In preparing this report, I spoke with artist James Montford, Hampshire Gallery Director Carolyn Arnold, and Jackie Hayden, a member of the Hampshire art faculty. An activist of long standing within the Western Massachusetts Local spoke with people in the Hampshire administration. I'm happy to report that while the people I interviewed had areas of disagreement with the Hampshire administration, all were professional and accorded dignity and respect to their opponents. I'm sorry to report that this high standard was not consistently upheld by those on the other side. National Writers Union President Jonathan Tasini repeatedly states that a principal tenet of the National Writers Union is that writers must be treated with dignity and respect. So must artists, other cultural workers, and workers in general. Artists are held in contempt within our culture. That's why the National Endowment for the Arts was such an easy target for the theocratic right. That's why James Montford and his work were treated with disrespect at Hampshire College.
This will not be an objective report. I'm not an objective person. Indeed, I don't believe that such creatures exist. (The physical sciences long ago discovered that objectivity can only be achieved by communities, never by individuals.) I'm a partisan person and a strong advocate for free speech. The National Writers Union is a partisan organization, an advocate for writers, cultural workers, and workers in general. Those who would silence or otherwise oppress us have sufficient advocates of their own. By our constitution, "The National Writers Union is committed to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of expression in all media." (My italics).
While I claim no objectivity, I will try to be fair--which is quite a different matter.
James Montford is a well-known and respected 44-year-old African American artist and teacher. He currently is studying for a doctorate in education at Columbia University and he teaches at the University of Rhode Island. He's taught at the Worcester Art Museum, Phillips Exeter Academy, and at three New England colleges as a visiting artist. He has received many grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts individual fellowship, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant for independent work, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts award, numerous grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts, and four Yaddo residency fellowships. His work has been exhibited at museums around the country, including the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists. Montford was a speaker at the 1994 New England Artists Congress and he also participated at that Congress on a panel ("Censorship Left and Right") sponsored by the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression. Montford is deeply concerned about racism, especially about the harm perpetuated by racial stereotyping. His art deals with these issues in an intelligent, provocative, and challenging way. As a result, it sometimes provokes anger and accusations that his work is racist itself.
In the fall of 1993, Gallery Director Carolyn Arnold invited Montford to do an installation at Hampshire College. The installation (part of a series) was titled The Lipper Constellation. It consisted of 36 basketballs arranged on the gallery floor in the form of a stellar constellation, connected by black tape corresponding to white out-of-bounds markings. What provoked outrage was not the basketball arrangement, but rather a poem that was an integral part of the installation--a poem abounding in offensive racial stereotypes. The ensuring controversy was over a piece of writing.
The show opened on a Monday, and at first things were quiet. A couple of days later, angry students and faculty members were demanding that the show be shut down. On Friday, Carolyn Arnold was asked to attend a meeting in the office of Hampshire President Gregory Prince. About seven members of the administration were present and the meeting lasted two hours. According to Arnold, as quoted in the accompanying PFAW report, "President Gregory Prince `demanded to know why, if I knew the artist was controversial, I brought him to Hampshire.'" Also according to Arnold, the administrators at the meeting were about evenly divided on whether or not the show should be shut down immediately. She also reported that strong pressure was put upon her to close the show herself. (A curatorial decision to close the show, of course, gets the administration off the hook.) When Arnold refused, she was told that she could keep the show open if and only if she installed a response wall (not a comment book). Arnold opposed this move because she strongly felt it would violate the artistic integrity of the work. She also felt it was improper to do this without consulting Montford. (Once again, we must consider the issue of dignity and respect.) Arnold gave in, however, because it was the only way to keep the show open.
The show did stay up, although in a significantly altered state. The show was also vandalized on more than one occasion during the run. Montford went to Hampshire on two separate occasions to deliver gallery talks. During these talks, said Arnold, James Montford was "movingly articulate." Having heard Montford speak myself, I'm sure this assessment is accurate. Arnold also told me that it became clear to her during the question-and-answer period that many who attended had no interest in hearing what Montford had to say and were there to promote other agendas.
