questions for the Yale Herald

Yet the visits of Chinese President Hu Jintao last April and Reverend Al Sharpton in October—both potentially divisive figures—passed more quietly than anticipated. In fact, many controversial but liberal figures seem to face little criticism, purely for their politics. “Occasionally, when a speaker like Sharpton comes, there are concerns over race riots,” said April Lawson, SY ’09, who, as the vice-president of the Yale Political Union (YPU), was responsible for bringing Sharpton to campus. “The administration was concerned. Obviously nothing happened, but there were actual contingency plans.” During Hu’s much-awaited visit, entire streets were shut off and security was at an all-time high—there were even whispers of snipers. Over a thousand protestors gathered, mostly visitors to New Haven. But despite numerous accusations of human rights violations leveled against China, Hu’s visit lacked the massive fallout that surrounded that of Baraka. “I think there was a ruckus,” Etra said. “Hu’s visit made students question the University’s alliance with China.”

But whatever political reservations some students had, student protest was overall remarkably restrained. Kirchick believes that in general, this speaks to the political bend of the Yale campus: “I’ve never seen an instance in which a left wing speaker has been met with calls, shouting, or attempts to drown him out,” he said. To him, the liberality that prevails on so much of Yale’s campus explains the lackluster protest surrounding Hu’s visit. “Here we were welcoming and celebrating a tyrant who tortures people—but since Hu’s a left-wing tyrant there was a completely different standard,” Kirchick said.

Question#1: So Al Sharpton's very presence is now an incitement to riot? For whom? Is the fear that Sharpton's presence will inflame the tempers of the hordes of angry white men pouring out of Payne-Whitney to set Dixwell aflame in reaction to the good reverend's provocations? Or is the administration afraid that Sharpton will make all those black folks who live so close to all those neighborhoods Yale's bulldozed get "uppity?" If Yale's fear was the latter, then this is deeply disturbing. Either way, Sharpton's hardly provocative enough to warrant such concern.


Question 2: Since when is PRC Technocrat Hu Jintao remotely left wing (or certainly any more so than Jamie Kirchick?) Whatever Amiri Baraka's "offensive" statementsa may have been, did he or any other "left wing" speakers Kirchick has seen ever make the kinds of racist claims about millions of people that Daniel Pipes did in 2003, when he was met with SILENT protest by students wearing black gags around their mouths, or that Shockley certainly did when he was shouted down in 1974? Did any "left wing" (and again, Hu Jintao, not "Left Wing") speakers perpetrate the forms of colonial racism and murder mobilized by the Israeli state under Peres's watch? And hasn't Kirchick himself been part and parcel of attempts by the far right (David Horowitz/Campuswatch) to police what is said in the classroom and on campus and publicly assail those who question right wing dogma in a manner that Jim Sleeper, no lefty himself, publicly called "Neo-Stalinist?"

And of course we should note that while the students involved in the action against Shockley were expelled, the university has yet to account, four years later, for its detention and intimidation of UOC leafletters during Parents' Weekend 2002.