November 8, 2012
Re: Conservative voices scarce, stifled on campus
While I’m sympathetic to some of the frustration Kayla Safran expresses in her opinion piece from November 1st, let’s get one thing straight: free speech, per se, is in no danger at Hamilton.
It’s true that some majority proportion of students and faculty at Hamilton believe that the preponderance of the recent evidence suggests that, regardless of its history, the modern conservative movement is dominated by homophobic, racist, sexist and xenophobic ideologues bent on imposing their backwards views on the rest of mainstream America.
That doesn’t mean, however, that anybody is stopping Ms. Safran or anybody else from expressing a different opinion. The fact that an administration sponsored weekly paper published her grievances should be evidence enough of that.
Nobody says you can’t express your views, Ms. Safran, we just feel free to disagree with them. That’s the whole beauty of free speech, and people asking for its protection can’t complain when others avail themselves of the opportunity to loudly proclaim how wrong they are. Your views are unpopular, not repressed. And that’s an important distinction.
—Nick Green ’12
Re: Conservatice voices scarce, stifled on campus
To the Editor:
I would like to commend Kayla Safran for her moving piece on campus bias in the 1 November issue of The Spectator. I would, however, like to make one correction: I am no longer the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College. I resigned my distinguished chair in a letter, dated 14 January 2011, to Chairman of the Board of Trustees A.G. Lafley. As the letter explained, given the current leadership of Hamilton College, I could no longer hold the chair in good conscience.
—Robert L. Paquette
Department of History
*This letter is in response to an error made by the editorial staff that was not included in the writer’s original submission.
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