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California Faculty Association at CSU San Marcos |
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Students and Faculty Defend Academic Freedom and
Free Speech At about noon on September 23, news helicopters circled over CSU San Marcos, TV cameras rolled, and reporters scribbled as Associated Students president Manal Yamout read a protest letter to campus president Karen Haynes. Yamout then handed over more than 500 signed copies of the letter which Haynes carried away through a throng of students, staff, and faculty. The crowd, more than 300 strong, had assembled to protest the administration’s decision to withhold university funding for a speech by Michael Moore, director of the acclaimed documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. To enthusiastic cheers and applause Yamout then announced that Moore would appear anyway, funded with money from private donors. And because there was so much interest and controversy, the event would move from the Escondido Center for the Arts on campus to a much bigger venue, the Del Mar Fairgrounds. This moment capped more than a week of intense organizing. Originally Moore had been scheduled to speak in October 2003, but his appearance was cancelled because of the catastrophic wildfires in Southern California that fall. This September, his agent contacted the University about an available date during a national speaking tour in connection with the release of Fahrenheit 9/11. The chair of the committee responsible for the Intercultural Speakers Series told Haynes of Moore’s availability and the event was approved on Friday, September 10. Later that day, ASI voted 12-3 to provide funding from student activities fees. An official offer was faxed to Moore’s agent the same day. But the following Monday, Haynes sent an email message to the campus community announcing the decision had been overturned. It said Moore’s appearance would be delayed “until later in the academic year, and after the election, pending agreement between his schedule and ours, and until we can consider how to provide a balancing perspective.” Haynes’ announcement provoked immediate and angry responses from across the San Marcos community. Through the day on Monday, students, faculty members and staff sent letters and emails to Haynes asking her to reconsider. By Tuesday, the faculty of two academic departments, Sociology and Visual and Performing Arts, had sent her collective letters of protest. An article on the cancellation appeared in the local daily newspaper, the North County Times, accompanied by an editorial that argued, “Haynes bungled this one” and that urged her to recognize that “good leaders know when to admit they are wrong and change course.” On Wednesday, Jackie Trischman, chair of the Academic Senate, sent Haynes a letter reporting on the many messages of concern the Senate had received from faculty members. Trischman learned that the campus President’s Executive Council would meet that afternoon to reconsider. By early afternoon, CFA members had begun to collect signatures on an open letter from the faculty. It was delivered to Haynes with 42 signatures just before the Executive Council meeting was to begin. The campus received no communication on the results of this meeting until Thursday afternoon, by which time the signatures on the open letter had increased to 86 San Marcos faculty members. When Haynes finally wrote to the campus, it was to say that her decision to withhold the funding had been upheld. Her message argued the “university is prohibited from using state funds for partisan political activity” and that because Moore had stated that “his single goal is to see that President Bush is defeated in this election,” he had moved “from being a controversial filmmaker to being a partisan political figure.” Haynes reiterated her position in a press release the next morning: “As a public university, we are prohibited from spending state funds on partisan political activity or direct political advocacy. After discussion, we concluded that we had two choices—either delay [Moore’s] appearance until after the election, or balance his partisan presentation with an alternative point of view so that we would not violate the law.” California state law does provide, in Stanson v. Mott (1976), that a “public agency may not expend public funds to promote a partisan position in an election campaign.” And Government Code section 8314 similarly states that it “shall be unlawful for any elected state officer, appointee, employee, or consultant to use or permit others to use state resources for a campaign activity . . . which [is] not authorized by law.” In the past, though, these findings have been interpreted strictly to refer to public advocacy of particular electoral candidates by state institutions themselves. It requires a vastly broader reading to apply them to Moore, an invited speaker who is not affiliated with a political organization and who regularly criticizes the policies and platforms of both mainstream parties. Moreover, even if it were accepted that Moore is a partisan figure and that state law prohibits the University from supporting his appearance, the US Supreme Court recently made clear that this would be unconstitutional. In its March 22, 2000 decision in Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System v. Southworth et al., the Supreme Court held that “The First Amendment permits a public university to charge its students an activity fee” for the purpose “of facilitating the free and open exchange of ideas by, and among, its students.” In order to ensure protection of First Amendment rights, the Court also imposed a “requirement of viewpoint neutrality in the allocation of funding support.” In other words, it is a violation of constitutionally-guaranteed free speech rights for a university such as San Marcos even to consider the political viewpoint of a speaker when determining whether or not to fund an event. There is a long and important history in the United States of public lectures and speeches at both state and private universities by figures with strong political views, including by such figures as President George W. Bush. Universities are rightly prohibited from directly endorsing such figures or their views. But as Nancy Sasaki of the San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union argued in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “It’s ludicrous to say you can’t invite any speaker with a political viewpoint.” Here at San Marcos, previous speakers in the state-funded Multicultural Speakers Series, which was to host Moore, include such politically outspoken figures as Angela Davis and Jonathan Kozol. Over the weekend following Haynes’s second letter to the campus, an ad hoc coalition formed that included student activists from the Women’s Studies Students Association and the Progressive Activists Network, along with members of CFA and many individuals. On September 20, coalition members began tabling in the campus’ Founder’s Plaza, gathering signatures on an open letter of protest. As students signed the letter, they were encouraged to hand deliver their copy to the President’s Office. At times, these letters were being delivered at a rate of one every five minutes. Haynes also received a letter, which was published on the editorial page of the Union-Tribune, from Roger W. Bowen, General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors, calling her decision a violation of the principle of academic freedom. Finally, Michael Moore advised the administration that if his invitation to speak was not restored he would sue the university for breach of contract. In the end, it was San Marcos students who found a way to resolve the stand-off. ASI officers approached several private donors, raising over $40,000 in just a few days. As a result, Moore’s appearance went forward with a huge audience of more than 10,000, many times larger than was originally anticipated. ASI gave free tickets to area college and high school students. During his appearance Moore announced that he was "not accepting a single dime for speaking here tonight," and promised to use the private money to establish a fund that would provide an annual grant of $5,000 to the student who "stands up the most to the administration of Cal State San Marcos." Moore told the crowd that he hoped “to encourage students to stand up and fight back and to make Cal State San Marcos a better school and San Diego a better community” and he remarked that nominations for the scholarship should take the form of one-page essays "explaining just how much hell this student has raised and just how successful they were." The CSU system is the largest institution of higher education in the world and it is dedicated to engendering critical thinking and free inquiry. The administration’s decision in this case flatly contradicted that central mission. In the end, though, their clumsy attempt at censorship only brought the student organizers of Moore’s appearance closer to their original goals—to provoke open debate on urgent public questions and to mobilize their fellow students to register and vote. Now it remains for the University to reaffirm of its commitment to the First Amendment and the universally-accepted standard of academic freedom. One concrete way to do so would be to rescind the unconstitutional “free-speech zone” policy that restricts many forms of public discourse to specially designated areas on campus. |
