Dartblog

Pursuant to the action meeting detailed in this post, a few individuals on campus have organized a massive Rally Against Hate. It is scheduled to begin at two o’clock this afternoon. Flyers, like the one above (artificial graininess applied), have been fanned about and no fewer than three organizations have e-mailed the entire campus. To most people, the rally has the faint feeling of a half-hearted reenactment of the sixties. These are, after all, affluent upper-middle-class students protesting a newspaper whose ideological bend they don’t like. A far cry from beleaguered masses fighting oppression. If you are wondering the cause of the paroxysm, oh, let me tell you a tale.

UPDATE: I’m back, and, well, if you want the headline, it is this: The president of Dartmouth College has condemned the off-campus, independent publication, The Dartmouth Review.

This, to my knowledge, is only the second time this has happened. The first instance was when James Freedman, the previous president of Dartmouth, condemned the right-of-center newspaper in his own rally against hatred. (The ‘hate’ event there? A saboteur inserted a Hitler quote into the newspaper.)

Of course, Freedman’s rally afforded only temporary happiness. He was able to slander the newspaper in print and the College even convicted the editor of the Review of “vexatious oral exchange” — a brand new crime — with a professor who had been criticized in a Review report. The editor was suspended. The regressives at Dartmouth thought they had won.

Until that editor turned to the law. After protracted litigation in New Hampshire, the student won—big. And then it was confirmed beyond a doubt that the Hitler quote was indeed sabotage. Dartmouth, because of its anti-free speech stance and its habit of assuming guilt whenever charges of ‘offense’ were thrown about, was shamed nationally. Is history repeating itself?

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Note: The student above goes on to call for Dartmouth to conduct and investigation of and punish students who are members of The Dartmouth Review.