High Court Hijinx

THE "MANDATE to inculcate moral and political values," Justice William Brennan Jr. points out, "is not a general warrant to act as thought police." The lesson was lost on the majority of Brennan's Supreme Court colleagues, who last week effectively deputized the nation's high school administrators to quash the expression of whatever opinions they deem objectionable. The opinion may well be used to justify censorship of student newspapers and journals in state universities. It mocks--or perhaps reveals--what passes for the nation's historic commitment to free speech.

In its 5-3 decision, the Court supported a Hazelwood, Missouri, high school principal who prohibited the printing of two pages of the school's student-edited newspaper. He objected to two articles--he thought one might violate some students' privacy, the other unfair to a person mentioned. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White called the action "not unreasonable" given the grounding of the principal's concerns that the contents of school newspapers are of "legitimate pedigogical" concern.

A particularly sorry spectacle has been the attempt of some conservatives to claim the ruling as some sort of victory. These are the same people who present Robert Bork's failed Supreme Court bid as proof of what Suzanne Garment calls in the current Commentary "[T] he liberal monopoly over the great academic institutions and even over the idea of intellectual merit itself." Whether mainstays of a "liberal monopoly" or not, those who run academic institutions have now been given the Supreme Court's go-ahead to advance their own views at the expense of all others.

In clearing the way for school officials to protect the privacy and reputations of those who might be harmed by overzealous student investigators or polemicists, the court erected no safeguards against excesses that might constitute censorship of the most capricious kind. What are "legitimate pedagogical concerns" if not any concerns some school official decides to be legitimate and pedagogical? How far may principals go in remaking high schools according to their personal ideals? According to Justice White's majority opinion, views officials might censor include any that might "associate the school with any position other than neutrality on matters of public controversy."

It is shocking that the high court so clearly--and correctly--recognizes the schools' mission to teach students moral and political values yet is blind to the fact that among the most fundamental democratic values is the citizen's right to speak forcefully about the affairs of the day. Newly empowered school officials would do well to remember that--regardless of the Court's unfortunate decision--no school can be judged successful if it fails to teach that lesson.