Letters and Editorials

Letter to the Editor

By Steve Schild

Associate Professor of Social Science

Sometimes it’s wrong to do even what you have a right to do.

That’s what happened with the last issue of the Cardinal. SMU administrators took a story written by Editor Lauren Rothering, changed it, and, despite her objection, left her little alternative but to run the revised story rather than the original.

It’s doubtless legal, based on precedent that lets administrators censor school newspapers. Administration routinely checks the Cardinal before it’s printed; in that sense, this episode is no different.

But two things trouble me: First, I’ve seen both versions of the story, and the changes aren’t worth such a heavy-handed response.

Second, this isn’t the first time ideas have been suppressed at SMU in the last year or so. A play about the Palestinian-Israeli war was scratched from the Veterans Memorial even though the student director had gotten approval to stage it there. Then there was the disappearance of photos juxtaposing Nazi mistreatment of Jews and Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. The photos, displayed by students in a Global Issues course, apparently upset someone—we’ll likely never know who.

Likewise, most readers probably don’t know which Cardinal story was changed or what was changed.

That’s how censorship works. It leaves us in the dark. It robs us of our right and responsibility to reason, to judge for ourselves. It leaves us not knowing how much we don’t know. And it offers no explanation as to why what was removed was removed.

That's antithetical to the liberal arts. It’s exactly opposite of what we offer to and expect from our students. The mission of SMU and every other liberal arts institution is inquiry--questioning, exploring, pursuing answers and understanding.

This incident of censorship is a terrible message to students—that our talk about the purpose and value of the liberal arts is just talk when push comes to shove.