A man named Amiri Baraka occupies the post of poet laureate in New Jersey. Appointed last August to a two-year term, Mr. Baraka might have finished out his tenure in quiet poetic reflection, if not for a particular poem he wrote after the Sept. 11 attacks, entitled "Somebody Blew Up America."
In it, he asserts that the Israeli government planned and executed the attacks. At one point, he asks "who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / to stay home that day?" New Jersey's top bard, that is, agrees with conspiracy theorists who find Al Qaeda innocent of the 9/11 attacks.
Baraka's hatred, however, is not reserved for Israelis and Zionists — he famously once told a white sympathizer of the civil rights movement that the best way she could help it would be by dying.
He has served as a mine canary for free speech over the last few months, speaking at venues as varied as Yale and Iowa State. Wherever he goes, he claims a free speech right to spout his hateful invective.
The Prince agrees that Baraka's free speech is as thoroughly protected as everyone else's, but we don't think any community of scholars gains from inviting his hatred. The schools that have invited him to speak have revealed two things about themselves: They are committed to free speech, and blind to bigotry.
State legislators in Trenton, wondering how they ended up sponsoring Baraka, are contemplating a bill to end the post of state poet laureate. It has passed the state senate, and is now bottled up in committee in the assembly. Governor McGreevey, who appointed Baraka in the first place, has said he will sign the bill if it passes, and is refusing to pay Baraka his $10,000 stipend in the meantime.
Whatever happens at the statehouse, Princeton is setting a positive example by declining to invite Mr. Baraka.
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