Reader Matthew Picioccio writes

I think your analysis of Berdahl's statement misses a crucial point. You
have made the issue that the stealings are likely ideologically motivated.
The op-ed (reprinted under Berdahl's on your website) mentions this as well.
Berdahl is calling them perpetrators and speaking of jail time because he is
trying to avoid making this an ideological issue. This is quite the
opposite of what you suspect - "1. It makes reference to past attacks,
drawing clear parallels. Before, every paper-stealing or book burning was
taken on its own terms, with the ideologies involved being ignored and no
blame being placed. But this ties all the attacks together as one giant
community-dimishing whole." The ideologies are once again being willfully
ignored - if I may indulge in an extreme metaphor, it's like saying that Bin
Laden is a hoodlum who is in no way connected to radical Islam and it's
ideals. Pay no attention to the ideology behind the curtain.

"The personal is political" - this statement has now drawn us to one of it's
inevitable conclusions; namely, that your (free) speech doesn't please me,
therefore I should seek redress and deserve to do so and, what's more, it's
"right." Believe me, that's their mentality. I saw it all the time at
University of Maryland - we had similar shouting-down-of-speaker incidents
(we were one of the schools profiled in Stossel's excellent piece about this
behavior of a couple years back).

It's good that Berdahl is willing to speak strongly about the people who
actually did this. It's unfortunate and sadly predictable that he would
ignore the groups and the ideologies that drive those actions

Keep fighting the good fight.

Good points! Berdahl announced he'd be actively policing the boundaries of the debate, not the participants. I should've realized that.

Just to continue the Blogger tradition of getting in the last word, I doubt Berdahl could ever be driven so far as to single out groups or ideologies, and I'm not sure I want him to. Believe it or not, there are certain limits to the controversy I want on this silly campus, and the Chancellor attacking MECHA would cause every sorta-lefty group on campus to rise up in indignation.

Nor do I believe this would be good for the campus. I don't want an actively crusading Administration. Their preponderance of power leads to bad things. What I want is one that acts as impartial referree, safeguarding my rights of freedom of speech, freedom from harassment, etc. So I think Berdahl struck the right tone here. Email This Post!