I’ll preface this by stating that I am no John Silber fan. I find many of his views reprehensible and his administration style antagonistic. That being said, I do not hate the man to a point where I cheer when seeing him blatantly misrepresented in print. The Chancellor has plenty of controversial views and the Daily Free Press need not resort to irresponsible journalism in order to stir up dissent.
Joshua Karlin-Resnick’s portrayal of John Silber’s September 20th speech was less than fair. Silber spoke on Friday, as Professor Sir Hans Kornberg, president of the University Professors stated, “not as Chancellor, but as a philosopher.” The distinction is an important one. Silber gave an academic talk; to treat it as a political one is deceptive. The article made no mention of Silber’s distinction between prejudiced discrimination—the kind that forms the foundations of social inequity—and rational discrimination, which implies discerning thoughtfulness. Linguistic description of this sort composed the first half of Silber’s speech. I’m sure he took great pains with that portion, hoping we would not misunderstand when he said “you can’t exercise tolerance intelligently without discrimination.”
Silber did indeed defend private organizations’ right to discriminate, in both sense of the word, as the article’s first sentence states. It was not, however, his primary point. Karlin-Resnick’s piece was a gross misrepresentation. It should not have appeared in print without being clearly marked as an editorial. I kindly beseech the Daily Free Press to let its features report, and to leave the spin on the opinion page. In short, you’d do well to act as a more discriminating publication.
Joe Martin UNI ’06
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