The Michigan Review

Oh, Enough With the Protests, Already!

by Benajmin Kepple

It was nice seeing the civilized discourse and fruitful exchange of ideas at Ward Connerly's speech this past March 18. Here we have Ward Connerly, a successful businessman and University of California Regent, face­to­face with students, and the student contingent acts for the most part like a gaggle of whiny brats. Even worse for the students on hand that were trying to listen to Mr. Connerly, this same collective of morons proceeded to act like three year­olds with regards to posession of the sole microphone for the crowd.

CONNERLY: Can I finish my ...

STUDENT: AND POINT NINETEEN! We hereby demand that the University of Michigan take action against opponents of affirmative action! We demand that the University administration Plunder their Seas, Ravage their Ships, Burn their Townes, and Take the Lives of their People!

CROWD: YEAH!

CONNERLY: Now look, I ...

STUDENT: Connerly, you sell out, how dare you come to the University of Michigan and spread your lies and deceit! How dare you come to Michigan and try to divide my people! At least I'm not the one working for white pay masters!

CROWD: YEAH!

CONNERLY: If I can...

STUDENT: Mr. Connerly, I'd just like to stand up and say how ashamed I am of you and quite frankly, you make me want to vomit.

CONNERLY: Hey, that's...

STUDENT IN CROWD: YOU SUCK, CONNERLY!

CROWD: YEAH!

The quality of discussion by the general members of the crowd was also pretty shabby:

STUDENT ONE: So you see, if Connerly weighs as much as a duck ...

STUDENT TWO: ... then he's made of wood ...

STUDENT ONE: ... and therefore ...

STUDENT TWO: A WITCH! BURN HIM!

CROWD: YEAH!

As the Detroit News pointed out in a nice editorial on Saturday, March 21st, students at this University weren't exactly open to a reasonable discussion of the issues when Ward Connerly showed up. But that statement deserves qualification: the noisy and the irate and hence the visible students are the ones who oppose a rational, thoughtful discussion of the issues. In the week leading up to Connerly's appearance, people on the far Right and the far Left and every point in between were calling for a rational discussion of the issues. Of course, this didn't stop the protestors at the speech. Those callous and unthinking individuals who jeered Connerly did so because they feared and hated his message. Allowing Connerly to speak meant allowing students to make up their own minds well, God forbid that happen. We've got to protect affirmative action!

They're going to protect it as long as they can, regardless of law and regardless of society.

But this is not to say that everyone against affirmative action is angelic, either. Now, opponents of affirmative action are advantaged in that those of us who argue against the subject generally do the following:

· act respectful to the views of others and allow for people to make up their minds

· present facts and figures, showing the very real consequences of affirmative action

· try to present a rational argument, arguing for equal and fair treatment for all

Unfortunately, opponents of affirmative action in Michigan are disadvantged by the fact that we have State Senator David Jaye (R­Macomb County) "on our side," for he does none of the above very well, and generally ends up antagonizing or somehow offending the very people he is supposedly trying to convert.

Now, my readers, I realize, may be a state of apoplexy. What what what?! you're thinking. That dolt is actually (gasp) attacking a fellow conservative?! What's wrong with him!?!

As Ward Connerly pointed out, just because someone happens to be something does not mean they think in lock­step with everyone else in that group. The same thing certainly holds true for conservatives. And Jaye, unfortunately, hasn't exactly learned how to approach this whole idea of "rational discourse" or "respectfully disagreeing when you are in a public forum" yet. I've seen Connerly speak when he was allowed to finish he is quite the speaker. I've seen in person or watched on television William F. Buckley, Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Phil Gramm, Newt Gingrich, Bill Paxon, Armstrong Williams, and a host of other prominent conservatives, and they got it down pat. Why can't this guy?

Recently, I had the honor and privilege of speaking at the Detroit Country Day School for those of you who don't know of it, it is an elite private academy in the Detroit suburbs (in Beverly Hills, Michigan, believe it or not). Their student council held a symposium on the affirmative action issue, and actually invited me to debate a fellow U­M student on U­M's affirmative action policy.

Now, despite warnings from my fellow editors here at the Review, who were convinced the deck would be stacked against me, so to speak, I gleefully accepted the invitation to speak. (As one of the other speakers was Michigan Association of Scholars President Richard Cutler, an exceedingly nice man, it was worth it to meet him!) My skillful and wily opponent from the (deep breath) University of Michigan Academics for Affirmative Action and Social Justice (social justice, here we go again), the UM­AAASJ, would be debating me in two sessions of approximately 45 minutes; one before the keynote speakers, and one after. The keynote speakers were, on the "pro" side, one Melvin Hollowell, an attorney for Butzel, Long P.C. (the University's general counsel, no surprise there). On the "con" side, was, well, who else, The Right Hon. State Senator from Macomb County, Mr. David Jaye himself.

My first session went exceedingly well. From the opening applause, I estimated that about 30 percent of the audience was with me at the beginning. After my remarks, which were delivered in about 20 minutes and actually got a few laughs out of the audience, there was a good, hard applause from the entire crowd - they may not have agreed with me, but at least they respected my opinion and my effort. Even better, my opponent was late and this helped my cause even more. Oh, good, I thought.

Then we had the keynote speech. Jaye, who apparently thought so much of the event that he wandered in about ten minutes after Hollowell began speaking (I don't care if he is a state Senator, he can be punctual like the rest of us), spoke bombastically and angrily. Within two minutes he had proceeded to insult and anger the very speakers who had gone before him (not professional in any arena) and within ten minutes of ranting, screaming, and looking as if he was going to burst an artery, I saw all that I had accomplished in my previous session ruined. The question and answer session that followed was even more of disaster for the collective opponents of affirmative action. These students left that auditorium furious, but then again, I suppose I would be too if this imperious dolt had come into my school, insulted it, the people running it, and a good portion of the student body.

The only consolation for me was that the people from the UM­AAASJ (they had four people there. One was invited. They came in a bloody convoy.) hogged the microphone for about five minutes, which also annoyed a lot of the students. It was their question time, after all, not time for some leftist graduate student to harangue David Jaye when he won't listen anyway.

Needless to say, my third session was not nearly as good as the first. Polite applause drifted away to nothing after an abridged session. And even worse, at a combined question­and­answer period where for some reason three of the UM­AAASJ people felt it necessary to be on the panel as opposed to my lowly self (all the other conservatives left in disgust, I guess), my opponents would babble on about social justice and class inequality and get cheers. I went from disgusted to a bit worried. Oh, God, I thought. Jaye's pissed them off so much that my opponents are going to begin going on about the importance of oppression in everyday life, and start quoting Foreire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Marcuse's Repressive Tolerance*, and the whole crowd is going to go to college and scream about socialism and plan National Days of Inaction. No!

My only consolations for the day were knowing that the courts would strike down the affirmative action laws, and that I, an American, knew more about Canadian politics than my native Canadian graduate student opponent. My only hope as I left was that those students would be open to new ideas and new thinking, and that maybe David Jaye would learn to at the very least tolerate those in public, so more disasters waiting to happen could be averted. MR

* Two of the four books that are the ideological canon, if there is such a thing, of the modern far Left and many sociology departments in modern Universities. The other two are Antonio Gramschi's Prison Notebooks and Franz Fannon's Wretched of the Earth. All aspects of the ideology of the modern far­Left can generally be traced back to one of these four books. Kinda neat, huh?

Benjamin Kepple is Editor­in­Chief of The Michigan Review. A senior majoring in History, he plans to be an American expatriate and hence cruelly oppress Third World nationals, preferably in the Caribbean.

This article was published in the 1 April 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 16, Number 9).
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