In the spring of 1991, Alan Dershowitz pointed out that forcibly adding something to a work of art is as much an act of censorship as taking something away. (One might call this "the fig leaf principle.") The context of Dershowitz's remarks was a controversy concerning Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA), which had scheduled a Palestinian and an Israeli film festival. Stephen Grossman, an ICA board member and an active member of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) resigned in protest, charging that the Palestinian films were "propaganda." The ICA responded by announcing, without consulting the curators, that the Palestinian festival would be accompanied by a panel discussion to provide "balance." (Ironically, curators for both festivals had originally requested panel discussions and had been told by the ICA that there was no budget to do this.) The Palestinians found a different home for their festival, and the Israeli curator resigned in solidarity with the Palestinians. (An interesting case of solidarity among artists transcending deep and emotional political disagreements.) An important difference between the ICA incident and the Montford incident is that in the ICA case the imposed addition was separated in time and space from the work itself. Nevertheless, Boston-area anti- censorship activists agreed that the imposition constituted censorship. Among those taking this position were the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression and the Steering Committee of the Boston Local of the National Writers Union.
The Faculty of Hampshire College affirms the right of all members of the College community to the free expression of views in speech or in art, and the right of all members of the community to hear the expression of any views or to view art without censorship, and without regard to the positions or perspectives embodied in that speech or art. This precludes the censorship or prohibition of non- criminal speech in all college fora and precludes restrictions on the judgments regarding the display of art made by those professionals entrusted with the college's galleries.
This brings us to the most astounding and disturbing incident of all: This resolution was defeated by a vote of 26-21. This incredible development attracted the press and it received national attention. Probably as a result of the embarrassing publicity, the proposed review committee was never established.
The investigator from the Western Mass Local presented two reasons his sources gave for the resolution's defeat: (1) "That the resolution was unnecessary since the college had already upheld Montford's right to exhibit his work," and (2) "there was concern that it [the resolution] would send a negative message to those members of the community who were offended by the exhibit." Neither explanation holds water.
First of all, it is disingenuous for the college to affirm that the it had "upheld Montford's right to exhibit his work." It had not. The administration's attempt to close down the exhibit had failed only because of the integrity of Carolyn Arnold. For the college to claim failure to shut down a show as equivalent to support of free speech is outrageous. In 1990, the First Amendment Common Sense (FACS) Alliance, a coalition of right-wing groups, tried unsuccessfully to close down Robert Mapplethorpe's photographic exhibit, The Perfect Moment. The FACS Alliance, however, was not so hypocritical as to claim that this failure should be taken as evidence of support for freedom of expression.
Second, the exhibition was not allowed to stay up in unaltered form. The response wall, which violated the integrity of the work, was installed over the curator's objections and without consulting the artist. Montford may readily have agreed to the wall The point is: He wasn't even asked. He was not treated with dignity and respect.
Third, because I have long followed efforts to enact gay rights laws I am nauseatingly familiar with the arguments of those who oppose such laws with the claim that they are "unnecessary" because gays and lesbians are "already well protected by federal law." Similar arguments were invoked by those who defeated the Equal Rights Amendment. Given the context of the controversy around Montford's show, and given that the administration was threatening to create an official Hampshire board of censors, the argument that the resolution was "unnecessary" is simply not credible. In my estimation, this "argument" is simply an excuse seized upon by those who wanted to have it both ways. If the faculty had defeated a resolution affirming that no member of the community should be discriminated against because of race, would we buy the explanation that it was unnecessary because of existing federal civil rights laws?
The second reason given for the resolution's defeat is even more troubling. I believe that this is in fact the true reason that the resolution was defeated. But consider the principle it affirms: One may oppose free speech in cases where the speech in question has offended someone. By this principle, the National Writers Union made a terrible mistake when it stood up for Salman Rushdie, because we sent a negative message to those offended by Rushdie's work. The Boston Local made a terrible mistake in defending the right of the Mapplethorpe show to stay open, because we sent a negative message to those offended by homosexuality. Speech that offends no one is never censored. The logical conclusion, therefore, is that it is never morally necessary to oppose censorship.
