Tea and Krumpets

So Emmett writes, “And he quotes a pithy faculty member who says, ‘we don’t have to invite the Ku Klux Klan to tea, either.’ Well, I say: why not?” which seems to indicate that we do, in fact, have to invite the Ku Klux Klan to tea. That strikes me as plain silly, quite apart from the question of what “grain of truth” Emmett hopes to discover while sipping Earl Grey with the Grand Dragon.

On Paulin, Emmett, you write, “He’s not prurient or vulgar, just stupid.” But it seems to me that the question of his intelligence is not trivial when we’re talking about his fitness to lecture at a premier academic institution, which should be, after all, devoted to exploring “the best that has been thought and said,” not what even you characterize as “stupid” and “worthless views.” In describing Paulin as stupid, you note: “indeed, his is an all-too-common position in academia, alas.” But I’m not really sure why you add the “alas,” since you think the academy benefits from stupid and intelligent views alike, and that universities must never insist on any sort of academic standards in the work they sponsor and produce. Well, that’s also silly; it would constitute a total abdication of the university’s role. A university isn’t supposed to be an incubator for ideas too stupid and insane to find a platform anywhere in the real word, and universities are moving in that direction precisely because college administrators are increasingly unwilling to judge substandard scholarship as such. So, when you ask, “Should David Duke’s regrettable views disqualify him from speaking on a college campus?” I say “yes,” and if the Government Department happened to invite Duke to lecture on “Global Struggle against Zionism” or “Israeli Involvement in September 11,” I would urge James Wright to rescind the invitation and cancel the talk. Otherwise, Dartmouth would expose itself as an intellectually bankrupt institution.

As to whether Paulin’s lunatic tendencies “don’t really pop up in his poetry,” you should read the “poem” at the top of the article to which you link below. And, as someone who thinks American Jews living in Israel are “Nazis,” Paulin could certainly make a lecture “about World War II” pretty darn crazy.