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Lecture Transcript: George Wolfe on ‘New McCarthyism’
October 31, 2005

{Roger Wojtkiewicz}
My name is Roger Wojtkiewicz, I am the Department Chairperson in Sociology, and we’re pleased to have our speaker today, who Professor Kraus will introduce. And we will have time for questions at the end. First, let me introduce Professor Rachel Kraus, the coordinator of the colloquium series.

{Rachel Kraus}
Thank you everybody so much for coming. We would appreciate your feedback, also if you would have any suggestions for future presentations, please mark them on the appropriate spot on the pink forms that are on the back table. Also there are plenty of handouts regarding the topic of today’s presentation. If for some reason we run out of handouts there’s also a piece of paper on the back there. All you need to do is write your e-mail address and we would be happy to make sure we get those handouts to you.

Before we get to today’s presentation, I just want to give you a heads up about our next colloquium speaker who will be Professor James D. Davidson from Purdue University. Professor Davidson is known around the country for his work on American Catholicism. When he comes to Ball State he will be speaking primarily about the social significance of religion beyond race, class and gender. The presentation is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, January 25th at 11:00 AM. And like all of our colloquium series presentations, you will be receiving an e-mail and a flyer about that particular talk.

Well, today we are very pleased to have Professor George Wolfe with us. Professor Wolfe is the Director for the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies here at Ball State; he oversees the Interdisciplinary Peace Studies Minor; he advises the Ball State student activist organization titled “Peace Workers;” and he teaches the interdepartmental class Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution.

Today his talk will be primarily focused on the use of Gandhian philosophy to counter David Horowitz and new McCarthyism that some people suggest are showing up in various forms of media. Now just to let everybody know, we are very aware of last year’s controversy involving Professor Wolfe. So, I do want to make everybody aware that we will have time at the end for a few questions and comments about the topic of today’s presentation. So, it is quite appropriate to hold any questions or comments relevant to today’s topic until that time.

So, without further ado please help me welcome Professor George Wolfe.

{Applause}

{George Wolfe}
Thank you very much. I am pleased to have so many people here. I want to start off by wishing everybody a Happy Halloween. It’s not been my custom to dress up so much on Halloween, the reason being that, when I was a kid, my Mom always told me that if I kept making those ugly faces the eventually my face would freeze that way. As you can see, she was right.

I have here, a manuscript which is a compilation of probably 90% of the publicity that was generated last year by the controversy. And I say 90% because there were articles running around the country, which I didn’t hear of, I’m sure I just happened to overlook some… even locally. But, nevertheless when I presented this, I compiled this and I presented it to Provost Beverly Pitts last spring. And, when I presented it to her, I pointed out that I don’t think any other program at Ball State University has generated this much publicity… since our basketball team went to the Sweet Sixteen. The title of the manuscript is “The Attack on Academic Freedom By Political Extremists and the Response By Ball State University Administrators During the 2004-2005 Academic Year.” For those of you that are interested, I am going to be placing this on my reserve in Bracken Library and you are free to go examine all of the articles, and I’ll be pointing out some in my talk today.

You will see that some of the publicity is rather serious and somewhat frightening, but there is also some humor in the publicity. One I saved for the very end, I don’t know if you have ever heard of the Indianapolis Monthly but… the Indianapolis Monthly awarded David Horowitz one of its “air ball” awards. Now, I don’t know what an “air ball” award is but it comes from basketball… that’s when you shoot at something and totally miss everything… so its rather amusing. They awarded the “air ball” award for accusing the Peace Studies program of supporting terrorism. In the sense that we advocate non-violent solutions, non-violent forms of reconciliation, as opposed to violent forms… and I don’t know of any non-violent terrorists… I don’t know.

I would like to start by reading the introduction I wrote, or parts of the introductions I wrote to this manuscript:

Academic Freedom is alive and well at Ball State University. Of all the universities across the United States who were subject to the attacks of liberal bias by political extremist David Horowitz. At only one did the administration come to the defense of their faculty and their academic programs, the university was Ball State. Vice President for Academic Affairs Beverly Pitts, President Jo Ann Gora, Interim Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management Randy Hymen and Joseph Losco, Chair of the Political Science Department are to be commended for their public stance against political extremism and their efforts to refute the false accusations directed toward Peace Studies at Ball State University.

As a result of their efforts, two newspapers in Indiana, The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette and the Muncie Star Press, ran editorials criticizing Mr. Horowtiz’s propaganda campaign. And if you receive the handouts in the back on the table, one of the handouts has those two editorials printed there. In addition, both papers called for state legislators to ignore requests for an Academic Bill of Rights. University faculty, therefore, should not be intimidated by Mr. Horowitz or by his student organization. Nor should any professor feel a chilling effect that forces them to compromise their freedom to teach as they deem appropriate in the classroom.
http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/archive/2005/November2005/BSUWolfeLectureTranscript110305.htm
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(disclaimer I didn't read this ..it just looked long and boring)