READER COMMENTARY: Put opinions aside, and hear Ayers out

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Posted: 5/19/09

To the Editor:

Justice Louis Brandeis made his reputation on the idea that in a democracy, the remedy for bad speech is more speech. A significant portion of the Brandeis University community seems to forget this foundational formula for the basis of a free society every time someone with whom they disagree is invited to speak on campus.

But further, Brandeis University was at the very center of the racial-cultural agon of the '60s. American radicalism of the Weather Underground variety had its roots in the questing, dialectical, rebellious, guilt-ridden, grandiose, love-besotted, principled and idea-philic Jewish left that gave Brandeis its soul. Katherine Anne Power came from us. This is our own American pastoral. Silence it? Reduce Ayers to the discredited Bushite epithet "terrorist"? We need to hear Ayers whether we agree with him or not. We need to debate Ayers and talk about him. But we cannot and should not prevent him from speaking any more than we can silence our own angry thoughts.

-Todd Melnick '84