It’s 7:03 p.m. on Monday, Sept.15. Anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s talk has already begun, and still masses of people stand in a line that snakes out of the side door of SSS, down the sidewalk, and all the way to the base of Hillhouse Avenue. Two security guards stand at the door, allowing a slow trickle of students to enter the packed lecture hall.
Left of the staircase, six students stand at a folding table handing out leaflets to provide an alternative viewpoint to the subject of the lecture. “Help yourself. These are just some materials on topics that relate to Islam and whether a clash be- tween Islam and the West really does exist,” a student behind the desk tells me when I approach. I thank her, and pick up a reference sheet reading: the following are pertinent critiques of the clash thesis, examining and refuting it from various disciplinary perspectives.
There are no signs, no megaphones, no shouting crowds. Just this small table with a handful of students quietly sharing their thoughts with passersby.
***
On the morning of Weds., Sept. 10, a letter from the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and 35 other signatory organizations arrived in every student’s inbox. The email, titled “Dear Friends: More Speech, Not Hate Speech,” outlined the MSA’s objection to Hirsi Ali’s invitation to campus and its concern “that Ms. Hirsi Ali is being invited to speak as an authority on Islam despite the fact that she does not hold the credentials to do so.”
But behind closed doors, the conflict really began Tuesday Sept. 2, when Rich Lizardo, JE ’15, student president of the William F. Buckley Program, received a message from a member of the MSA calling for an “urgent meeting in the Chaplain’s Office.” The Buckley Program, which brings a variety of political speakers to campus, sponsored Hirsi Ali’s lecture. In the meeting, the student said she felt hurt that Hirsi Ali had been asked to speak and requested that she be disinvited, restricted to talking about her personal experiences as a Muslim woman and not as an authority on Islam, or asked to share the stage with someone more scholarly. In an interview with the Herald, Lizardo said that he listened as best he could and tried to be as understanding as possible, but that those options were nonstarters.
Later, an official release from the MSA backpedaled on their requests, reading, “While we cannot overlook how marginal- izing her presence will be to the Muslim community, we nevertheless did not ask for a disinvitation or a cancellation.” Nevertheless, Lizardo didn’t make any decisions before conferring with some of the Buckley Program leadership and making the decision to go forward with the event as planned. “Anything less would be against principles of free expression,” Lizardo explained. From there, Lizardo contacted the Yale ad- ministration—Dean Gentry, Dean Holloway, and President Sa- lovey, among others—to discuss the event. Salovey was out of town, but emailed Lizardo directly to send his support of free speech and hopes for a vibrant, civil event.
Meanwhile, the MSA went about constructing an open letter to the Buckley Program and Yale community, reaching out to other student organizations. A student, who asked that he and his organization remain anonymous, said that he was holding a dinner for his group to go over future events and plan for the upcoming semester when Abrar Omeish came in and asked if he would sign onto a letter protesting Al Hirsi’s lecture.
“I said, ‘I don’t know,’ and she said, ‘The Silfka center has signed on,’ and I still said, ‘I don’t know,” he said in an interview with the Herald. “A few days later she sent an email saying, ‘We’re meeting at this place; come if you’re interested,’ and I said ‘no.’” The next day, the letter was released to the Yale community with the signature of the organization that re- fused to sign on.
“I was really, really, really upset about what happened,” the student said. “We had only expressed interest at most, and she took that as consent. I don’t even think you can call what happened miscommunication. The way they wrote their letter was just so messed up, using other organizations’ names to legitimize what they had written. I didn’t want to keep my signature on, but felt like I had to since taking it off might alienate other groups—so I just kind of stayed on, but we were furious.”
He added that the MSA later corrected themselves by saying that this particular organization signed on after-the-fact, which felt to this student like a “sort of remorseless way of apologizing.” The MSA did not respond to requests for comment, but advised their members to “make it clear that they do not speak as representatives of the MSA, but as unaffiliated individuals.”
***
On Tuesday, I scaled the steps of the Buckley Program’s headquarters in Taft Mansion where Lauren Noble, PC ’11, founder and Executive Director of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program, met me at the door. She wove through the carpeted hallway, leading me through the spacious building to a small round table in the corner of her office where she offered me a glass of water.
