project's mailing list of 3,000. She
then had an alternative mailing printed at her own expense.


"You can't work on the Emma Goldman Papers Project and fold
on something like this," said Dr. Falk, who sent out 60 of
the new solicitations last week. "We just had to find a way
to get this out."

Since 1980, the project's annual mailing for donations had
included at least one quotation from Goldman, often with
current events in mind, Dr. Falk said. After Sept. 11, the
project sent out a bookmark with a one from 1912: "Out of
the chaos, the future emerges in harmony and beauty."

Dr. Falk called the university's editing censorship and
said it violated the spirit of Goldman's work, which
emphasized freedom of expression. During a time when many
universities depend heavily on government grants and
contracts, she accused the Berkeley officials of worrying
too much about crossing the Bush administration.

"Sadly it is the politics of scarcity and fear, that
instead of opening up they have shut down," Dr. Falk said.
"We are a group with a lot of integrity on a campus that
has a lot of financial problems. We are like the canary in
the mine."

Robert Cohen, an associate professor at New York University
and a co-editor of a new book about the free speech
movement said the university's action reminded him of the
1950's. At that time, Professor Cohen said, professors were
barred from identifying themselves as employees when they
participated in outside activities deemed political.

"This strikes me as being a sign of the times, that
something has changed in the political climate and people
are more tense in the administration," said Professor
Cohen, who worked at the Goldman Project while in graduate
school at Berkeley and remains a consulting editor.

Last Wednesday, Dr. Falk hand-delivered a five-page letter
to the office of Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl that detailed
her concerns.

Dr. Falk said she received a telephone call from the
chancellor on Thursday in which she said he sympathized
with her viewpoint. Though nothing changed as a result of
the conversation, Dr. Falk said the chancellor assured her
that "there would be no retaliation" against the Goldman
Project for speaking out against the university's action.

George Strait, an assistant vice chancellor for public
affairs, said that the decision to remove the quotations
"did not rise to the chancellor level," but that Dr.
Berdahl was aware of the dispute.

"He doesn't necessarily feel the two quotes make a direct
political statement, but he understands how someone can
infer that they do," Mr. Strait said.

Mr. Strait said the dispute was not a free speech issue.
"Clearly Ms. Falk had one opinion on the best way to raise
money for the Emma Goldman Papers Project, and the person
with direct responsibility for supervising that project had
another," he said. "At best, what we are talking about here
is a difference of opinion between two people who are
valued members of the Berkeley community."

Leon F. Litwack, a professor of history who until recently
was the liaison between the administration and the Goldman
Project, said the university's explanations did not ring
true. In purely scholarly terms, Professor Litwack said,
the project had the right to quote any of Goldman's works,
so long as the excerpts were not abridged in a manner that
altered the meaning.

As such, he said, Goldman's views already appear in many
forms associated with the university - from university
publications to high-school curriculum materials prepared
by the project to an Internet site
(http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/) - but no one has
suggested that they are an endorsement of Goldman's views
by the university.

"It seems the administration is mocking freedom of
expression by limiting it," Professor Litwack said. "The
First Amendment belongs to no single group or ideology, but
that message is often difficult to implement even at the
University of California, Berkeley."

Dr. Price, the associate vice chancellor, said the central
issue was not the content of Goldman's quotations.

"We are not saying these quotes should never appear
anywhere in the publications of the Emma Goldman Papers
Project, but that they are not appropriate in the context
that Candace Falk put them in," he said. "She can disagree
with us, but it is not a matter of the First Amendment."