Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Professor Walt Visits Montana, Without Dershowitz. Montana Survives via Mondoweiss by Philip Weiss on 9/16/07 A year ago Stephen Walt was invited by University of Montana History Chairman Richard Drake to deliver the school's annual Presidential lecture in Helena. Drake writes that he experienced a fusillade of angry mail -- from other professors. "I have invited more than two hundred speakers to the campus. Walt was the first one to be welcomed with a preemptive barrage of defamatory invective from faculty members."
One of my critics told me before startled witnesses that he would not rest until I had been stripped of my position of power, which manifestly had corrupted me. Someone as insensitive to Jewish issues as I was could no longer be entrusted to coordinate a university lecture series. He initiated a campaign to bring about my dismissal.The charge that Walt was the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier seemed little less than grotesque, but there it was in black and white on University of Montana stationery in one of the many bitter letters that this affair inspired: "It is much as if the university had brought a Holocaust denier to campus and accorded him the honors of a respected guest." Of course, another charge was that unless Drake invited someone to balance Walt--say Alan Dershowitz--he would "leave a dark stain on the President's Lecture Series and the university itself." Drake answers that one by referring eloquently, not to the lobby, but to American government: The government possesses ample resources for celebrating its policies, dominating as it does a wide range of institutions and offices that condition the public debate, and it hardly requires the services of a university lecture series... In a democratic society, all government policies must stand for public inspection. With both of our political parties and the media sharing the same basic ideas about foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, we need a place where the assumptions of the status quo encounter a stern testing, not a happy-faced tribute. The university should be that place. Things you can do from here: - Visit the original item on Mondoweiss - Subscribe to Mondoweiss using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
