The only perversion on the Carnegie Mellon campus is the administration's rape of academic freedom.
Excerpted from a speech Mike Godwin gave last November at Carnegie Mellon University, which recently banned several Usenet newsgroups from campus computers.
For the first time in history, we have a many-to-many medium where you don't have to be rich to have access, and where you don't have to win the approval of an editor or publisher to speak your mind publicly. Usenet and the Internet, as part of this new medium, hold the promise of guaranteeing that the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the press means as much to each individual as to Time Warner or The New York Times.
The US Supreme Court has long held that, at least in theory, freedom of the press applies as much to "the lonely pamphleteer" as it does to the editors of a major urban daily newspaper. But the Net puts this theory into practice. And it is precisely because the Net holds the promise of being the most democratizing communications medium in the history of the planet that it is vital we prevent the fearful and the ignorant from attempting to control your access to it.
Which is what is happening here at Carnegie Mellon. There is a strong sense here that Carnegie Mellon must protect you from yourselves. The university claims that if it doesn't cut off access to these newsgroups, for everyone on campus, it will not only risk perverting you by exposing you to sexually oriented materials, but it will also be legally liable.
The claims are wrong. First of all, it's not true that the only way to prevent minors from gaining access to this material is to deny everyone access to it. It is clear to me that the administrators haven't explored any alternatives other than the most expensive and infeasible.
Secondly, there is little if any risk of legal liability for the university. As Usenet is so large, no one can be presumed to have knowledge of all the content of Net traffic; without proof of that knowledge, says the Supreme Court, there can be no liability. No university anywhere in the country has ever, at any time, been held liable to any degree for carrying the alt.sex newsgroups.
Third, the risk that the 17-year-olds who enter this university as freshmen are unfamiliar with the materials that are carried in these newsgroups is exceedingly low. I submit that if any entering freshmen haven't encountered material that deals with human sexuality before now, then Carnegie Mellon has an affirmative duty to expose them to it.
I was told by attorney Jackie Koscelnik of the university's legal office, "So what if the risk is low! We don't want to be a test case!" To which I respond: Carnegie Mellon, your lawyers have forgotten the meaning of the Constitution they have sworn to uphold.
Indeed, it's ironic that an institution that focuses so much on memory - of our sciences, our knowledge, our traditions, our values - has displayed so much forgetfulness about the meaning of a university.
They want you to remember the meaning of the Periodic Table, but they want you to forget that the chemistry between lovers is one of the most beautiful things we know. They want you to remember the poetry of Dante and Shakespeare and Shelley, but they want you to forget that human sexuality, which often inspired these poets, is equally the inspiration of those who write stories and poems for rec.arts.erotica.
And Carnegie Mellon has forgotten that the Constitution presumptively protects speech and expression about sexual matters, even when that speech and expression may be offensive. It's been forgotten that the Constitution does not allow governments to ban sexual expression for adults merely because there is some risk that children might see it. And it's been forgotten that, when it comes to the Bill of Rights, what you don't use, you lose. The First Amendment is a terrible thing to waste.
I strongly suspect that the real reason the administration tried to yank these newsgroups is that it is embarrassed by them. If the university lacks courage, it's up to you to supply it.
This morning I spoke with Erwin Steinberg, a member of the administration who told me at least twice during our talk that he is a teacher and admirer of James Joyce's Ulysses - also one of my very favorite books - so he therefore understands the issues raised when someone tries to ban works based on their purported obscenity. When I heard this from him, I felt sad - how could he possibly have missed the lessons we learned in this society when books like Ulysses were litigated in the courts?
It's very easy, I think, to proclaim that you understand the issue of obscenity because you're willing to defend a book that was vindicated half a century ago.
What he doesn't seem to realize is that this fight - the fight for online freedom of speech - is the one that matters now.
