Op-Ed: Cornstein Talk
By Jen Edwards, November 2018
The way CEU conceptualizes academic freedom in the Open Society is bitterly ironic. On the one hand, university administration crafts rhetoric of academic freedom as means of defense against attacks from Fidesz, playing to sympathies of the remaining neoliberals in power in Europe and the U.S. On the other hand, any whisper of true academic freedom through student-led dissent of a speaker — namely Ambassador Cornstein — prompts CEU’s administration to surveillance and suppression of speech. We, as a culturally and ideologically diverse student body, have the right to question and peacefully protest speakers whom we believe are counter to both our individual values and the values of this institution. The University is hypocritical to silence student opposition, given its stated commitment to Open Society values.
The administration announced Cornstein’s talk by declaring itself lucky to be welcoming “a personal friend of Donald Trump” for a talk on the “American Dream under Trump”. This, of course, caused immediate alarm among many in the student body, who took to Facebook to discuss the event and suggest action. Some students were singled out for articulating their intent to protest and were called in to a private meeting with the Dean of Students. University surveillance of student Facebook groups is itself inappropriate and alarming. Worse still, pictures of at least one of the individuals singled out were seen at the security desk on the day of the talk, suggesting an intention to keep this student out of the event. The student was actually barred from the talk and was forcibly removed by security. Finally, leaflets created and distributed by students which called out the hypocrisies of the talks’ topic were collected by CEU staff members, breaking CEU’s own policies about leaflets at events.
After these violations were called out, the Provost issued an email stating that he “regret(s) if students felt limited in their abilities to exercise their rights to free speech”. Are the above actions a matter of ‘feeling limited’? Are we just being too sensitive? I, for one, don’t think so. Additionally, the Provost stated that an internal investigation had taken place and no policies were broken. The administration identified campus security as the main perpetrators of the problem, and declared intent to change policy. Many of the violations of student free speech, however, were not at the behest of individual members of security but by members of the administration. Furthermore, there was no indication of how these policies will change or if there will be student involvement in the policy changes.
Is this what the university means by academic freedom and the values of Open Society? If so, it seems to me to be time for a radical reconceptualization of these foundational principles.
