|
Academy of American Poets—Free
Speech in Peril
 Literature
should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
—Chief Justice William O
Douglas
The selector begins, ideally, with a presumption in favor of
liberty of thought; the censor does not. The aim of the selector is to
promote reading not to inhibit it; to multiply the points of view which
will find expression, not limit them; to be a channel for communication,
not a bar against it.
—Lester Asheim,
“Not Censorship but Selection” (Wilson
Library Bulletin, 1953)
All censorships exist to
prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions.
All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by
supplanting existing institutions. Consequently, the first condition of progress
is the removal of all censorships. There is the whole case against censorships
in a nutshell.
—George Bernard Shaw
The Academy of American Poets operates as one of a number of modern-day LITERARY
CENSORING ORGANIZATIONS akin to the
Catholic Church of yesteryear renowned for, amongst other things, its Index
Librorum Prohibitorum.
Democracy continues its
downward spiral thanks in part to the democracy-indifferent literary and
censoring managers of the Academy.
Note that an essay created out
of the egregious incident of censorship described below was published online by the Underground
Literary Alliance and may be viewed at the following URL:
www.literaryrevolution.com/mr-slone-021108.html.
The Journal of Information Ethics published a shortened version
of the essay in its Fall 2009 issue and paid me a $50 honorarium for it. My thanks goes to editor Robert
Hauptman for having the openness to publish it.
 The
literary survey created as a result of the censorship incident and disseminated
to over 130 "high-end" literary journals (e.g., Ploughshares, Poetry, and
Kenyon Review) resulted unsurprisingly in only several responses and
only one
completed questionnaire. It was published in
Counterpoise for Social
Responsibilities, Liberty, and Dissent,
which asked the editors of those
journals to respond. Not one of them ever responded. Vigorous
debate, cornerstone of democracy, was not very vigorous at all in the
academic/literary established order.
The Academy of American Poets
"banned" me permanently from participating in its online
forums on July 6, 2007. What surprised in our democracy was the number of
professors, poets, and other so-called "learned" citizens who
actually favored censorship, though would never have the guts to outright make
that declaration. Lyn Hejinian, Academy Chancellor as depicted in the above
cartoon, served as a good example.
"In every
free and deliberating society, there must from the nature of man be opposite
parties, and violent dissentions and discords," had stated Thomas Jefferson.
Yet my discord was not even violent! But the "pansies" are in control and
demand the liberal party line.
What irks me and ought to irk
all citizens is the fact that the Academy of American Poets is heavily funded by
the taxpayer-funded NEA, which outright rejected The American Dissident
proposal for a relatively tiny grant. Why does the NEA favor according
grants to organizations (e.g., NewPages.com, P$W Inc., and the Academy) that
favor censorship and a party-line restricted agora of ideas? Evidently, it
does so because that bolsters the power of the oligarchs (i.e., the wealthy)
ruling the American "democracy." Poetry and literature in general serve
the wealthy only when poetry and literature serve as diversion and evidently do
not question and challenge, for example, the iron grip of the wealthy
(bourgeoisie) upon poetry and literature.
The following is an account of arrogant censors at
work, including three distinguished tenured poet/professor laureates of the U. S. Library of Congress.
Proponents of censorship, including those
connected with the Academy of American Poets, are apparently unaware that vigorous
debate is the cornerstone of democracy. Whether or not such debate might
risk offending them and otherwise expose them as fascist poseurs is immaterial. If
they are at all interested in further educating themselves, they might wish to
begin by examining
pertinent quotes on censorship by,
amongst others, famous writers and Supreme Court judges. Contrary to the evident opinions of the administrators
and chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, childish mockery of
unpopular ideas will not make those ideas disappear.
Regarding the Academy's decision to censor me out of
its publicly-funded agora of ideas, never did I use four-letter words and never
did I threaten anybody, except perhaps with the dangerous idea that responsible
poets should overtly and periodically question and challenge literary icons,
canon and institutions. For proof of this assertion, see the entire
uncensored transcript
deleted from the Academy of American Poets website.
