Thinking Out Loud

William R. Brody
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By William R. Brody
"Primal Screaming E-Mail Therapy"
Someday, I will get around to writing that book on my
to-do list: E-mails to the President. What with the
magic of instant electronic communication, people in senior
positions are more accessible to a wider group of
constituents than ever before. The results are not always
pretty. E-mail started out as a great way to stay in touch.
But over the past few years, it seems as if electronic
communication has been transformed from dialogue into
diatribe.
Consider my subject matter for chapter one, which I
plan to title "I Believe in Freedom of Speech, BUT ... ."
Most of this chapter will consist of samples of e-mails
that I receive pretty much on a daily basis. For example,
whenever we have an outside speaker coming to campus, I get
a barrage of messages like the following:
Dear Dr. Brody,
I believe in freedom of speech, but ... how could you
allow your university to be a forum for Professor Blitzfitz
from the Center for Socially Unacceptable Behavior???!! His
presentation will be so biased, it threatens national
security, world peace and the economic viability of the
church of Rev. Revenues. You should be ashamed to allow the
babblings of such a cretin, and, henceforth, I am canceling
all of my contributions to your university!
Yours truly,
Sam Spade
cc: The New York Times
Mayor Michael Bloomberg
The following week, the Rev. Revenues was a guest
speaker at the same seminar series. Of course, neither Sam
Spade nor any of his cohorts lauded the university for
presenting views favorable to their position. Here is a
sample of what I did receive instead:
My Dear President Brody:
How could The Johns Hopkins University allow, in good
conscience, the Rev. Revenue to use the university as a
bully pulpit for his malicious dogma?! I believe in freedom
of speech, but this time you have gone too far. I had
planned to make a large donation to Hopkins, but since you
obviously condone the teachings of this rogue character,
your university is off my list!!!
May your soul rot in h-e-double toothpicks,
Suzy Diamond
cc: Christianity Today
The Pope
Free speech on university campuses always begets
controversy, sometimes rising to front-page national news
when provoked by a particularly incendiary speaker like
Ward Churchill. Whether the speaker is a faculty member at
the host institution or not, universities have always
provided an open forum for ideas. Now, events at Columbia
and the University of Colorado have again stirred the
debate as to whether there are, or should be, boundaries to
the free expression of ideas.
What does not seem to be drawing attention is the
shrillness of debate about free speech, which has come to
resemble something like primal scream therapy. As one of my
colleagues, a president of a large public research
university, exclaimed to me: "Bill, we have become a nation
of screamers!" With half the voices coming from the far
left, and the other half from the far right, it sometimes
seems being a university president that you are the only
one left in the middle. On a graph, the distribution of
views presented in these e-mails looks more and more like a
dumbbell, which, ironically, is the term by which many of
the senders tend to address me. Finding myself on the
receiving end of all this reminds me of the old saw about
how statistics belie reality — there is a man with
his head in the freezer and his feet in the oven, but his
average body temperature is 98.6. I can identify with
that.
Consider the spate of e-mails I received when Sen. Ted
Kennedy spoke recently at Hopkins about the war in Iraq.
They were the same "I believe in freedom of speech, but ...
" messages, this time wondering how we could countenance
the treasonous outpourings of a U.S. senator. Now, there
are lots of things that the good senator from Massachusetts
says with which I personally do not agree; however, I am
completely perplexed why these e-mailers chose to spit
venom on the university for allowing the speech of a duly
elected public official. Why not, for heaven's sake, send
the e-mail message directly to the senator, or write a
letter protesting his speech to The Boston Globe? But no,
somehow it's all the university's fault.
Commencement speakers, usually selected not by the
administration but by our students, also put the president
in the hot seat. No matter who is chosen, I get e-mails
chastising me for such an unfortunate choice: too liberal
or too conservative, too flamboyant, too serious, too
controversial or too bland. At Hopkins, each division has
its own commencement speaker. Not long ago, one division
invited a Republican administration official to speak, and
soon I had dozens of screaming e-mails in my inbox. Of
course, the official chose not to accept the invitation,
but the "damage to the university's reputation," I was
told, was already done. Another year, a very senior
Democratic leader was invited, and — guess what
— there were more e-mails to the president in violent
protest.
When I lived in Italy, I once went to Rome and asked
someone on the street corner for directions to the
Colosseum, in an Italian that was less than optimal. The
volume of the response I received in pidgin English-Italian
got louder and louder as the directions became more and
more complicated, as if increasing volume somehow increases
comprehension. So it has become with e-mail messages of
dissent. Apparently, the shriller the message, the better
to be heard. E-mail shouting has become the 21st-century
incarnation of primal scream therapy: If yelling a little
feels good, then screaming your head off will feel much,
much better. Liberal/conservative, red state/blue state,
Palestinian/Zionist, fundamentalist/atheist, our approach
to any challenging issue is as bipolar as a serious
psychiatric disorder. Where in our thinking can we make
room for voices of moderation, middle-of-the-roaders, for
finding common ground while at the same time allowing space
for the extremes to be heard without being shouted down?
The answer, apparently, lies not within ourselves but
in the Ethernet: Blog on, blog on, blog on!

William R. Brody is president
of The Johns Hopkins University.
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