Western Oregon Journal

Issue date: 10/19/07 Section: Headlines

John Frohnmayer spoke about rights he believe are being threatened.

By Jeffrey Sawyer
Headlines Editor

The Social Sciences department at Western hosted its inaugural presentation for the Social Science Symposium Series on Wednesday, Oct. 17. The goal of this particular speaker was to stimulate debate on campus. The speaker was John Frohnmayer, former chair of the National Endowment of the Arts. Frohnmayer will be running for the United States Senate against current senator Gordon Smith in the 2008 election.

The title of his speech was "Censorship, Intolerance and Other Swamp Vermin: Government Funding and the Arts." At the beginning of his presentation he brought up the use of hateful symbols and hateful words that some Americans use. He gave the audience of faculty and students a brief history of hateful speech and symbols that have been used and gave reasons as to why he believed they exist in our culture.

He claims that we have sort of a revolutionary mentality in America. In our Declaration Of Independence it does state that we have the right and duty to overthrow our government when they are limiting our rights. He stated that this gives us something resembling a "license of violence" and that this comes out in the way we speak oftentimes. He also believes that we frequently exaggerate when we are debating. One example he gave was that if you enter into a controversial chat room usually within 45 minutes somebody will draw a comparison to Hitler.

One of Frohnmayer's main contentions was that the first amendment was created to protect the speaker's rights, and not the audience's. This is why hate speech is not outlawed like many would like it to be. Even though the majority of Americans do not like hearing such things, the Supreme Court has been upholding their first amendment rights in recent history. He indicated this by bringing up the incident when the National Socialist Party of America (NSPA) was trying to march and demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois (a predominantly Jewish town with several holocaust survivors) in the late 70's. The NSPA won their right to demonstrate in Skokie and wear swastika armbands, even though essentially everyone in the town was against it.

Frohnmayer was certainly not advocating such actions but believed that they had a right to demonstrate. He believes that there are ways to get rid of this in our society, or at least quiet such hateful talk and expression. According to him we have rights and responsibilities as well when it comes to freedom of speech. One of our responsibilities is to speak out against those who speak with a hateful voice, and to speak boldly. Taking on controversies and searching for the truth is another one of our responsibilities.

Continued...

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