Concerned
about a breach in Robert’s Rules of Behavior, the Academy of American Poets Site
Manager, Christine Klocek-Lim (click on cartoon above), with the approval of moderators sent me a brief
warning: “I suggest you read the
Terms of Use.”
Aberrantly, for in flagrant contradiction, Klocek-Lim responded with a simple quote
by Stephen Fry: “Poetry is
not made to be sucked up like a child's milkshake…"
The Academy of American Poets owes the editor of
The American Dissident an official apology and, in the name of democracy,
needs to replace its dubious Speech Code (i.e., Guidelines for Behavior, Terms
of Use, or whatever) with a statement of Free Speech and Expression encouraging
vigorous debate and democracy. To date, not one staff member or moderator has
responded regarding this despicably egregious instance of censorship.
Three chancellors responded, two vacuously, while the third predictably condoning censorship as a means of eliminating anything subjectively
determined to be offensive. The poets may be quite intelligent, but how
they lack courage! The following are their responses:
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:06:22 -0500
(EST)
From:
so1@nyu.edu
Subject: Academy censorship...
and YOU
To: todslone@yahoo.com
Sharon Olds is unavailable via e-mail.
Please fax her, care of the Creative Writing Program, at
212-995-4864. Thank you.
How odd for a professor to be unavailable via e-mail
in these days of high connectivity!
As for
Poet/Chancellor/Professor Ellen Bryant Voigt, she does not even use the Internet, so had
subordinate Amy Grimm
send her message to me.
From:
"Amy Grimm" <agrimm@warren-wilson.edu>
To:
"George Slone" <todslone@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re:
Academy censorship... and YOU
Date: 06 Dec 2007
12:30:48 -0500
Dear George Stone,
Since I don't follow
online forums, I have no way of assessing whether those conducted by the
Academy of American Poets involve reasonable or unreasonable guidelines,
or whether you have been unfairly censored. I will, however, ask the
usually very helpful and open-minded Academy staff about your charges.
Regards,
Ellen Voigt
Needless to say, Voigt's statement that the Academy staff was "usually
very helpful and open-minded" was akin to Bush stating that his staff was also
thus. In other words, it was hot air of the luminary poet variety. No further
response was ever received from Voigt or her "very helpful and open-minded"
staff. My response to her was the following:
From:
"George Slone" <todslone@yahoo.com>
To:
"Amy Grimm" <agrimm@warren-wilson.edu>
Subject:
Re:
From Ellen Bryant Voigt
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007
11:09:05 -0800 (PST)
Dear Ellen Voigt,
Thank you for your response. That in itself
is generous. Please do keep me abreast as to the Academy’s reasoning et
al when you ask it about my “charges.” You might also wish to ask why
ALL staff members, including Tree Swenson, have refused to respond to my
“charges” of censorship. Others have written to her and the Academy
regarding the “charges.” They too have yet to receive responses. For
these reasons, I chuckled reading your statement about “the usually very
helpful and open-minded Academy staff.”
As you well know, there ought to be zero
tolerance for censorship in universities and poetry academies. Yet the
reality is certainly not that at all. The Academy censors and also
refuses to respond to queries from entities not of its apparent liking.
It refuses, for example, to list The American Dissident, a 501 c3
nonprofit literary journal with other journals it lists. I’ve made
periodic requests and have received nothing but silence. If that is
“very helpful and open-minded,” it is only thus to the status quo.
If you doubt me regarding institutions of
higher learning, allow me to introduce you to the
fire.org, which
has catalogued many, many instances of college and university
censorship and censorial speech codes. Moreover, in vain, I attempted
to interest The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding my
“charges” of censorship.
As for
the third responsive chancellor, the following is her brief email:
From:
"lyn hejinian" <lynhejinian@earthlink.net>
To:
"George Slone" <todslone@yahoo.com>
CC: "Tree Swenson"
<tree@poets.org>
Subject: Re:
Academy censorship... and YOU
Date: Wed, 5 Dec
2007 19:14:41 -0800
Dear George Slone,
I know nothing
about the circumstances you are referring to. I don't support or condone
censorship. I should add that I do consider libelous, murderous,
defamatory, and hateful comments unacceptable--but freedom, including
freedom of speech, always entails obligations. For example, we enjoy
many freedoms, each of which obligates us to allow equal freedom to
others and prevents us from criminal freedoms.
