David Back | Free speech for some

Two weeks ago, Angela Davis gave the keynote address of PENN's Women's Week. I think that Angela Davis' career, including her invitation to this University, is a sign of something wrong on many American college campuses.

I believe in freedom of speech. I believe that all people have the right to express their ideas, even if I find them offensive.

I particularly believe that universities should be places where people are free to explore all ideas without fear.

However, I think that a lot of university administrators who claim to value freedom of speech only do so selectively, because they often apply such considerations to certain groups and not to others.

Angela Davis, for instance, was a member of the Black Panthers. In 1970, a group of Davis' friends in the Panthers used an arsenal of guns owned by Davis to take a courtroom hostage in an attempt to free Davis' lover, another Black Panther who was on trial for murder.

The group ended up killing the judge and three others. Davis was acquitted at her trial, arguing that the guns were stolen by her friends and that she knew nothing of the plot.

Davis has since devoted herself to abolishing (not reforming) the prison system by using her academic career as a pulpit for this cause. While calling for the abolition of prisons in America, Davis vocally supported communist regimes which had tens of millions of political prisoners executed or forced into slave labor.

Davis was an active member of the Communist Party for 33 years, twice running for vice president on the Communist Party ticket and receiving the International Lenin Peace Prize.

After her trial, Davis went to the Soviet Union. According to a speech given by Nobel Peace Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, she was approached by a group of Czech dissidents who said to her, "Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You have such great authority now. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those people in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?"

Davis reportedly responded, "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison."

Despite all this, if a person is a sufficiently good scholar and teacher, she should be offered an academic position regardless of her political beliefs.

One of the reasons I am proud to be an American is that Angela Davis is free to say whatever she believes.

If she spoke about the USSR the way she spoke about this government, she and her family would have been executed.

Instead, Angela Davis holds a Presidential Chair in the University of California system, a prestigious title which carries a high salary.

She was also paid $15,000 to speak at Women's Week, according to College senior Lauren Lorberbaum, chairwoman of the Penn Consortium for Undergraduate Women.

But imagine if Ms. Davis' race and political beliefs were different. Suppose that a white woman was involved with a violent white-supremacist organization. Suppose that she bought the guns which her friends used to kill a black judge and three other black people.

Suppose that she was awarded the Mussolini Medal of Honor and said that the people "disappeared" by Pinochet deserved what they got. Suppose that she then spent her academic career calling for the abolition of all immigration into the United States and ran for national office as a Fascist.

Would this woman have a job at any university? Would she have been invited to speak at Women's Week? Would her works be taught favorably by many professors across the country?

I am not saying that the University of California should hire Neo-Nazis to be professors.

But Angela Davis' views are just as radical and just as appalling.

Davis represents a double standard on college campuses which only allows freedom of speech for some, while silencing many ideas which are deemed offensive or inconvenient. Universities (and students) have an obligation to recognize that Angela Davis is a fringe hypocrite.

If they give her a pulpit to preach her beliefs, they must have the courage to allow a truly free exchange of ideas.

David Back is a 2007 College alumnus from Denver, Colorado.

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