 . . . Fall 2000
NYT's Lewis keynotes Freedom Lecture symposium 'It did happen here' By Joel Seguine The symposium at the Law School celebrated the 10th anniversary of the lecture series dedicated to three faculty members who were suspended from the University in 1955 for refusing to give testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1954.
Davis said the "in-house inquisition" that had aimed to find all three defendants "unfit for University service", had failed to remove Markert because "vocal opposition to the repression" by a few faculty and students had proved strong enough to save Markert's job. "It's a pleasure to see some of that valiant band here today," he added.
Lewis, a New York Times columnist, began by observing that although there is "no island of freedom for intellectuals in a totalitarian system" like that in Stalin's Russia, impulses to curb freedom of thou and expression have arisen in the United States, too. "It can happen here. It did happen here." Lewis said, adding that "academic and intellectual freedom cannot be separated from freedom of thought and expression in society as a whole."
After World War II, he said, "Academics went to prison for refusing to testify about their beliefs and associations. And, as I hardly need to say on this occasion, some great universities were, to put it politely, less than courageous in protecting the intellectual freedom of their faculty members."
In our society as a whole today, Lewis said, "we are as free to say what we think as we have ever been and freer than any other people on earth. But it would be a great mistake to believe such broad freedom is unchallengeable."
To illustrate his point, Lewis traced the history of attempts to limit free speech in the United States after the passage of the First Amendment in 1791. In 1798, the Federalist Party began playing on fears of the Jacobin terror in revolutionary France by connecting Thomas Jefferson, leader of the opposition party, with that revolution. Thus began the "paranoid strain" in US politics that, according to Lewis, weaves throughout our history.
The Federalist congress passed the Sedition Act designed to silence opposition newspapers in the run-up to the election of 1800. "Many of the leading Jeffersonian editors were prosecuted and imprisoned under the act before it expired on Inauguration Day, 1801," Lewis said.
Moving to the period of World War I, Lewis cited the Espionage Act of 1917, which prohibited interference with mobilization efforts. Under this legislation, said Lewis, Eugene V. Debs, a Socialist Party candidate for president, was convicted and imprisoned for praising three jailed draft resistors. "This and many other cases prosecuted under this act were all upheld by the Supreme Court on the ground that speech with a 'bad tendency' could be stopped, though some dissenting opinions began to appear," Lewis added.
First Amendment law has seen many changes over the years. "The way the Supreme Court has decided free speech cases has so much to do with the changing nature of our society." It is more affirmative now, he said, exemplified by Justice Hugo Black in a 1959 dissenting opinion, later quoted in the famous 1964 libel case, New York Times v. Sullivan, that "it is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions."
At present, Lewis continued, "we have a surprising new phenomenon-a transformation of attitude about free speech" between the political left and right. "There are now forces on the traditionally liberal left seeking to limit speech, especially on campuses in the form of speech codes" Lewis said. "Speech codes hinder robust debate that should of all places take place on campuses."
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