March 20, 2001

‘Unacceptable’ Speech

To the editors:

The opinion piece by David B. Orr ’01 (“Legal, but Unacceptable,” April 9) advocates the removal of offensive material from the Harvard community. It veers so far to the left, however, that it comes out on the far right. In encapsulating the alarming “free speech, just watch what you say” mentality, Orr’s opinion holds that students do not have the wherewithall to decide what is and is not mindless literary garbage for themselves; it takes a top-down approach to decide for them.

He then attempts to couch these views by claiming that he’s not for deeming his targets “illegal,” only “unacceptable” in the Harvard community. This very type of rationale not only has resulted in the tainted presence across the country of campus speech codes limiting free expression, but is the antecedent for such reprehensible acts as the destruction of newspapers at Brown University, an incident resulting from perpetrators finding a news item not “illegal,” just merely “unacceptable.”

I look forward to the day when one of Orr’s written selections, works of art or political views is found not illegal, just merely unacceptable, and subsequently removed from the public forum, to see if his reaction is still the same. Perhaps he should spend a little less time trying to drop in references to the ivory-tower academics he studies, and a little more time considering the real-life consequences of his suggestions.