By Matt Beienburg
Following recent events, the rightful outrage from our community — including the recent student demonstration in the University Chapel — appropriately galvanizes us to confront racial injustice and shame those who spew hate.
That racism should be condemned could not be more true, and it is precisely what is true that we must always challenge ourselves to uphold. Despite the good intentions behind it, however, I fear the recent student demonstration has failed to do this, with significant, and troubling, implications.
Understandably, many students considered the April 9th message from President Christopher Eisgruber '83 a “tone-deaf” and tepid response to sickening bigotry, and they admirably raised their voices to say so. Yet amid the handful of signs carried into the chapel, one featured the president’s own words: “[Racism] is fundamental to the life of a great University” – Christopher L. Eisgruber.
Such a heinous statement should never have been uttered by Princeton’s president.
The problem, however, is that he never said it. Instead, he wrote:
“Comedy, satire, and stage performances inevitably transgress boundaries. The controversies they provoke may be genuinely painful, but they are also fundamental to the life of any great University.”
We might be inclined to shrug off the revision as hyperbole or an isolated error, or to concede that it’s close enough to what he implied.
Or perhaps the sign simply satirized Eisgruber’s own support for “comedy, satire, and stage performances.” But there’s an enormous difference between a witty caricature and a misleading, false attribution. To ascribe a loathsome quotation to someone who has neither uttered nor remotely implied its content is, as The Daily Princetonian's Editorial Board also observed, “intellectually dishonest.”
This is more than quibbling over the proper rules of bracketed quotations. It’s about our alarming willingness to quite literally substitute the actual beliefs, intentions and words of our perceived political opponents with the worst of what we expect from them.
Unfortunately, this urge extended beyond an isolated sign: the manifesto read aloud during the demonstration echoed the same indictment: “By proclaiming that racism is ‘fundamental to the life’ of Princeton University, this so-called community becomes one that violently excludes students of color.”
There is certainly logic underlying the charge: if performance begets controversy, and controversy can mean racism, then isn’t defending the freedom to create controversy little better than defending racism? But take the same logic: The freedom to trust someone in friendship invites the risk of disappointment, heartache or betrayal. Yet friendship remains fundamental to the human experience, and it would be unthinkable to reinterpret such a phrase as “[betrayal] is fundamental to the human experience.”
This does not lessen the students’ courage nor the credit they deserve for raising their voices. Those of us who do not and cannot ever fully know the pain affecting other members of our community, and who ourselves fail to engage proactively on their behalf, should hear the cries of abandonment and weariness.
Why then, does this matter more broadly?
First, activism, even for good causes, does not give license to distort the truth. If a cause is just, it should prevail because society awakens to the clarity of its truth, not because its advocates more shrewdly bend facts in the wars of rhetoric. Certainly misinformation has been used for great good — like shielding families from the Holocaust — but a habit or comfort with misrepresentation ultimately cripples our ability to perceive justice.
Second, by speaking for, rather than to, those we disagree with, we shut down political dialogue. When warnings of “rising carbon levels” are heard by opponents as a conspiratorial plot for “economic totalitarianism,” or when calls to preserve local self-government become code for the bigotry of segregationist era states’ rights, we close the door to honest discussion. In such cases, should we not listen and discuss, rather than accuse?
Third, racism is not a necessary evil. It is simply evil. Free speech, however, is precious, even though it can be used to do great harm. Students in the demonstration chanted “hate speech is not free speech,” and racist messages will never constitute a productive contribution to campus dialogue. But when even the words of the university’s president can be repackaged into something so odious, should we not consider the ramifications of attempting to arbitrate speech? As the ACLU reminds us, "Verbal purity is not social change. Codes that punish bigoted speech treat only the symptom: The problem itself is bigotry.”
Yes, Princeton is a private institution within its right to decide when someone's contribution to campus climate or dialogue is unwelcome. This isn't about First Amendment protections. It is about, as Eisgruber quoted from the faculty resolution, "the University's fundamental commitment ... to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed."
Finally, let us look beyond our campus to the polarized politics in our country: If we condone the literal rewriting of others’ words amid our eagerness to find them illegitimate, how can we be trusted when advocating the greater truth of our side? Distortions and propaganda are unfortunate realities in politics, but that doesn’t mean we should deal in them ourselves. Lincoln’s words to aspiring jurists should apply no less to today’s political activists, left or right:
“If in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.”
Yes, let us stand up and reject the peddling of hate; let us promote the process of healing. But let us not separate truth from the pursuit of righteousness.
Matt Beienburg is a graduate student at the Woodrow Wilson Schoolfrom Phoenix, AZ. He can be reached at mdb3@princeton.edu.
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