A Mississippi legislator—Representative Charles Blackwell of Laurel—has disclosed what we hope will be ill-fated plans to introduce a bill in the next session of the legislature designed to ban controversial speakers from the state’s college campuses.
The source of such an abortive piece of legislation is not surprising: Representative Blackwell–a graduate of the University of Mississippi and its law school—has for several years been one of the self-appointed political lacklusters who pose as champions of right-wing antics and governmental retardation.
Blackwell told a group of polite white supremacists—the Jones County Citizen’s Council– that his bill would call for the legal regulation of speakers who are known members of the Communist Party, atheists, had advocated the overthrow of the State Constitution, or who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment in answer to questions concerning “communist or subversive activities.”
Other states, such as North Carolina, have slipped into error and passed such laws and now find their heretofore highly regarded state-supported universities faced with loss of accreditation.
When regulations as to who may or may not be invited to a university campus to lecture are granted legal status; that is, when the long nose of the legislature reaches into what should be the hallowed ground of educators and academicians, the result is tantamount to political intervention in the Educational Establishment, the anathema of scholars and the antithesis of academic freedom. The most noteworthy examples of governmental control of education–the very evil that so many conservatives in this country profess to abhor—are found in communist states, where indoctrination with political dogma is nearly paramount to real education.
We do not care to be indoctrinated with the State House’s political, social and racial doctrines. Not that any effort is being made to do so, but a so-called speaker ban law would constitute a big step in the wrong direction. There is no logical reason students should be deprived of the opportunity to hear whatever speakers are deemed worthwhile by our state’s own educational administrators.
The present arrangement in this state in regard to control of speakers on campuses is entirely adequate. Each college or university president is held responsible for guest speakers on his campus, and he in turn is responsible to the state Board of Trustees. Jackson’s Capital Hill is left out of the picture, and this is as it should be. The problem lies entirely in the hands of the administrators, almost safe from the politician’s roving hands.
