| Steven Slosberg |
At Conn, fear muffles the debate
By Steven
Slosberg - More Articles
Published on
09/15/2002
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Connecticut College, it can be said, did not exactly hide Daniel Pipes. But,
in the words of spokeswoman Trish Brink, it “may have forgotten” to notify local
media about his appearance there last week.
Pipes, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Post whose most
recent book is “Militant Islam Reaches America,” was at the college last Tuesday
as part of its annual Distinguished Speaker Series.
Author of 11 books and a recipient of both a B.A. and Ph.D. in history from
Harvard, Pipes appears frequently as a Middle East expert on TV current events
programs such as Crossfire, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Nightline. The Wall
Street Journal, according to Pipes' Web site, has called him “an authoritative
commentator on the Middle East.”
In other words, he's known. So much so that a West Virginia-based white
supremacist, anti-Semitic outfit called the National Alliance apparently follows
him on the lecture circuit. Members of the hate group were at the Conn lecture,
seated in front, and distributed material with such thoughtful themes such as
“We're looking for a few good goyem. You, too, can die in Jew-instigated wars.”
Pipes' appearance at Conn the day before the Sept. 11 anniversary was not
kept entirely quiet by the college. His lecture was posted on the college's
online calendar and included in a brochure about the series mailed to all
alumni.
But the college routinely notifies local media about guest lecturers on
campus, no matter how mundane the topic or the speaker's political stripe.
Someone with Pipes' standing clearly commanded public notice.
“We did do a news release, a media advisory,” said Brink last week, two days
after the lecture. “I sent it to C-Span in the hopes they would cover it. They
didn't. I sent it out at the end of August, three weeks before the lecture.”
So the college, fully aware of Pipes' notoriety, wanted national attention,
but it guarded against widespread local notice.
“We don't publicize every college speaker,” she said. “He's well known and
admittedly a bit controversial. One thing that was considered, according to my
boss, Patricia Carey, was that we anticipated the speaker himself to draw a
large crowd anyway, that we could have a large crowd.”
More than 100 people, mostly students as well as a couple of members of the
National Alliance, attended the lecture in Evans Hall, which could accommodate
three times as many. Few people from the community were there.
Besides apparently pressing concerns about the size of the crowd, Brink also
mentioned sensitivity about the timing of the event vis--vis Sept. 11. “The
academy is all about debate and discussion to enlighten and inform,” she said.
“We did recognize that he was controversial. We heard from certain factions from
inside the campus that had very different political opinions. We tried to be
sensitive to that.” She declined to name the “factions.”
Eugene Gallagher, professor of religion at Conn, helped welcome Pipes as a
representative of departments related to Pipes' address – religious studies,
history and government.
“Pipes says that the declared war on terrorism has failed to identify the
specific enemy,” said Gallagher. “That terrorism is a mode of combat rather than
an enemy that can be fought. But that the ‘enemy' in this war is militant Islam,
which he tries to distinguish from Islam in general.”
Pipes talked about three strains of militant Islam – one associated with
Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran, another with Osama bin Laden and a third coming out
of Egypt.
The National Alliance members did not engage Pipes, but sparred with several
students.
If not at a liberal arts college touting itself as one of the nation's select
campuses, then where should an attentive public look for informed debate on
issues that matter?
With Pipes, though, the college did not just play safe. It played dumb.
This is the opinion of Steven Slosberg.
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