Mario Savio at the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement in 1964.

On Freedom of Speech
To: John H Beckman, New York University
From: Prof. Robert Cohen, New York University

Dear Mr. Beckman,
I noticed in your statements to the New York Times below that in your rush to condemn Logan Rozos and threaten him with punishment for the few sentences in his graduation speech condemning the atrocities the Palestinians have endured that you ignored the whole issue of freedom of speech.

Whether you agree with him or not, he spoke his mind. Do you really think NYU ought to be censoring its student speakers and punishing them for the moral and political judgements they make?

In his view, US arms have been supporting genocide. So his conscience led him to use part of his graduation speech to condemn what he viewed as massive war criminality. A university ought to be an institution that protects free speech instead of punishing students who exercise that freedom.

Since you seem to have lost touch with free speech principles, I offer you a reminder of why free speech is of such great importance, via a quotation from Free Speech Movement leader Mario Savio (whose biography I published with Oxford University Press back in 2009). Savio began by citing his favorite free speech quote, from Diogenes, who said “The most beautiful thing in the world is the freedom of speech.”

And “those words,” Savio explained, “are in me, they’re … burned into my soul because, for me, free speech was not a tactic, not something to win for political [advantage]… To me, freedom of speech represents the very dignity of what a human being is…. That’s what marks us off from the stones and the stars. You can speak freely. It is almost impossible for me to describe. It is the thing that marks us as just below the angels.”

At a time when democracy is threatened by an increasingly authoritarian White House, universities should be standing up for free speech, not suppressing it. So I ask that you and your colleagues in the NYU administration reflect on Savio’s words and defend the free speech rights of Logan Rozos rather than punish him for speaking his mind.

Sincerely,
Robert Cohen
Professor of Social Studies, Steinhardt
Affiliated Professor, History Department
New York University