Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee

National Review, Dec 28, 1992 by Richard Samuelson

Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee, by Nat Hentoff (HarperCollins, 405 pp., $25)

NAT HENTOFF has made a career out of free-speech absolutism, but fortunately he is consistent enough to realize that today the real threat to free speech comes from the Left, and brave enough to denounce it in the pages of his own main outlets, The Village Voice and the Washington Post. Conservatives may be annoyed by Hentoff's inability to see any difference between cranks who would ban Oedipus Rex from the schools, and legitimately concerned citizens who would ban pornography from the streets. However, he brings forward an abundance of case studies to illustrate the ongoing struggle of the "advocates of civil rights versus the advocates of civil liberties." One case concerns a black student at the University of Michigan who, during a discussion, said that he had heard that a certain course was particularly difficult for minorities. The professor, also a minority member, demanded redress under the school's speech code, and the student was forced to write a letter of apology. According to the University of Michigan, the professor had a "right" to be free from the harm that criticism of his class would bring. In this and other cases, Hentoff provides additional evidence, as if any more were needed, of the depredations of PC.