Lyn Hejinian
Needless to say, I pushed Hejinian, tenured professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, to be more specific and to act against censorship, but
she chose not to further respond. As underscored on this page, vigorous
debate, cornerstone of democracy, is scorned by the Academy of American Poets
and its diverse human cogs.
From:
"George Slone" <todslone@yahoo.com>
To:
"lyn hejinian" <lynhejinian@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re:
Academy censorship... and YOU
Date: Thu, 6 Dec
2007 12:11:02 -0800 (PST)
Dear Lyn Hejinian,
First, thank you for
engaging in this dialogue, though I suspect that engagement will be
quite brief. Just the same, you are the first chancellor of the Academy
of American Poets to respond to my grievance of being censored by that
organization last July. Not one staff member has yet responded to my
grievance.
By responding, you
prove yourself different from the other chancellors. No doubt, they
rationalize their silence with the old “no-time” argument. How sad to
discover so many poets and professors have no time for vigorous debate,
yet plenty of time to hatch out another ineffectual poem or lecture!
From one of your
photos posted on the Internet, I notice you were once a hippie. But
evidently, you’ve since “grown up,” that is, become part of the
“system,” which you once likely and rightfully decried as corrupt. As a
former hippie myself, it is always interesting and usually quite sad for
me to “see” where others of that generation have ended up (e.g., Bill
and Hillary). Indeed, the present mirrors the very fraud of that past.
In any event, now
that you are well aware that vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy,
is not a cornerstone at the Academy of American Poets , where you
preside as a “distinguished” chancellor, why haven’t you expressed
outrage? After all, you clearly state: “I don't support or condone
censorship.” But you do conveniently rationalize your inaction,
acceptance of censorship, and lack of outrage with a
politically-correct, dogmatically fixed statement: “I do consider
libelous, murderous, defamatory, and hateful comments unacceptable.”
That statement, of course, echoes the many speech codes enacted by the
nation’s university professors. In case you are not aware, many of
those codes have been deemed unconstitutional and struck down in courts
of law throughout the country. In case you are unaware of the
censorship effected at the University of California at Berkeley , where
you occupy a tenured post, please consult:
www.thefire.org/index.php/schools/220.
Your statement in
favor of curtailing freedom seems somewhat aberrant or at best unclear:
“For example, we enjoy many freedoms, each of which obligates us to
allow equal freedom to others and prevents us from criminal freedoms.”
It is as if, for you, the institution can do no wrong, and therefore my
grievance must automatically be deemed superfluous or at best without
justification. There are certainly many, many out there like you.
Institutional patriots will cause the demise of democracy.
By doing nothing
when informed about an act of censorship, you clearly prove you do
support and condone censorship. How can you not possibly perceive that
self-evident truth? Have “badges and names” perhaps blinded you over
the years? Have they blinded you to comprehending what Emerson once
said, regarding them? As for the “dead institutions,” he decried, how
not to think of the pomp and circumstance-oriented Academy of American
Poets ?
Regarding
“libelous,” examine Bunnin and Beren’s Writer’s Legal Companion,
which stipulates that “a truth statement, no matter how damaging, can’t
be libelous.” Arguing “libel” or “defamation,” as you’ve suggested, is
an easy and corrupt way of rationalizing censorship! Apparently, that
is your intention.
“Hateful,” an
intrinsically subjective term, can be applied whimsically to almost
anything by anyone. How very easy to label my criticism of the
academic/literary established order to which you now proudly belong,
“hateful,” or even label this very email to you, “hateful.” Of course,
deeming speech “hateful” is an intellectually lazy and easy way to kill
vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. Yet why the rush and fervent
desire to kill debate? Supreme Court judges have ruled that speech is
not protected under the First Amendment, but only when “hateful” or
“harassment” is pervasive. Clearly, one alleged instance does not
constitute pervasive!