Carolyn Arnold told me that she thought Hampshire College had flubbed a tremendous teaching opportunity in dealing with the controversy surrounding Montford's show. I agree completely. I'm not angry with the Hampshire students, especially the African American students, who demanded that the show be closed down. American secondary schools do a very poor job in teaching young people the importance of free expression and the meaning of the First Amendment. Many of us first learned this lesson in college, and no college worth its salt fails to instill this most essential lesson.
In the movie Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky is quoted as saying, "The difference between agreeing with what someone says and respecting their right to say it has been clear in non-fascist circles since the eighteenth century." It is indeed sad that this distinction is not clear to the majority of the Hampshire College faculty.
The defeat of the free-expression resolution makes it entirely inappropriate for the National Writers Union to hold a Delegates Assembly at Hampshire College. Freedom of expression is one of our core principles, enunciated in our constitution. Would we hold a Delegates Assembly at a college that practiced racial or ethnic discrimination? Would we hold a Delegates Assembly at a college that mistreated its employees or that engaged in union busting? The National Writers Union must not defend freedom of expression only when it is convenient to do so. The First Amendment does not need one more summer soldier or fair-weather friend. To hold a Delegates Assembly at Hampshire College while the defeat of the free-expression resolution is still on the books could jeopardize the reputation and the credibility of the National Writers Union.
Jackie Hayden told me a story that illustrates the chilling effect of the anti-free-speech resolution and gives lie to the claim that it was "unnecessary." Danny Lyon is an acclaimed photographer who made his reputation documenting the civil-rights movement. (See his book, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.) Lyon had a show at the Corcoran a while back, and Jackie Hayden decided to invite him to Hampshire College to show his work.
Over 30 years ago, Lyon became interested in biker culture and begin to document it with photographs. (Another of his books is Bikeriders.) In preparation for Lyon's visit, Jackie showed slides of some of Lyon's work to her class. Unfortunately, she chose to include some of the biker photos as well. A student in her class objected to one of the photos, which showed a woman (one of the biker's girlfriend) lying on the ground, and three bikers standing around her. Jackie asked the student if she wanted to discuss the photograph, talk about why it upset her, talk about the intent of the photograph, etc.. The student said no, she just didn't want to look at it. So Jackie went on to the next slide and (naively) thought that would be the end of it.
A couple of days later, every Hampshire student had a note in their mailbox saying that Jackie Hayden was bringing a "rapist artist" to campus. The troops went into action, and the usual brouhaha occurred: picketing, candlelight marches, concerned telephone calls to Jackie from Men Against Rape. The students' demand: censorship. Censorship, plain and simple. They wanted Lyon disinvited or a guarantee that none of his "offensive" work would be shown at Hampshire College.
Lyon did go to Hampshire, but the experience was disheartening for all concerned because of the absurd and destructive protests. There's no doubt about it: Hampshire is getting quite a reputation. Would any artist of stature set foot on that campus now, considering the abysmal treatment accorded Montford and Lyon? In his discussions with me, Montford told me he felt he'd been "banned for life" and "blacklisted" at Hampshire College. Hampshire may well find itself blacklisted by artists as well.
I'm tempted to suggest that the intolerant and dogmatic crowd that seems to dominate the Hampshire student body be taken to the woodshed and sent to their rooms without supper. But they have the right to call for censorship. Free speech is everyone's right. Red Guards and neo-Nazis have the right to free speech, and they may use this right to demand censorship of those who disagree with them.
More importantly, the Hampshire students are not at fault. They are unfortunate enough to attend a college where the faculty defeats free-speech resolutions because they are "unnecessary." Therefore it is absolutely to be expected that such students demand censorship whenever they encounter a work of art, or other instance of expression, that they happen not to understand. The majority of the Hampshire College faculty have brought disgrace upon their honorable profession. Only they can reverse this most terrible mistake and remove an otherwise indelible stain on Hampshire's reputation.
September 8, 1995
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