Good piece, Drew. I also think my husband, Rick, provided interesting perspective on the PSM conference in his Oct. 6 Raleigh News & Observer column. Here is an excerpt:
“Duke can issue all the statements it wants saying that acceptance of the conference isn’t endorsement. Even if you buy that line, by hosting PSM Duke offers a measure of validity to the group’s ideas and agenda. You can’t be a neutral player on your home field.
Duke officials are smart enough to know that. I wish Brodhead had shown more intellectual backbone by acknowledging that hosting PSM is a political choice, not a decision based on free speech and academic freedom.
Making political choices and defending them is something Duke has never been afraid of. This is a university that keeps an eye on the political ramifications of its investments (and has declined to give up its Israel-related holdings). This is a university that helped spearhead a boycott against the Mount Olive pickle company over farmworker rights. And this is a university that out of sheer political stubbornness refuses to recognize appropriately the accomplishments of one its most distinguished law school graduates, former President Nixon. (There’s more to Nixon than Watergate; China, the Environmental Protection Agency and affirmative action for starters.)
And in 1941, it was Duke that extended a faculty appointment to international law and human rights expert Raphael Lemkin, allowing him to emigrate to the United States. Lemkin created the concept of genocide in international law, and his work culminated in the passage of the U.N. genocide convention of 1948.
Frankly, I wish Duke had given PSM leaders a map to Chapel Hill. However, more troubling was the failure to vigorously defend the merits of its judgment. By defaulting to the free speech and academic freedom arguments, administrators showed they prefer the comforts of political correctness to the heat and lessons of political courage.”