If you are really
against censorship, why haven’t you even taken the time to examine the
details of the Academy censorship incident, clearly detailed on The
American Dissident website? When, as now seems to be the case, large
numbers of professors and poets censor and/or have no time for vigorous
debate, cornerstone of democracy, perhaps then we no longer have de
facto democracy. But who cares, right? Hell, I have life-time job
security, money in the bank, health insurance, pension, and big fat
house in Berkeley ! Instead of democracy, for example, we have the
Academy and its array of fascist chancellors and staff members.
How can one not
think of the golden years of the Nazi regime, where so many professors
colluded? Back then, as it is today, the cocoon of tenure was far too
comfortable to exchange for moral and democratic principles! How not to
think of those professors after that regime’s defeat, declaring they, in
your words, knew “nothing about the circumstances”? How not to think of
the Stalinist poets, when thinking of the poet laureates of the U. S.
Library of Congress?
In any case, I do
hope that this email might provoke a little memory, if not thought, in
the distant recesses of your cerebrum and that you might actually take a
stand against censorship and initiate the procedure necessary for the
Academy of American Poets to apologize for heinously engaging in it and
welcome me back as a critical poet. Pipe dream? But of course! It
would be so much easier for you to simply truncate this dialogue, adorn
the black gown and parade in the chancellor herd, holding your hand out
for yet another award or fellowship or speaking engagement or another
nomination for a Pushthecart or appearance in the Best American Poetry
anthology...
PS: When employed,
I too am a PhD professor, but of a much different sort… for the prospect
of job comfort will never tempt me to muzzle myself or alter the logic
in my soul.
PPS:
Is vigorous debate,
cornerstone of democracy, also dead in the English Department at
Berkeley ? How sad… for America ! How did you ever descend to the high
established-order position of tenured curator and chancellor? Silence!
That’s all we can get out of you and yours today. Silence! Well, at
least I suddenly emerged into your comfortable cocoon realm of
self-congratulating stupor to shake you up a tad, if that is at all
possible.
What are your ideas,
woman? Not a word about them, not even on your Berkeley webpage. All
we get is an endless list of sycophant credentials. Why have lists of
prizes and publications and positions supplanted ideas in the world of
Academe today? How convenient!
That said, since
you’re evidently content with censorship at the Academy of American
Poets , how about subscribing to The American Dissident? I’m sure
Berkeley could afford it. After all, Harvard, Buffalo , Brown,
Wisconsin , Michigan , and Catawba Valley have subscribed. Your
students would no doubt love it! But perhaps you and your staid
colleagues wouldn’t. Silence…
Sadly, perhaps many poets, writers, professors,
journalists and others will censor glibly. They'll do it, then chuckle with one
another about it and will rationalize theirs is not censorship at all, but
rather editorial discretion or whatever. They have become a reality in
America today. Many of the characters named on this page (see below) have
won numerous awards, but what does that imply about
awards? No wonder poets and professors today have been accorded little
prestige from the thinking citizenry—so
little indeed that they must brew up their own prestige in whirlwind ceremonies
and festivals of rampant backslapping, self-congratulations, not to mention icon worship. They create
academies and foundations for the same purpose.
The Board of Chancellors
of the Academy of American Poets was formed in 1946
in accordance to the guidelines set forth by the Academy's founder, Mrs. Marie
Bullock, who stated:
"These men and women must be chosen from amongst literary persons
of the highest standing. They must themselves be known for their good judgment
and eminent integrity of opinion. They should geographically represent the
entire United States, so that their choices will be representative of the nation
as a whole, and not of one trend of thought, or literary clique, or section."
But how can the current chancellors be known for their "good judgment and
eminent integrity of opinion," if they condone censorship in any of its subtle
and not so subtle forms?
The
Board of Chancellors serve several functions. "They advocate for the
programmatic work of the Academy; act as consultants to the organization on
matters of artistic direction and programming; elect the recipients of some of
our awards, including the Academy Fellowship; and serve as ambassadors of poetry
in the world at large."
But what kind of ambassadors do censors make?
As for its
President/Executive Director Tree Swenson, she has proven indifferent
to censorship and, perhaps unsurprisingly, served as director of programs for
the Massachusetts Cultural Council (see
MCC corruption) and publisher and executive
director of Copper Canyon Press. Perhaps also unsurprisingly Tree has an
MA in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Please contact
academy@poets.org
to protest against Academy censorship, not
for me... but for you! Email each staff member, moderator, and
chancellor listed below. Only together can we stop censorship from
corroding democracy.
