speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Addressing the Harms of Speech
might play this role—a truth-telling function similar to that of an
ombudsman. 36 At a minimum, the audience for the apology must be
as large as that for the insult. To amplify its impact, French law
compels those convicted of racial hatred to pay substantial sums to
publish the retraction and apology repeatedly in several national
newspapers. 37
There is unavoidable tension in this process since accounts seek to
disavow responsibility while apologies must embrace it. Unless they
are separated, the former can undermine the latter. Nixon characteristically
conflated the two in his resignation speech: "I regret deeply
any injuries that may have been done in the course of events that led
to this decision. I would say only that if some of my judgments were
wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at
the time to be the best interest of the Nation." When it was disclosed
in 1992 that Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a German political scientist
visiting at the University of Chicago, had displayed anti-Semitism in
her dissertation and newspaper articles in the 1930s, she mixed
justification with apology:
Anyone who has dealt with texts written under a dictatorship
knows that certain phrases serve an alibi function and are a
necessity if one is to be able to write what is in fact prohibited. I am
terribly sorry if any hurt was caused by what I wrote 50 years ago. I
certainly can say that when I wrote that passage at the time, I had
no intention of doing any harm to the Jews.
The department chair was not satisfied: "Knowing what we know
about the Holocaust, there is no reason for her not to apologize. To
ask somebody who played a contributing role in the greatest crime of
the twentieth century to say 'I'm sorry' is not unreasonable." 38
The realignment of status is highlighted when apologies are
exchanged between groups. Signing the bill authorising reparations
to Japanese Americans interned during World War II, President
Reagan declared: "No payment can make up for those lost years.
What is more important in this bill has less to do with property than
with honor. For here we admit wrong." When three young Japanese
radicals massacred Jews at Lod Airport in 1972 many ordinary
citizens visited the Israeli embassy in Tokyo to offer apologies, while
the Japanese ambassador said on Israeli television in halting
Hebrew: "Dear citizens of Israel, it is my wish to express my sorrow
and apologize for this terrible crime perpetrated by Japanese nationals"
and then burst into tears. Sometimes no words may be
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