Vain search for radicals on UNR campus

Three myths will never die in America. One: the exceptionalism of the United States. Two: the media are liberal. Three: universities are overrun by leftists.
I made a pitch recently to the journalism faculty at the University of Nevada, Reno, to join the Nevada Faculty Alliance, the campus advocacy group. (Teachers, like newspaper folks, eschew the word union. Union, like liberal, is a dirty word.)
I noted that the NFA defends academic freedom, fights for higher faculty salaries and benefits, lobbies the Regents, the Legislature and the governor on behalf of the faculty, and helps with faculty appeals of evaluations and amounts of merit pay.
My plea was met by vast indifference. What, professors, who work with their minds, be contaminated by unionism? One faculty member said loftily that the NFA was not on her agenda.
NFA has about 130 members out of about 1,300 professors and staffers on the UNR campus. So much for faculty liberalism--let alone radicalism.
Then there was a seminar on campus this spring discussing the worldwide Muslim furor over the Danish cartoons that satirized Muhammad. The program, under the auspices of the UNR journalism school and the National Judicial College, featured four panelists who interacted with an audience of about 30. The title of the seminar: “Caricatures and Censorship: a Free and Responsible Press?”
Incredibly, the seminar was, in effect, censored. Not one of the cartoons that inflamed the Muslim world was shown. I can understand why the cartoons might not be shown by Establishment newspapers. They were inflammatory, offensive to Muslims.
(The Philadelphia Inquirer did run them, the only major newspaper in America with the courage and wisdom to show its readers what the Muslim demonstrations and trashing of embassies were all about.)
Journalism professor Ed Lenert, lawyer and PhD as his emails always remind recipients, moderated the panel and exchanges with the audience. He explained in an email why the Danish cartoons were not shown:
“First, the purpose of the discussion was to go ‘beyond the Danish cartoons.’ There’s been a lot of coverage about the specific cartoons themselves and I didn’t want to go over that ground again. Second, I discussed it with the presenters (panelists) and it was felt that we should focus on U.S. cartoons in the context of a free and responsible press.”
But the Danish cartoons were the impetus for the session. Why bother having a seminar if you don’t show them? Academics are so cautious, nay, even gutless. Rocking the boat is not the academic way.
Dr. Lenert, who holds the august chair of Critical Thinking and Ethical Practice, showed about eight American cartoons. Everyone one of them should have run. Yet the audience and panelists engaged in deep soul-searching and philosophical agonizing. An amazing number of the cartoons were rejected by a hefty majority of the audience. Even some panelists turned thumbs down on a few cartoons.
Finally, after an hour and one-half of this brow-furrowing, I angrily cried out over the audience microphone: “What this panel needs and this audience needs is a Justice Black or a Justice Douglas.”
Dr. Lenert ignored the comment, repeating some silly remark about “black and white.” But the session demanded the viewpoint of First Amendment absolutists like Black and Douglas.
Paul Conrad, wonderful editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, put it well: “A cartoonist should get out of bed mad and stay mad.” That anger is reflected in a comment by Douglas: the very purpose of the First Amendment “is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest…or even stirs people to anger.”
Editorial cartoonists, unlike newspaper reporters, make no effort to be fair. Good cartoonists are negative critics, sometimes even destructive.
Thomas Nast, 19th century giant of editorial cartooning, drew mordant and trenchant cartoons. One showed erditor Horace Greeley shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth over the grave of Lincoln. Grossly unfair, hyperbolic. But that’s how Nast felt about Greeley.
Cartoonists do not possess what the learned Professor Lenert calls a “moral compass.” Nor should they. They are artists, not careful, “balanced” members of the professoriat.
Political cartoonists have no duty to be “responsible.” They have no duty to be “respecters” of people’s feelings. Nor should they ever be squelched in their vision no matter how vicious.
One guy in the seminar audience was bright, philosophical and profound. He said he would not have printed most of the cartoons. Like academics, he would make a lousy editor.