Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2007, this was printed in your newspaper. Would you tolerate it?" Naseem Alavian said she posted that denunciation of Grant Woolard's "Ethiopian Food Fight" cartoon on her Lawn room door because she did not think the comic should be tolerated. But if there were any expression that ought not to be tolerated at the University, it would be a demand that a member of the community be silenced.
Yet that was the demand that was made, explicitly or implicitly, not only by Alavian, but by the demonstrators who marched on this newspaper last week: that Grant Woolard, comic artist and graphics editor, be fired because his expression offended them.
Woolard is no longer a cartoonist or graphics editor at this newspaper.
To be offended at the cartoon was not unreasonable. Woolard depicted Ethiopians as starving savages in loincloths, fighting with furniture. The comic was in poor taste and advanced no discussion. But Woolard has a long record of making jokes in poor taste, at the expense of a wide variety of groups, and his jokes have not always had redeeming value; the real issue in this controversy was not what level of taste would be upheld on the comics page, but whether some people's sensitive feelings take precedence over others' freedom of speech.
Several people with whom I discussed "Ethiopian Food Fight" said the comics page is no place for serious matters. And famine is serious. But Woolard said, "A comic is the medium that can address many different subjects, both serious and trivial." And while many media can do that, comics certainly can -- consider "Doonesbury."
Among the student leaders involved in the protest against "Ethiopian Food Fight" was Morenike Agiri, president of the Organization of African Students. Her short-term goals, goals that appear to have been widely shared, were to procure a formal apology and get Woolard dismissed from the newspaper.
Misael Negash, an Ethiopian student, went further: "This kind of joke is not honor," he said, and those who make such jokes repeatedly ought to be dismissed from the University, or at least suspended for a full year.
Why impose such sanctions? As Agiri put it, "to make sure that anything such as this does not occur again." And that's the problem. The University and this newspaper are committed to promoting, and providing a safe place for, open discussion. If The Cavalier Daily seeks in any way to represent the whole community, it is by welcoming many voices, not by silencing any. As editor-in-chief Herb Ladley pointed out, a wide variety of opinions appear in this section. (And if you'd like to add yours, now's the time to apply.) Open discussion is as important with respect to sensitive issues as in any other context. Quite a few highly sensitive topics are essential to discussing important political issues. When political correctness silences frank discussion of race, for example, or of gender, or of Islam, our discussions of affirmative action, sex roles and the war on terror suffer, and, as a result, so do our practices. When any aspect of a controversy cannot be openly discussed, the issue cannot be fully faced or genuinely resolved. Political correctness will never eliminate social tensions -- it can only perpetuate them in hidden forms, difficult to identify and impossible to resolve.
Agiri and Negash denied that they had challenged the principle of free speech, offering distinctions between Woolard's comic and the expression they were willing to tolerate. Agiri alleged that Woolard's comic had reflected ignorance. Negash said freedom of speech meant freedom of political speech, not "insulting other people."
But political speech cannot be isolated from speech about racial, national, religious and cultural groups, and some of the latter is bound to be negative. And the toleration of error, including error based on ignorance, is necessary for productive discourse; without it, no one can feel safe in expressing his views, because he may be judged to have been wrong. If error is to be cured, it must be expressed.
Toleration must extend to those who argue against it. Yet just as certain soft, social sanctions are appropriate in response to unjustifiably hurtful expressions such as "Ethiopian Food Fight," so they are appropriate in response to intolerance -- and in response to actions that embolden the intolerant.
Grant Woolard seems properly embarrassed to have hurt people with his cartoon, and he has apologized. But there is more shame in this story than just his, and more apologies are needed.
The Managing Board of The Cavalier Daily may have shown bad judgment in printing the comic, but it showed even worse judgment in what it did afterward. Before publication, the comic could have been cut as a matter of good taste and editorial judgment. But once the comic had been published and protesters had attacked the cartoonist and the newspaper, refusing to defend Woolard meant giving at least an apparent victory to the forces of intolerance. Both those who wish to express controversial ideas in this newspaper and those who wish to suppress them will remember that shortly after the protests, and at least seemingly because of them, Woolard ceased to be part of this organization. That is just what the protesters wanted. The Managing Board should be ashamed to have given them what they wanted, and it should apologize to those who count on The Cavalier Daily to practice and protect open debate.
But the worst shame in this case belongs to the protesters, who showed themselves willing to sacrifice everyone's freedom -- including, ultimately, their own --on the altar of their hurt feelings. It is they who owe the greatest apology.
Alexander R. Cohen's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at acohen@cavalierdaily.com.
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