The Censoring Chancellors
All but one or two of the poet chancellors are entrenched professors. In
that respect, diversity is certainly not the Academy's modus operandi. So
many entrenched professors in the milieu will inevitably place a particular
"cloistering" spin on poetry and the canon—yesterday's,
today's, and tomorrow's. Professors tend to be well indoctrinated, as
opposed to free thinking, and tend to bow before "badges and names," as opposed
to questioning and challenging them. Recall what Ralph Waldo Emerson had
said:
I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and
names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and
well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought
to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.
Moreover, professors tend to be "safe-playing"
careerists, not courageous truth tellers. They tend to relish in pomp and
circumstance, engage in rampant sycophancy and self-vaunting, and for that
reason they tend to abhor vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy.
Thanks to their mass and money, thus shall be the direction of poetry... like it
or not. The following are the chancellors. Send them an email. See
if you get a response. Frank Bidart
(klynch@wellesley.edu),
Lyn Hejinian
(lynhejinian@earthlink.net),
Sharon
Olds(so1@nyu.edu), Kay Ryan, Gerald Stern, C. K. Williams
(ckwms@princeton.edu), Rita Dove
(rfd4b@Virginia.EDU), Galway Kinnell, Carl
Phillips (CPhillips@WUSTL.EDU), Gary Snyder (gssnyder@ucdavis.edu),
James Tate (tate@hfa.umass.edu), Robert Hass (bobhass@berkeley.edu), Nathaniel Mackey
(mackey@ucsc.edu), Robert Pinsky
(rpinsky@bu.edu), Susan Stewart
(stewart1@princeton.edu, and
Ellen Bryant Voigt (agrimm@warren-wilson.edu).
The Censoring Staff Members
Tree Swenson, President /
Executive Director (tswenson@poets.org)
Elaine Bleakney,
National Poetry Month Coordinator (ebleakney@poets.org)
Eric Engleson, Financial Manager (engleson@poets.org)
C. J. Evans,
Audio and Awards Associate
(cevans@poets.org)
Audrey Ference,
Membership Coordinator
(aference@poets.org)
Beth Harrison, Associate
Director / Director of Development (bharrison@poets.org).
She was formerly the
Development Specialist for Literary Publishing at the Council of Literary
Magazines and Presses, and has worked as a freelance grant-proposal writer for
arts organizations and nonprofit presses. Beth has also worked as an editor for
several book publishers, including Princeton Architectural Press and Oxford
University Press. Beth has a B.A. in English/creative writing from Miami
University and is the founding editor of the literary magazine Spinning Jenny.
Jennifer Kronovet,
Editor, American Poet /
Executive Associate
(jkronovet@poets.org)
Jennifer Kronovet was
born and raised in New York City. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from
Washington University in St. Louis, an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from Columbia
University Teachers College, and a B.A. in English from the University of
Chicago. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal Circumference:
Poetry in Translation. Her poems have appeared in Crowd, Pleiades,
Ploughshares and other publications.
Robin Beth Schaer, Chief Online Editor (rschaer@poets.org).
She has taught literature
and writing at Columbia University and Cooper Union, and was educated at Colgate
University and Columbia University's School of the Arts. She is the recipient of
fellowships from the Saltonstall Foundation and the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts and has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
Elliott Liu, Audio & Web Associate
(eliu@poets.org)
Billy Merrill, Web Associate (bmerrell@poets.org)
Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman, Academy Intern,
whiteman@poets.org)
Christina La Praese, Academy Intern (laprease@poets.org)
The
Censoring Moderators:
Christine Klocek-Lim (chrissiemkl@gmail.com),
Site Administrator
Gary Charles Wilkens (gary@gcwilkens.com)*
Dave Rowley (medaverowley@gmail.com)
Stephen Bunch
Diana
Manister
Catherine (rogersc) Catherine Rogers
Larina Larwar
(larina76@msn.com)
Cynthia (CynN)
Linz (girlypoet)
The research was time-consuming, hunting for the email addresses of the
chancellors and moderators, who do, however, have their poems
posted right and left, boasting about the prizes they've won, entirely
incapable of contemplating the often corrupt nature of the prize-awarding
machine. And the poems, all of them I’ve glanced at, tend to be fully submissive to
the power standing ubiquitously in the background—submissive in innocuousness,
blandness, childish cleverness, lack of questioning and challenging, and general banality. The poem, "Thursday," by
moderator Gary Charles Wilkens, serves as an egregious example. It
is the type of poem MFA programs tend to get students to write. "Now,
everyone choose a day of the week and write a poem about it!" Whoopee! Wilkens boasts on his website and proudly refers to himself as
"dazed
and hallucinated, that’s me." Tell us about it, man.
