University Daily Kansan / Monday, February 22, 1988
9
Visit canceled, but issues remain
Faculty considers status of academic freedom, free speech
By Rebecca J. Cisek
Kansan staff writer
The decision Friday to cancel a Ku Klux Klan appearance on campus seemed to have satisfied some faculty members and administrators that academic freedom and free speech rights were preserved. However, others question the pressures involved in the decision and the possible precedent set for other extremist speakers.
Judith Ramaley, executive vice chancellor, said Friday, "Academic freedom has been preserved here." He added, "In this way to handle the difficult material."
Three journalism faculty members decided to cancel the Klan's campus appearance in a reporting class and on KJHK's JayTak 91. But they said they would obtain the Klan's viewpoint through other means.
Mike Kautsch, dean of journalism,
said that the Ku Klux Klan issue was
not typical of what usually happened
to feminist speakers appeared
on campus.
"It also shows how bizarre coinci
dence can thoroughly disrupt efforts to exercise freedom responsibly and can lead to serious conflict based on misunderstandings and misperceptions." he said.
He said the University was totally surprised by the insult felt by the community regarding the Klan's visit.
Kautsch said that when controversial speakers were brought to campus, the community needed to be prepared and the presentation needed to be orderly. He said that that didn't happen last week.
"We were scrambling to explain the situation, all after the fact," he said.
Kautsch said the precedent that was set was that people needed to adapt to changing conditions caused by community reaction.
Harry Jones, the journalism instructor whose reporting class was to have interviewed the Klansmen on campus, said he planned a field trip to provide the same opportunity. He said he hadn't sacrificed academic freedom or freedom of speech by
moving the interview off campus.
But Jones said he didn't agree completely with the community's rationalization for not having the Klansmen on campus
"I wish the protesters would realize that a university campus should be the first place that divergent views should be discussed," he said.
Sam Adams, an associate professor of journalism who spoke about the Klan issue in Jones' class Wednesday, said the cancellation did not prevent exploration of the ideas of the Klansmen.
But others are unsure whether the Klansmen's freedom of speech was retained. They also question what precedent was set for future extremist speakers.
Dwight Kiel, assistant professor of political science, said he was worried about the University's image as a result of the cancellation. "It doesn't make the University look like a place of free ideas," he said.
Kiel said that he didn't know if freedoms had been abridged but that it appeared that pressure caused the
faculty to make decisions they nor mally would not have made.
He also said that the situation made students appear incapable of properly dealing with controversial issues.
"This is not the first time this sort of thing has gone on," he said.
Jim Seaver, professor of history, said he wondered what other groups would not be able to appear on campus as a result of the cancellation of the Klan's visit.
The Rev. Emmanuel Cleaver, pastor of St. James-Paseo United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Mo., and vice mayor of Kansas City, Mo., also disagreed with the decision to cancel the visit.
"I'm a First Amendment zealot, and I think we walk on thin ice wen we deny access to anybody," he said Saturday at the Big Eight Conference on Black Student Government in Manhattan.
Kansan reporter Kathleen Faddis contributed information to this story.
Specialist supported KKK visit
By Karen Boring
Kansan staff writer
Laird Wilcox, former KU student and an expert on extremist groups, was upset Friday when the campus visits by the Ku Klux Klan were canceled.
"It's clearly a free speech issue," Woxil said.
Chancellor Gene A. Budig said Saturday, "The right of expression is not negotiable. Content has not been sacrificed."
Wilcox, 45, was a leftist rebel at the University of Kansas in the '80s but has since studied extremist groups of both the left and the right. Each year, Wilcox compiles two directories of political extremist groups: "Guide to the Left," Guide to the American Left," which he sells from his home in Olathe.
Wilcox is also the founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, housed in Spencer Research Library. It is one of the largest collections of extremist propaganda in the country, said Linda Fredericksen, cataloger at Spencer.
To understand extremist groups, Wilcox said, one must allow oneself to feel sympathetic toward their beliefs and how they view them and then step back and analyze.
Wilcox, who has offered to debate the Klansmen on the air if KJHK would still have them come, is an freedom and the First Amendment.
Laird Wilcox
"You have people from outside the University who are using racial sensitivity to control the administration," Wilcox said.
He said he thought the University's administration had been watered
But Budig disagreed. "Institutional integrity has not been compromised, and the sensitivities of the community have been addressed," he said.
