The College Fix

Many political operatives and pundits have had no reservations about using the tragic happenings in Tucson to score cheap points. At my own University of California, even Chancellor Birgeneau has been looking to advance his political agenda. In an open letter addressed to the “campus community” of every student, employee, and alumnus of the University, Birgeneau wrote:

“It calls upon us as an academic community to stop and ponder the climate in which such an act can be contemplated, even by a mind that is profoundly disturbed.  A climate in which demonization of others goes unchallenged and hateful speech is tolerated can lead to such a tragedy. I believe that it is not a coincidence that this calamity has occurred in a state which has legislated discrimination against undocumented persons. This same mean-spirited xenophobia played a major role in the defeat of the Dream Act by our legislators in Washington, leaving many exceptionally talented and deserving young people, including our own undocumented students, painfully in limbo with regard to their futures in this country. …

We must work to support dialogue about our differences and eschew expressions of demonization of others…”

Now, Birgenau has a long history of malappropriation of his office’s resources to advance what seems to be a personal–though certainly very popular–political agenda. Berkeley students have been proselytized on the virtues of immigration reform, increased subsidies for education, sustainability, and the postponement of pension reforms. Yet it takes a special kind of logic to associate an assassination attempt by a deranged lunatic to a state’s execution of Federal immigration laws. And how can anyone simultaneously condemn “demonization of others” while accusing political opponents of “mean-spirited xenophobia”?

Like many in the media and politics, the chancellor calls for a “return to civility,” but one wonders what era’s culture we should return to. Perhaps our Founding Era, when John Adams said, “If Thomas Jefferson wins, murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced. The air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation blacked with crimes. Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames? Female chastity violated? Children writhing on a pike?” Or perhaps the 1850s, when Democrat Congressman Preston Brooks beat Republican Senator Charles Sumner to unconsciousness on the Senate floor. Or maybe the 1910s, when political discourse without government approval was a felony.

The Supreme Court wrote in 1949 that free speech “may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger,” tipping its collective hat to the idea that political agitation is precisely the point of the First Amendment’s protection of the human right to free speech. Politics has never been a clean business in any sense of the word, and it’s time to acknowledge it.

Better still would be to acknowledge that not everything in this world can or should be exploited for political gain, including the tragic attack of an elderly man, a nine-year-old girl, and an engaged, respected congresswoman.

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