For immediate release: January, 17 2003

Media contact Svetlana Mintcheva at 212-807-6222 ext. 23

Today the National Coalition Against Censorship and other free expression and civil rights organizations issued a statement commending University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Berdahl for affirming the University's commitment to academic freedom by overriding a previous decision to censor a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project.

The groups emphasized the importance of academic freedom. David Greene, executive director of the First Amendment Project in Oakland, CA, said, "Censorship of political expression is not acceptable in any setting. Yet a University has a special obligation to ensure that its students and faculty are free to express and explore the whole spectrum of ideas and ideologies."

Svetlana Mintcheva, arts advocacy project coordinator at the National Coalition Against Censorship, noted that the controversy over the censoring of the fund-raising appeal has additional resonance in the present political atmosphere. "The freedom to express dissenting political opinions needs to be protected with exceptional vigilance in times of political urgency when civil liberties begin to appear as a luxury we cannot afford."

Statement:

We commend University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl for affirming the University's commitment to academic freedom by overriding a previous decision to censor a mailing from the Emma Goldman Papers Project. University officials had ordered the Goldman Project to remove two Goldman quotations from a fund raising appeal, because they were apparently concerned that Goldman's pointed political statements might be taken to represent the position of the University.

Last April Chancellor Berdahl called upon the university community to show that even in exceptionally troubling times - times when passions and emotions run deeply - the great value of a university is that it is a free and ordered space in which civil debate and reasoned discourse can prevail. If political speech is repressed, civil debate cannot exist. A university must be a place where students and faculty are free to explore and debate dissident views. And a university must let these views be expressed without concern that some may misperceive the university's respect for freedom of speech as an endorsement of the views themselves.

Chancellor Berdahl's affirmation of the University's commitment to intellectual and academic freedom has set an example for other educational institutions. It is precisely in the present political context of terrorist threats and governmental preparation for a possible war that upholding freedom of speech is crucial. As the late Justice Thurgood Marshall said, ...[G]rave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

It is sadly ironic that the words of Emma Goldman, who led a long and determined battle for freedom of expression, especially in war times, were censored. The University's initial action had given a portentous meaning to her warning that "We shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next door neighbors should hear that freeborn citizens dare not speak in the open."

Svetlana Mintcheva
Arts Advocacy Project, National Coalition Against Censorship

Chris Finan
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

David Greene
First Amendment Project

Larry Siems
Freedom to Write and International Programs, PEN American Center

Cindy Cohn
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Robin Gross
IP Justice

Jeff Perlstein
Media Alliance

Dorothy Ehrlich
ACLU of Northern California

Kent Pollock
California First Amendment Coalition