To the Editor:
As faculty members committed to the robust exchange of ideas, we protest President von Arx’s decision to cancel the Marriage Equality Forum. Like most of the 250 faculty, staff and students who attended the rally last Thursday to protest the president’s action, we continue to look for any intellectual justification for this assault on campus speech.
We cannot find any.
President von Arx said he worried that the cancelled presentation would have been one-sided. Such an argument sells Fairfield students short, suggesting they do not have the ability to critically analyze a single point of view. It also ignores the fact that many, if not most, such campus presentations include a single speaker or point of view. For example, when New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman spoke at Fairfield last fall on such issues as NAFTA and the Middle East, no effort was made to pair him with a union activist opposed to NAFTA or another voice on the Middle East.
President von Arx said he worried the intent of the original event was to influence legislation under consideration by the Connecticut General Assembly. Any public event has the potential to influence legislation, but the president overestimates the importance of a public event on the Fairfield campus in influencing deliberations in the state’s capital.
Once criticism started to mount, the president said he wanted “to find ways to assure all members of our community that they are valued and respected especially in regard to their difference and diversity, and will look for opportunities to do so.” The Mirror reports that von Arx said Thursday “he was sad that many students now felt alienated from the Fairfield community.”
For the president to cancel the event, then talk of assuring the community that all are valued and respected, seems disingenuous.
The president has been silent on whether events that run counter to church teachings will be allowed on this Catholic campus. We hope that the large attendance at the rally and the bad press the university has received will deter the president from taking such actions in the future.
Sincerely,
The Fairfield English Department
(The letter was signed by 16 full-
and part-time members of the
Fairfield English Department fac
ulty.)
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