"The irony is that these are the people who wanted tolerance." Wilcox said. "These are the people I marched for."
Wilcox said that compared with their own special interests, the black community treated students' rights to speech and a free society as trivial.
"The interesting thing is that 100 years ago it was Klansmen keeping blacks off the campus."
Canceled
"The University is more vulnerable to outside pressure than ever before." he said.
But the Rev. Calvin Jackson of the First Regular Missionary Baptist Church said the black community battling the free speech question.
"A lot of individuals were caught up in the academics of the situation." Jackson said. "We were concerned with what the KKK stands for."
Continued from p.1
race. This child shall know no fear." After the news conference, Dulin said he wasn't concerned about the advertiser program KJHJ was planning.
"We hear stuff on the radio all the time," Dulin said. "But we have no direct control over that." The invitation is the same as saying, 'Come on,
we welcome you.' Well, we don't
welcome the Klan. Your voice can be
heard, but we don't welcome you."
Harry Jones, the journalism instructor who invited the Klan to his class for a reporting exercise on extremist groups, said this was the
best decision that could be made.
Jones, who was not at the news conference because of a prior commitment, said the exercise in interviewing extremists would take place off campus.
my place to become a martyr to some fuzzy concept that some people are worried about," Jones said. "It's their university, not my university."
"Being a one-month academician with on one-hour class, it was not
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Harry Jones, the teacher, said in a statement to Mike Kutsch, dean of journalism, that providing the experience, wherever that may be, was his primary concern for the students.
The University deeply regrets the pain and hunt that this issue has caused. We wish to thank the leadership of the black community in Lawrence for the commitment to engage this issue with us. The events of the past few days have been a painful learning experience for many of us on campus. We look forward to working with the community to assure that extremism does not take root in Lawrence. - February 19, 1988
Taking a journalism class off campus to interview the Missouri Knights instead of interviewing them on campus does not compromise academic freedom, the class instructor said Friday.
I personally apologize to those individuals who have been offended by this incident. That clearly was not the intent of the University community . -February 19, 1988.
The faculty members involved have reached a position where academic integrity has not been compromised, and the deepest sensitivities of the community have been recognized and respected.
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Statement by Chancellor Gene A. Budig:
Class to meet Klan away from campus
Judith Ramaley, executive vice chancellor, issued a statement Friday that outlined Jones' decision. She said that the administration did not pressure Jones to cancel the Klan's visit to his class.
By James Buckman
Jones said that his decision Friday was final.
A representative will be on campus
Kansan staff writer
"In other words, instead of bringing the Klansmen to the class, I'll be taking the class to the Klansmen," he said.
"My role was to listen to the concerns of the community with Mike Kautsch there," she said. "Mike relayed the concerns back to the faculty. The decision was in the hands of the faculty."
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"But if delaying it and moving it off campus help calm passions in the community, I am more than happy to do both," he said.
Jones, who has studied extremist groups and their effects on society for more than 20 years, said he owed it to the University of Kansas not to cancel the meeting completely.
Kautsch said that the change would not compromise Jones' original intentions but that it might remove some of the community's false impressions surrounding the incident.
The faculty have concluded that there are other, more meaningful and constructive avenues for educating the university community about the manifestations and dangers of extremism and of the espousal of white supremacy. The preservation of the principle of academic freedom requires that we exercise both our intelligence and our humanity so that we present matters such as these in the most thorough, reasoned and sensitive light.
The KKK controversy
Statement by Judith Ramaley, executive vice chancellor:
The faculty, having taken into consideration what we have learned over the last few days, have decided to cancel the visits of KKK representatives to the KJHK station and the journalism class. The instructor of the class will use alternative means, other than a Klan visit to the campus, to complete his plan for a study of how journalists may report upon and expose extremism. The faculty overseeing the development of the station's program on the Klan said that the live appearance by the Klan was canceled on the basis of security concerns. The program on the Klan will go forward using alternative means of presenting the Klan viewpoint for discussion on the air.
"Harry Jones is no racist, and he did not want to deal with the perception that he was." he said. "His objective in the classroom was to show the students how to interview and expose racist views."
Stephen Kline/KANSAN
"The ball is in the protesters' court," Jones said. "They can pick me until the sun sets. I am not going to change any more. I've been as reasonable as I can be."
I'm not going to change any more. I've been as reasonable as I can be.'
instructor in journalism
Harry Jones
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