Reporter Volume 25, No.18 February 24, 1994

Dear Editor:
For the better part of this month, Khalid Abdul Muhammad's visit to UB
has occasioned considerable comment by faculty, staff, students, and
the greater Buffalo community. This, in my judgment, is a very good
sign.
Lively debate is indispensable to the continuation of free thought and
free expression. It would be worrisome in the extreme if the members
of our community had not exercised their right to argue vehemently and
publicly over Mr. Muhammad's presence and message. Absence of comment
would have suggested a dearth of concern for the quality of
thoughtQor, worse, a dearth of thought itself.
Our colleagues and students, however, have amply demonstrated that UB
is actively and seriously examining the implications of some facts of
life in this country. One of them is our remarkable diversity of
origins and beliefs; another, our remarkable tolerance for our own
diversity. With the United States moving toward the 21st century,
toward a time when our people are more diverse than our founders could
ever have imagined, the American "one from many" and the principles
that bind the many into one will be tested again and again. So they
should be. Mr. Muhammad's visit provided an occasion for testing these
fundamentals at UB.
What have we learned from all this? I hope that students have learned
that UB will fiercely protect their right to bring to campus someone
whose thought interests them. I also hope that our students have been
reminded that we do not exercise First Amendment rights in a vacuum;
that, in opening the door to a speaker who espouses one point of view,
we also open the door to opponents of that point of view; that those
whom we might offend, by espousing any point of view, have as much
right as do we to express their opinions; and that we do not advance
the cause of human understanding very far unless we concern ourselves
with the effects of wrongs that others have suffered, as well as with
the effects of wrongs that we and our forebears have suffered. 
As for the rest of the university community, and especially those who
most vigorously opposed Mr. Muhammad's visit to campus: this incident
provided a graphic demonstration that prior restraint of speech has no
place at UB. As it turned out, Mr. Muhammad's talk here was more
restrained than were his widely-censured Kean State remarks; even
though there might have been much in his UB presentation to disagree
with, there was comparatively little that was hateful, and much that
was worth hearing. Moreover, had UB prevented Mr. Muhammad from
speaking, the longterm consequences for others' freedom to speak and
react could have been severe; as a more immediate consequence, we
would have missed an opportunity to hear and ponder a provocative
perspective on the complex and seemingly intractable issues of race in
American history and culture.
A number of colleagues asked me, in the name of UB, to condemn Mr.
Muhammad's Kean State remarks. I am proud that these colleagues
exercised their right to object publicly; however, in asking me for
official censure of these statements, they asked for an inappropriate
institutional intervention. Universities should neither sponsor, nor
advocate, nor censure, nor suppress ideasQnot even ideas that may be
hateful.
I share these colleagues' belief that hateful ideas can have dangerous
consequencesQyes, as history has amply demonstrated not only for
African Americans, but also for so many others. It nonetheless
behooves us to remember Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.'s maxim regarding
the Constitutional concept of free expression: "not free thought for
those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate." The
university, perhaps more than any other institution, must embrace that
conception of First Amendment guarantees. By neither espousing nor
censuring ideas, we ensure that there will be at least one neutral
forum in which any idea, no matter how radical or hateful, may be
heard and critiqued. If the university institutionally censures or
censors ideas, any ideas, it loses its ultimate social function. Our
society simply cannot afford that.
Hating the hateful is not a productive alternative. Listening to what
may be hateful or offensive, without endorsing or censuring it, and
then discussing what it means to usQthat is a productive alternative,
and in keeping with the spirit of the university. So was the
candlelight vigil held at the Student Union on the afternoon of Mr.
Muhammad's talk. Both alternatives are very much in keeping with our
social and intellectual obligations as a public university.
The nineteenth-century British reformer Charles Bradlaugh said,
"Better a thousandfold abuse of speech than a denial of free speech.
The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people,
and entombs the hope of the race." Mr. Muhammad's presentation is
over, but the dialogue that will secure "justice for all," if it is
ever to be secured, continues and must continue. It will do so only if
weQas students and colleagues and citizens at an institution that,
more than any other institution in our society, is defined by freedom
of thoughtQallow all comers to contribute freely and explore their
ideas. That, after all, is why we are here.


		William R. Greiner