After I informed Klocek-Lim
to tell Wilkens his poem would be published on this site, Wilkens quickly contact me, exposing his concealed email address (see below). My service provider sent an email noting Wilkens had lodged a
complaint, though did not request I remove the poem. After reflection, I decided
to remove it anyhow since it was easily located on the Internet and also I'd had
a bad experience with a previous provider, yahoo-geocities, which removed my
entire web site without even first issuing a warning. That site was
removed as the result of one complaint lodged by a cultural council jefe. For more
on the threat to free speech, consult
cease and desist letters.
In any case, the poem, "Thursday,"
begins thusly: "I would love to wax romantic about poetry and many
other things,/
but Thursday won’t let me. Thursday won’t even let me use it as a symbol-/
Thursday stands for everything mundane and prosaic in the world." Well,
Thursday must certainly be Wilkens' special day! If you want to read more of that
poem, and I suspect you won't, hunt for it on the Internet.
Finally, those who censor, like Wilkens and Klocek-Lim,
inevitably possess faulty logic. Because of that, they opt for ad
hominem shoot-the-messenger name calling.
Wilkens is or was in the MA in English program at
Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. That institution and its
professors must bear
some responsibility regarding Wilkens'
censor-the-voice-of-anybody-you-don't-agree-with modus operandi. Yeah, I loath
the sonofabitch. Don't you?
Date:
Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:08:05 -0500
From: "Gary C.
Wilkens" <gary@gcwilkens.com>
To:
todslone@yahoo.com
Subject: Only Warning
Dear Toddy:
Use "Thursday" on your rancid website, and I will contact your IP provider and
threaten legal action to have it removed. It would be a clear violation of
copyright, you'd lose. Just don't do it.
-Gary
My
response follows and was not answered:
Date:
Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:03:37 -0700 (PDT)
From:
todslone@yahoo.com
To: "Gary C. Wilkens" <gary@gcwilkens.com>
Subject: Only Warning
Gary,
First, you and your established-order poet cronies, who evidently and
unsurprisingly favor censorship, are wrong! Robert’s Rules of Order or other
speech codes should never be invoked to stifle ideas and opinions!. You need to
carefully study the plethora of quotations with regards censorship. You can
easily find them on the Internet. I suggest, for example,
http://cgd.best.vwh.net/home/anticens.htm.
Sadly, in America , the
censorship mentality is likely rampant in the ranks of poets and professors, and
that problem can likely be traced to the education dispensed by the nation’s
universities. That, of course, explains your mentality.
Your poem serves to
illustrate a point and you, as a 501 (c)(3) moderator at the Academy of American
Poets, serve as a public entity, which is why the poem will remain posted.
However, if you can send me the precise text of the copyright law as it relates
to the Internet and public entities such as The American Dissident, I
will gladly consider your request.
On another note, I request
that you and your crony moderators cease censoring me from the Academy of
American Poets forums and issue a formal apology. My request is based on the
following regulation:
FINAL-REG, TAX-REGS,
§1.501(c)(3)-l. Organizations organized and
operated for religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public
safety, literary, or educational purposes,
or for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals
An organization may
be educational even though it advocates a particular position or
viewpoint so long as it presents a
sufficiently full and fair exposition of the pertinent facts as
to permit an individual or the public
to form an independent opinion or conclusion. On the
other hand, an organization is not educational if its principal function
is the mere presentation of
unsupported opinion.
