Emma's Too Hot to Handle

The University of California at Berkeley is refusing "to allow a fund-raising appeal for the Emma Goldman Papers Project to be mailed because it quoted Goldman on the subjects of suppression of free speech and her opposition to war. The university deemed the topics too political as the country prepares for possible military action against Iraq," reports the NY Times.

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open."

Berkeley officials said the quotations could be construed as a political statement by the university in opposition to United States policy toward Iraq. Candace S. Falk, the director of the project and author of the appeal, acknowledged that the excerpts were selected because of their present-day resonance. But Dr. Falk said they reflected Goldman's views, not the university's policies.

Ah, intellectual and political cowardice on one of the most distinguished campuses of America. How surprising.