By James Holstun

At UB, I frequently teach the poetry and prose of the great Puritan radical, John Milton, including his Areopagitica, one of the great documents in the history of free speech. Milton is disgusted by petty bureaucrats who think they have the right to screen potential publications, deciding what sentiments may and may not be voiced and printed. Recent events suggest that UB administrators may need a remedial Milton course (I’m available for a modest fee—contact me!). Particularly for the large-scale community-oriented “Distinguished Speakers Series,” they frequently demand that all questions be pre-submitted for screening and censoring.

Where did this odious notion come from? I don’t remember ever hearing of such a thing ten or twenty years ago, but lately, it seems to be everywhere. Perhaps some hack wrote an article for Nervous University Managers Fortnightly, saying, “Now you can give the appearance of actual free speech without any of the risks!!!” The idea might then have spread like kudzu among anxious bureaucrats, like that other misbegotten post 9-11 invention, “the free speech zone,” which herds demonstrators into discreet corrals.

Most recently, for the October 7 UB lecture by former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, the censorship took the form of “The Blair Student Question Contest”: students presubmitted questions for review, and the lucky winners were invited up on the podium to deliver their approved questions in person. When questioned about the practice, Mr. Dennis R. Black, UB Vice President of Students and emcee for the evening, “said that there was no attempt at censorship and that the questions were merely moderated“—an interesting distinction. Another article summarizes Black’s explanation: “The screening was put in place to prevent repeated questions, condense similar questions and displace irrelevant questions like that of Blair’s age, height, favorite color, and other questions that didn’t pertain to the speech.”

This excuse seems less than persuasive. Anyone who has stood in the cavernous Alumni Arena knows that no one would be likely to stand up in front of five thousand people and ask Tony Blair about his favorite color. And some Distinguished Speakers (such as Michael Moore and Steven Colbert) don’t seem to have any trouble answering direct, uncensored questions. Strangely, those who do tend to be ex-politicians on the make (like Blair, Colin Powell, Karl Rove, and Wesley Clark) who have helped kill thousands of people in the Balkans and West Asia. Do they demand protection from real questions in their appearance contracts? Or do UB organizers obligingly offer the service? We can’t say for sure. But we can say that this sort of censorship stinks like week-old fish, particularly at a public university.

But the best-laid plans of mice, men, and even university administrators often go awry. On October 7th, the Peace, Justice, and Anti-War Coalition of Western New York gathered outside the entrance to Alumni Arena, herded inside a corral made of bike racks—UB’s first “free speech zone,” I think. We mooed, chanted, drummed, and leafleted, trying to draw some attention to Tony Blair’s war crimes. We also protested the censorship of questions and Blair’s staggering speaker’s fee: $150,000, as confirmed by his exclusive agent. Since 2007, when he left office under a cloud named “Iraq,” Tony Blair has become the highest paid public speaker in the world, racking up over $25 million worldwide, not to mention the millions he has “earned” from an Israeli peace prize and from consulting fees and bonuses paid by banks such as J. P. Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services.

 
The high point of the evening occurred inside the hall, during the question-and-answer period. Mr. Nicholas Kabat is a UB Political Science major, co-founder of UB Students for Justice in Palestine, and member of the WNYPC Palestine-Israel Task Force. He was one of the lucky Blair Student Question Contest winners, thanks to the painfully safe and boring that he presubmitted. But at the microphone, he asked a different question of Mr. Blair, who is the (well-paid, of course) Quartet Envoy to the Middle East. He asked him about his response to the recent UN “Goldstone Report,” which charges Israel as well as Hamas with grievous war crimes during the Gaza Massacre of earlier this year.

I won’t talk about the exchange here, which you may view on YouTube, except to say that Mr. Kabat is polished, passionate, and grounded in an understanding of international law, while Mr. Blair bumbles, evades, and sounds positively sophomoric. Please don’t miss Blair on the high point of his recent Mideast work: he is now able to get a good hotel room when visiting the West Bank.

I’m told by the UB student who recorded the exchange that Vice President Black heard the unapproved question with vein-popping disbelief. And Mr. William Regan, Director of UB Special Events, wrote Mr. Kabat to chastise him for departing from the script, saying that he had “violated a trust that needs to exist for a contest like this to function properly.” Truly, there is something exquisitely absurd about the righteous indignation of a censor.

But there is something genuinely inspiring about living, breathing free speech. As Milton said, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.” Elsewhere in this issue, you’ll find Mr. Kabat’s reflections on Tony Blair’s talk and on related matters.