In the Case of Ann Coulter vs. Fordham University

This is definitely stating the obvious, but Ann Coulter goes out of her way to make liberals dislike her.

Her screeds are, at best, entertaining polemics, and tiresome slanders at worst. Her laugh sounds like a half-hearted gasping hiccup. She speaks in a WASPy New England accent with an obnoxious, throaty inflection. Cursed with the likeness of a cockeyed horse emaciated from a lifetime of grazing on Chernobyl’s irradiated fields, she’s as unpleasant to look at as she is to listen to. And worst of all, she listens to the Dave Matthews Band.

That said, I’m a fan of Ann Coulter: The One Woman Sideshow, so I was thrilled when I heard that she would be bringing her circus act to Fordham University, my old alma mater, to speak at an event organized by the College Republicans. This could only end in disaster and given how much I hate my old school, I was more than happy to watch the spectacle.

When the news broke that she was scheduled to speak, a number of students decided to spoil my fun by starting an online petition opposing Coulter’s appearance. The petition, however deluded (it’s not like their petition was going to stop Coulter from speaking), managed to get over 2,000 signatures and the school president, Father Joseph McShane, issued a letter expressing disappointment with the College Republicans’ decision.

The College Republicans, under pressure by the media, the student body, and Father McShane, disinvited Coulter. Their excuse was that they failed to “thoroughly research” her — as if anyone has to research Ann Coulter thoroughly — before inviting her. McShane called the compromise a victory. I call it a copout, but, hey, I’m a cynic.

One wonders how a school, whose policies are as conservative as whatever ham-fisted bon mot Ann Coulter happens to be uttering, would be so opposed to a right wing enfant terrible like her speaking at a private club event. Strip away Coulter’s colorful word choice and their views do overlap. Especially when it comes to religion, sexuality and culture. After all, this is a school that had Newt “Women are not fit for combat in trenches” Gingrich deliver a lecture about conservatism.

I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with Ann Coulter on anything, but even I think she should have spoken. There are authors sitting on the bookshelf at Fordham’s library who are ten times as subversive as Coulter. As a matter of fact, Coulter isn’t the first controversial lightning rod to speak at the campus. Fordham invited Norman Finkelstein, a scholar whom some have characterized as a Holocaust denier, to speak in 2009. In the same week that Coulter was supposed to speak, Peter Singer, a philosopher who has advocated infanticide as an emergency contraceptive and defended bestiality in articles like “Heavy Petting,” will participate in a panel on animal rights.

Finkelstein and Singer are just as contentious as Coulter. Perhaps, more so. So where’s the letter from the president? Where are the petitions? Is it possible that the university accepted that there are dissenting voices populating the intellectual sphere and that a college campus is best, if not the only, place for such voices to have an audience?

Colleges are ideally nests of antithetical ideas challenging one another to arrive at the truth. Inquisitive minds don’t need to protected from big, bad ideas, even if the ideas come from a mouth as obnoxious and boorish as Coulter’s.

Besides, it’s not like she’s some dingbat blogger that neo-Nazis gush over. She was a columnist for National Review and is a bestselling author with a following. Like her or not, Coulter is relevant to the conservative culture. If Fordham disagreed with Coulter or found her schtick distasteful, they squandered an opportunity to take her to task and spar with her mentally.

Instead, they assumed the self-appointed role of censors and twisted the arms of the cowards in the CR until they yielded. And they ruined what could’ve been a good show.