Dear Vice President Black:

Last night’s debut of the Distinguished Speakers Series was a highly regrettable event, on a number of levels. First, to pay anyone $50,000 (as you did Karl Rove) or $30,000 (as you did General Wesley Clark) in the midst of this budget crisis is appalling. At some level, I think Rove and Clark must feel the same way, given that they insist in their contracts that these figures be kept confidential (their agents are not quite so close-lipped). The world is full of intellectuals, scientists, and artists who live and breathe for the sake of communicating their ideas, not for the sake of pocketing an obscene amount of money. In fact, I think one could make a good case that any speaker who demands $50,000 to speak is, by that very fact, undistinguished.

Second, to kick off this year’s series with a gracious tribute to two war criminals suggests significantly misplaced priorities. If you read beyond the press kits produced by their shills—as I assume you and the Distinguished Speakers organizers did—then you will discover rather quickly that Karl Rove is a failed student, a draft dodger, a smear artist, a confessed burglar, the recipient of a citation for contempt of Congress, and the proud “architect” of an utterly illegal war that has led to the deaths of over one million people—including sixteen inhabitants of Erie County. His defense last night of torture and his persistence in his murderous lie that Iraq was holding WMDs was disgraceful—and the disgrace was not his alone.

General Wesley Clark boasted last night of not having lost a single US soldier in the Kosovo War, during which he was commander of the NATO forces. Of course, he did not mention that the war itself was not sanctioned by the UN, and was therefore manifestly illegal. And he did not mention the various NATO atrocities, including the bombing of Radio Serbia and the daytime massacre of fourteen civilians (80 injured) in Niš Market—among hundreds of other civilian casualties, most of which came after, not before, the NATO bombing campaign. To claim, as you did last night, that he prevented the massacre of 1.5 million Kosovars (I believe this was you, yes?) is sheer, speculative fantasy. At the very least, basic human decency demands that the thousands of actual dead also be acknowledged.

Yes, I know Rove and Clark appear on FOX News as commentators, but as a major public university, UB should aspire to higher standards. Really, Vice President Black, I can think of quite a few distinguished speakers who have not massacred civilians in illegal wars—this should not be a check mark in the “distinguished” column.

Even ignoring the fees and the speakers, the format of the question and answer period was disgraceful. As far back as the quodlibetal sessions of Thomas Aquinas’s medieval University of Paris, the very essence of the university has been the free and open play of questions and answers. Sifting and censoring questions as you did last night left you with inoffensive, slow-pitch questions and kept any uncomfortable points from being raised. But this came at the cost of putting the audience to sleep, denying the role of free inquiry in intellectual life, and degrading a great university into a sorry site for packaged spectacles. Either the speakers demanded screened and censored questions and you agreed, or you suggested screened and censored questions and they agreed. In either case, shame on you and the Distinguished Speakers series. Anyone who does not want to entertain direct, face-to-face questions is, by definition, a bad pick for a university lecture.

Next week, I will be teaching Milton’s “Areopagitica,” his great defense of free speech, directed primarily against prior restraint of publication. It embarrasses me to think how far UB in 2008 has slipped below the ethical and intellectual standards of England in 1644. Indeed, the only hint of “Areopagitica” I heard last night came when a group of people attempted to move to the stage and ask unscripted questions, and without demanding any money at all for their pains. Of course, they were silenced and escorted out, but not before reminding me of what I love about UB, its students, and university life.

Truly,

Jim Holstun

Professor of English