Noble told me that she launched the Buckley Program in the spring of 2011 after taking a residential college seminar titled, “William F. Buckley and the Rise of Modern Conservatism.” The program started small, in its in- augural semester hosting only about a half dozen speakers “with an eye towards promoting intellectual diversity on campus.”
It was then that things really took off.
In the fall of 2011, the Buckley Program expanded to include a conference on the 60th anniversary of God and Man at Yale, a book written by William F. Buckley himself. Internship opportunities at the National Review, American Spectator, and New Criterion followed during the summer of 2012. Soon, the program finalized student board positions. Then came a flurry of more conferences, fellows, “firing-line” debates, essay contests, and more, all with an emphasis on exposing Yale students to unvoiced views.
Still, the bread-and-butter of the Buckley Program has been its speaker series—that’s how most students on campus have heard of the program. And though the Buckley Program was started to promote “intellectual diversity” on campus—and speakers are invited based on their ability to share unfamiliar viewpoints with the student body—both Noble and Lizardo agreed that it hasn’t seen controversy of this magnitude arise from one speaker in the history of the program. The last time Lizardo could remember any kind of protest at a Buckley event was in 2012 when Harvey Mansfield spoke on “Manliness” at a Branford Master’s tea organized through the Buckley Program.
The Buckley Program isn’t in the business of seeking controversy, Lizardo told me. “We don’t seek to make people hurt. But we do want to challenge people’s ideas and make sure people hear another viewpoint. Sometimes, controversy can accomplish that.”
I asked Lizardo if, in this case, that line between stimulating disagreement and hurtful language was blurred.
“That’s an interesting and difficult question,” he said. “I mean, people did say that they were hurt. If you listened to her speech on Monday, everything she said was absolutely merited. I didn’t hear anything she said that I would categorize as hurtful, though I’m not exactly in the position to speak for others.”
Lizardo said that the Buckley Program has not yet made an effort to further discuss the Hirsi Ali issue or to coordinate with the groups that were opposed to facilitate vibrant and fair discussion. Noble said that the events of this week are a “victory for free speech” and won’t impact how speakers are invited to campus through the Buckley Program.
“It’s not the role of one organization to police how another organization facilitates its program,” Noble said. “No one is stopping the MSA from hosting their own debate or speaker, but you can’t approach a group and say ‘we don’t like your speaker’s credentials,’ and ask them to not come.”
***
The Buckley Program itself has seen little controversy within its speaker series, but protest due to provocative lecturers and guests is not unknown to universities around the country, including Yale. According to The New York Times, Brandeis rescinded its offer of an honorary degree to Hirsi Ali after students from the university organized an online petition against her. At Brown, students spoke out when Ron Paul was invited to campus to speak on “his skepticism of large government and his opposition to war,” according to the Brown Daily Herald. Like the MSA and Hirsi Ali, Brown’s students were wary of Paul’s history of scathing language targeted toward the gay community.
Here at Yale in 2003, students protested Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes for his discriminatory re- marks. In 2007, over 1,000 gathered to protest then-president of China, Hu Jintao, and his record of human rights violations. Demonstration then was far less civil: protesters rallied on Old Campus at 6 a.m., New Haven Police blocked streets, someone was arrested for throwing a water bottle at a police officer. A 1974 protest prevented a speaker from delivering an address and prompted C. Vann Woodward, a history professor at Yale, to gather a committee and write a report, known as the Woodward report, on how free speech should be exercised on campus.
Four weeks ago, over a thousand freshman sat in Woolsey Hall for the Freshman Assembly, listening to President Salovey deliver an address, titled: “Professor Woodward’s Legacy after 40 Years: Free Expression at Yale.” I wonder if those freshmen— sweltering, fanning themselves in dresses and collared shirts, groaning at parents snapping pictures on their cell phones— could have expected that Presi- dent Salovey’s message on the gravity and significance of free speech would hold such striking relevance to events a mere month later. “There will be times,” Salovey said, “when meaningful lessons can only be learned by grit- ting our teeth—and then arguing back.”
Illustration by Julia Kittle-Kamp