Matt Kinnaman on Free Speech

New Article by State Committeeman Matt Kinnaman on free speech (or lack thereof) at Smith College.

Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts is a top-tier school with a remarkable story. It was founded as an all-women's college in 1871, one year before Susan B. Anthony was arrested for attempting to cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election.

Nearly a half-century before they were guaranteed voting rights by the 19th Amendment, women were blazing a trail to first-class citizenship at Smith College.

It's no surprise that Smith describes itself as "empowering" and transforming." According to its promotional material, the college is "heady, nervy, intellectually exciting." With its history of promoting civil rights even under hostile circumstances, this is clearly not a campus that would blatantly crush free speech.

But on April 29, that's exactly what happened after guest speaker Ryan Sorba arrived to address an audience in the Smith College library. Sorba is the author of "The Born Gay Hoax," which challenges the premise of genetically-based same-sex attraction.

This turned out to be too much for today's Smith College community. Early in Sorba's presentation, student protesters stormed the library, waved signs, shouted him down, chased him from the podium and commandeered the microphone. The speech was canceled. But was the premise of Sorba's presentation outside the bounds of constitutionally-protected expression? Was it outside the bounds of legitimate academic inquiry?

Not according to Simon LeVay, a gay neuroscientist, and one of the world's foremost voices promoting the paradigm of biologically-based homosexual attraction. Even so, LeVay points out that the scientific community is unsettled on the "gay gene" debate, and in a current PBS report about the nature v. nurture controversy, he asks, "Are the positions taken by researchers merely the expression of their own personal attitudes and prejudices -- whether pro- or anti-gay -- that have been dressed up in academic language?"

This is precisely the type of question students at an "empowering, transforming, heady, nervy, intellectually exciting" college ought to confront at a presentation like Sorba's. Instead, they shut it down, violating the spirit of inquiry and academic integrity on which Smith was founded.
In the cacophony after Sorba was driven from the library, an attendee captured the floor for just a moment: "You guys are all cheering and that's great. I understand you're excited. You won. But what did you really win?"

Excellent question. In August of 1814, the desperate British military burned the Library of Congress. In the aftermath, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts."
The British book-burning rampage was no worse than what happened at Smith last week, because at Smith College the underlying principles of all liberal democratic institutions were trampled in the very halls where they ought to be most protected.

And did it escape the censors' notice that Ryan Sorba's book is still in draft form? His presentation offered the perfect opportunity for listeners to expose flaws in his book through rational critique, prior to its publication. But rational critique has been chased out by a dangerous form of political correctness that threatens the foundations of free inquiry and ordered liberty.

On April 28, the day before Ryan Sorba was silenced at Smith, the American Psychiatric Association provided a foreshadowing when it pulled the plug on a Washington, D.C., conference session titled "Homosexuality and Therapy: The Religious Dimension."

David Scasta, the gay psychiatrist and former APA president coordinating the symposium, said, "It was a way to have a balanced discussion about religion and how it influences therapy. We wanted to talk rationally, calmly and respectfully to each other."

Then the panel's headliner, New Hampshire's Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson, boycotted and forced the event to be canceled. Robinson, who is also gay, claimed that the APA, by including two evangelicals on the panel, was being manipulated by Focus on the Family. Bishop Robinson is quoted as saying, "just my showing up and letting this event happen" would give "credibility" to views he disagrees with.

But isn't "showing up" for the debate integral to our civil liberties? Isn't the guarantee of free speech inseparable from the full enjoyment of first-class citizenship? And isn't censorship of ideas other than one's own a hallmark of totalitarianism?
The answers are powerfully obvious.

Matt Kinnaman's "Getting it Right" column appears every Thursday in the North Adams Transcript.