A-Infos (en) US, Media, Emma Goldman's Words on War Stir New Dispute at Berkeley

[Dan Clore <clore@columbia-center.org>]

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> The New York Times January 14, 2003 - 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."

-- 
Dan Clore


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