Comment
This is a
key principle regarding advocacy.
By the way, try
maturing and
not calling people names so readily, as in “Toddy” and "rancid" and whatever
else you called me in that forum. Instead, try disputing the arguments
presented... with logic and reason. In essence, I could sue you for defamation
because of your statement made during that forum that I was probably part of a
Nazi organization. Fortunately, I was able to save the transcript of that
censored forum. You cannot win this debate. Censors always lose! Stalin
lost! Hitler lost!
BTW, thank you for your
email address. I could not locate it on the Internet. I shall now post it on
my website. Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone, Editor
Dave Rowley's tardy response follows below.
Note the smug attitude with regards his backing the censorship mob. Is
there any hope at all for people like him?
Date:
Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:04:43 -0700
From: "dave rowley"
<medaverowley@gmail.com>
To:
todslone@yahoo.com
Subject: Acadamy Rant
Mr Slone,
I stand by my comments and actions. Feel free to publish my email address too, I
couldn't care less. If anyone emails me I'd be happy to respond, though I doubt
there's anyone out there actually reading this tripe.
Dave Rowley.
My response follows:
Date:
Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:04:43 -0700
From:
todslone@yahoo.com
To: "dave rowley" <medaverowley@gmail.com>
Subject: Acadamy Rant
There is no
excuse for censorship in a democratic society. It really saddens me that you
got through college without anybody ever teaching you that... and that is the
principle problem with higher education today... it's become corporate
education. Feel free to dialogue. Dialogue is also of the utmost importance.
Sadly, Bush isn't even aware of that.
G. Tod
More recently, I discovered a few more email
addresses of chancellors and issued the following open letter:
Open Letter to the Honorable Chancellors of the Academy of
American Poets*
Only three of you have
deigned to respond to my concerns of the censorship effected by the Academy of
American Poets last July, though not one of you has proven eager to engage in
vigorous debate with that regard. As an American citizen, I therefore consider
all of you far more reprehensible, than honorable. Your blacklisting me as
poeta non grata is shameful, to say the least. By the way, your responses,
names, and email addresses have all been incorporated into the updated webpage
created to denounce the censorship approved by you.
Please do examine it. In fact, why not have your students examine it?! After
all, don’t you publicly consider their interests more important than yours?
In case you are still
unaware, vigorous debate is the cornerstone of democracy. Why, one must ask, is
it not also the cornerstone of the publicly-funded Academy of American Poets?
And why do all of you shun it like the plague? After all, almost all of you are
or were tenured professors. What on earth, one must wonder, are you or were you
teaching your students: sycophancy, censorship, political correctitude, speech
codes, the benefits of McCarthy-like inquisitions? Well, tenure tends to
destroy minds; it doesn’t free them.
Finally, prize-winning poets
like all of you are perhaps known for your ability to spin an ingenious line of
poetry, but certainly you are hardly at all known for the courage to act alone
and against the grain of the established-order milieu awarding the prizes. And
that is precisely why you are not great and will never be great. And that is
why you will never be held in high esteem by any independently thinking
human being. Sadly, you’ve all become cogs in the machine. “Let your life be a
counterfriction to stop the machine,” had written Thoreau. Well, that’s who I
am, a counterfriction…
*Frank Bidart (Wellesley College), Lyn Hejinian (University
of California at Berkeley), Sharon Olds (New York University's Graduate Creative
Writing Program), Kay Ryan (New York’s Central Park Zoo), Gerald Stern
(University of Iowa Writers' Workshop), C. K. Williams (Princeton University),
Rita Dove (University of Virginia), Galway Kinnell (New York University), Carl
Phillips (Washington University at St. Louis), Gary Snyder (University of
California at Davis), James Tate (University of Massachusetts at Amherst),
Robert Hass (University of California at Berkeley, Nathaniel Mackey (University
of California at Santa Cruz), Robert Pinsky (Boston University), Susan Stewart
(Princeton University), and Ellen Bryant Voigt (Warren Wilson College)
ALL MATERIAL ON THIS SITE IS COPYRIGHT ©G. Tod
Slone, 2010, The American Dissident
www.theamericandissident.org,
a 501c3 nonprofit.
|
