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

The Illusion of Private Freedom
simply amplify market forces. In 1991 the American Booksellers
created a Book of the Year award for the volume they most enjoyed
selling. The first "Abby" went to The Education of Little Tree, the
purported memoir of an Indian orphan, which remained a best-seller
even after its author was unmasked as a white racist. 77
The production and dissemination of scholarship is supposed to
be insulated from commercial or ideological considerations. After
more than 20 years of writing for leading scientific journals Forrest
M. Mims 3d applied to write the "Amateur Scientist" column of
Scientific American, submitting good trial columns and impressive
proposals for future projects. At the interview, however, Mims
revealed that he was a creationist and opposed abortion. Armand
Schwab, who soon thereafter retired as managing editor, attributed
Mims's rejection to the fear that "Scientific American might inadvertently
put an imprimatur on 'creation science,'" jeopardising the
journals credibility with biologists. Associate editor Tim Appenzeller
conceded that Mims would have been hired had his religious
beliefs not emerged. Mims was understandably aggrieved: "I have
never, ever written about creationism ... I'm willing to dialogue.
But I'm not going to deny my faith. ... I even told them I could be
their token Christian, but they didn't smile at that." 78 After three
years as general editor of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Harvard Divinity
School Professor John Strugnell was removed "for ill health" when
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted him as saying that Judaism was
"originally racist" and "not a higher religion." Israel was "founded
on a lie, or at least on a premise that cannot be sustained." Judaism
was "a horrible religion. It's a Christian heresy .... You are a
phenomenon that we haven't managed to convert—and we should
have managed." 79 Money buys scholars the means and time to
research and write (and sometimes subsidises publication). In 1991
the conservative John M. Olin Foundation gave $12 million to
support law and economics, the American Enterprise Institute, rightwing
authors like Dinesh D'Souza, Harold Bloom, Linda Chavez,
and Carol lannone, and ex-politicians like William J. Bennett. 80
A fundamental argument against state regulation of speech is the
indispensability of an informed electorate to a democratic polity. But
the market guarantees neither quantity nor quality in news reporting.
Between 1975 and 1986 American network newscasts devoted 37
per cent less time to domestic policy issues and 50 per cent more to
human interest stories. Most stations cut their news budgets 20-25
per cent between 1988 and 1990. The networks allocated only four
hours to the four-day 1992 Democratic National Convention. Some
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