I include this here as a screen shot because, as of this writing, the piece is no longer available at the YDN’s website [it is back up here.]. When I called to inquire, I was told that this part of their website was experiencing technical difficulties, so perhaps it will reappear in the fullness of time. I know it is hard to read, so until The Yale Daily News overcomes its technical difficulties, here is a transcription of the relevant bits:
Q: What advice did you give Yale about publishing the cartoons?
A: I agreed with the decision by Yale and I certainly think that publishing the cartoons and the likenesses of Muhammad in the way they appeared in those cartoons would have been a gratuitous act.Q: Do you think there would have been violence in reaction to the republication of the cartoons?
A: Certainly the experience has been that up to now the republication of some of these cartoons has caused an even more violent reaction than the initial publication.Q: Would that violence have taken place on Yale’s campus or elsewhere?
A: I think it was a more generic threat. The violence in the case of the Danish cartoons mainly happened abroad in places like Kabul, Afghanistan. But it’s violence nonetheless.Q: When would the concern about possible violence be outweighed by the obligation to protect free speech?
A: It’s a judgment call, of course. The question is: on balance, how much of the academic purpose of this book is stymied by the fact of not publishing the cartoons? I don’t think it’s
stymied at all since the images are accessible elsewhere, especially online.Q: What else influenced your recommendation to the University?
A: What was kind of decisive for me in a way as I looked through the background and some of the material was that the American newspapers took the decision not to publish the images back in 2005. I think one did, but the Washington Post and New York Times and Boston Globe did not.
Readers might be interested in Jytte Klausen’s response to Ambassador Negroponte’s remarks. “Negroponte cancelled my illustrations because of ‘a generic threat’,” she emailed me, “and because he considered the illustrations ‘a gratuitous act.’ I wonder how he knew that? He never read the manuscript?”
I’ve always admired Sydney Smith’s quip that he never read a book before reviewing it because he found that doing so “prejudiced one.” John Negroponte and the other “experts” show that Smith’s witticism is not always a funny remark.
* * * UPDATE: a friend who is knowledgeable about this episode makes an insightful observation about Ambassador Negroponte’s intervention: “Negroponte says that he agreed with the University’s decision. That implies that the University had made up its mind in advance of even getting in touch with him. He agreed. He didn’t counsel or persuade. I view this as crucial in establishing that the University did not operate in good faith—that it was NOT interested in the interests of academic freedom, historical truth or fairness. It was interested from the outset entirely in squelching the cartoons because they would damage what the University perceived as its own, corporate (economic) self-interest. And this comes back to your point about the character of American universities today. As a corporation it acted as any corporation would act—General Motors or Bank of America. To my mind, it has sullied not only its own credibility as a scholarly institution, but it has debased the meaning of the university itself.”
My only quibble is that I suspect that most corporations (thought perhaps not Government Motors) would act a whole lot better.
In the interest of standing up for freedom of speech I have named my colon Mohammed and I’m presently wearing an “I named my colon Mohammed” T-Shirt.
‘Readers might be interested in Jytte Klausen’s response to Ambassador Negroponte’s remarks. “Negroponte cancelled my illustrations because of ‘a generic threat’,” she emailed me, “and because he considered the illustrations ‘a gratuitous act.’ I wonder how he knew that? He never read the manuscript?”’
Again, since the cartoons ARE readily accessible on the web, I don’t see why reading the MS should be a prerequisite for debating their republication. Have you read the MS, Rog?
#1: ‘In the interest of standing up for freedom of speech I have named my colon Mohammed and I’m presently wearing an “I named my colon Mohammed” T-Shirt.’
Funny! Now take a walk through some Brooklyn neighborhoods.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t Toynbee one of the historians who concluded that civilizations, like people, have a fixed life.
I dare say that it is also true for Yale, and the end is nigh! For it has abandoned its defences by inviting in the Trojan horse.
One wonders how Mr Negroponte would react if someone suggested that girl shouldn’t wear a short skirt because it might cause a man to rape her.
it is those who would htreaten violence over the cartoons that should be condemned, not those who would publish.
Yale University Press is staffed by a bunch of weak-kneed pansies who are happy to enjoy the freedom of our civilisation, but are not able to or prepared to fight for that freedom.
Yale University Press’s Donatich said he “never blinked” before when they published a book on Thailand. But it looks like there is a different story on that too:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/18121
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/world/asia/25thailand.html
“Funny! Now take a walk through some Brooklyn neighborhoods.”
Yes, that would provide an excellent illustration of the fact that the First Amendment (and most others for that matter) is meaningless without the Second Amendment.
What good is freedom of the press if the publishers and editors are ballerinas who never grew a pair?
Actually the only newspaper in the country that published the cartoons was the Daily Illini at the University of Illinois. The Editor in Chief was fired as a result because of the fear of violence. As it turned out, there was no violence.
http://tinyurl.com/mzvxko
Left to their own, large institutions will almost always disappoint. Certainly universities should have a different mission than for-profit corporations but ultimately such differences are abstract.
I remember when my school, the University of Chicago, refused to divest its endowment’s portfolio of South African investments; this at the height of apartheid. Their reasons were quite practical: such investments had been profitable. In response to student protests, the then chancellor made a famous statement to the effect that the University of Chicago could get along perfectly well without students. Certainly arguments can be made both ways about whether such behavior is consistent with a school’s mission but this response suggests that it probably wasn’t.
Witness the Catholic Church’s handling of child molestation cases. THEIR mission (the propagation of goodness, godliness, and faith) HAD to have been different than some private corporation or government agency. How well did they adhere to their mission statement?
Yale clearly has to go back to THEIR mission statement and see if in fact they’re really doing the right thing.
Duke of Sharon: “I named my colon Mohammed”
Big deal! Even the most devout Muslims use that name for terrorists and other low-life scum.
Banjo: That’s an insult to ballerinas: they are very tough women who work very hard. (Dancing on pointe isn’t just difficult, it’s painful.)