To the Editor:

Since my enrollment at Georgetown, I have had a deep admiration for my alma mater’s commitment to giving a full and complete hearing to political opinions of all varieties, but lately that admiration has slightly abated given two unfortunate inclusions into the slate of speakers.

The amount of prescience and insight per capita on the Hilltop dropped precipitously a few weeks ago when  Michael Moore came to deliver his ill-informed harangue about the state of American affairs. After recovering from this tremendous blow, the average intelligence index took another hit as Ann Coulter arrived on campus last week to deliver a talk similarly bereft of nuance. At this rate, the pattern of levelheaded reason on campus is beginning to be more volatile than the New York Stock Exchange. Since when did our campus become the stomping ground for irreverent and irresponsible rhetoric proclaimed by unabashedly extremist partisans who mask their egregious vapidity with excessive volume?

I am convinced that the Lecture Fund has done GU students a profound disservice in this case by shelling out not insubstantial quantities of money to bring Moore and Coulter to speak at this campus, not because of where they fall on the political spectrum but because they both have an established reputation of making statements filled with partisan platitudes to the wholesale exclusion of clear insight into the challenges of the day.

There is a reason why think tanks and public policy institutes are not knocking down their doors in search of suggestions for policy improvements, and it is this: Both are performers masquerading as political pundits. Both have created their own brands as entertainers, not educators. They are comic sideshows, not competent statesmen, and Georgetown is not the place for such a display.

The reputation of Georgetown is a factor to be considered both when selecting speakers to invite to our campus and in our response to them, and it is a theme on which students, administrators and alumni are all united. The prestige of our university lends itself easily to speeches by influential statesmen, dignitaries and occasionally our favorite neighbor, the leader of the free world. This reputation ought to be protected and honored because, once lost, it is incredibly difficult to regain.

One of the tragic side effects of the jejune protests against Gen. Petraeus in 2010 (in addition to its obvious disrespect to the American military) is that it presented to the broader world an image of our campus as hostile to a diversity of thought and undesirable as a forum for world leaders to come and present their opinions. The world beyond the Hilltop is far more attuned to what takes place behind the podium in Gaston Hall than to the tenor of the average classroom discussion, irrespective of whether we perceive that to be a fair rubric of judgment. To promote diversity, mutual respect and the rigorous exchange of ideas from the classroom while ignoring those principles when selecting and responding to our public speakers is contradictory at best and hypocritical at worst.

To prevent these errors in the future, I do not suggest that we censor our guests; that would set a dangerous and undesirable precedent. Rather, campus groups of all affiliations ought to take more seriously the solemn stewardship they exercise over significant financial resources and over a piece of Georgetown’s reputation for global excellence. Furthermore, we ought to consider how our invited guests will either enrich or impoverish the campus conversation. The rhetoric of speakers like  Moore or Coulter does not facilitate a richer dialogue across lines that typically separate Georgetown students from each other, but rather entrenching those lines, polarize the discussion and pushes students further away from each other. It is incumbent upon all campus groups to recognize the significant ramifications their choice of speakers will have, and to choose speakers that reflect well upon the reputation of our campus, enrich its dialogue and cause unity rather than division among its students.

The challenges of our day are serious, and if Georgetown University desires to be at the forefront of offering creative and innovative solutions to those challenges, we ought to cease this fatuous political theater.

Sincerely,

Justin Hawkins (COL ’11)