Salvete...Omnes?

When I opened The Crimson and read that G. Brent McGuire '95 was delivering the Latin Address for this year's Commencement, I paused, Something about it made me uncomfortable, but I was not immediately sure why. Other friends who heard the news had a similar reaction, so I decided to analyze whether our feelings were justified.

I was led to ask a number of questions about the relationship between speech and speaker. I wish to state early on that this is not an editorial against McGuire; I do not question the committee's opinion that he gave the best Latin Address, nor do I question his right to speak. His selection was simply the catalyst for my questions about the line each of us draws on the issue of what we find to be offensive speech.

First, the background. McGuire is a Crimson editor and former senior Council member of the arch-conservative magazine, Peninsula. He has written such pieces as "Frailty Thy Name is Woman" in which he argues that "Reason tells us why gender differences are necessary to society. And morality tells us why gender differences are good...By attacking the traditional family, feminists seek to remove the one context in which women can and should be the center--the center of home and the center of a man's love. "In this same article, he contends that "in any truly competitive environment for high status positions, the man will prevail over the woman more than nine times out of ten."

In a Crimson editorial, McGuire argues that Harvard should not be co-educational. McGuire takes the point of view that the "mission of the University is undermined by the presence of women," who are by nature "more delicate in their sensibilities than men," and who disrupt the education of men. McGuire's concern is solely with the education of men, claiming that "coeducation at Harvard does deleteriously affect many men's attitudes towards women"; a parallel argument would be that Blacks interfere with the education of whites and therefore should not be allowed to study at Harvard.

McGuire also defendsThe Bell Curve'spremise that the fact Blacks and Latinos have lower I.Q.s than whites is significant because "there is little question that whatever I.Q. measures has a lot to do with what is involved in becoming a doctor or lawyer or professor." As McGuire writes, "In fact, the gap between upper-class whites and upper-class Blacks...is actually wider than the gap between lower-class whites and lower-class Blacks. This fact, borne out by decades of scholarship, strongly suggests a genetic component."

I am offended by McGuire's statements not because I disagree with him politically but because he essentially questions the right of more than 50 percent of Harvard to be educated at this University. I wish to make a very important distinction between my disagreeing with someone politically and my taking offense with their questioning of my very person. Although I disagree politically with Stephen E. Frank '95, who is delivering the English Address, he has not questioned my right to be at Harvard. McGuire, on the other hand, questions my right as a non-heterosexual, non-male to the pursuit of happiness and a Harvard education. McGuire writes in another article that "marriage, properly understood, stands alone among human partnerships, for it begins not with a contract, dependent and rescindable, but with a vow, existential and transcendent," but then proceeds to say homosexuals may not marry or even experience the love of a partnership. It is particularly difficult on my Commencement Day to know that a speaker believes I should not even be sitting in Tercentenary Theatre that day.

After last year's Take Back the Night rally, McGuire wrote an editorial confessing to be the man who stood up in front of a group of people gathered to talk about violence against women and told misogynist and offensive jokes. Puffing on his cigar, McGuire mocked the gathering, singing "Hey, hey, ho, ho patriarchy's got to go," before running off. Well, I have a confession to make. I was the woman who got up after he left and said that he had every right to speak, that I would even listen to him (and indeed I read his subsequent editorial) but that he had not chosen the appropriate forum or manner.

If the Commencement speaker invited were to have made any of the statements cited above, there would obviously be numerous protests, as there were for General Colin L. Powell. McGuire's case is unique, however, since it is not he who was chosen but his address. He is also speaking for a mere five minutes in a language most of the audience will not understand, so it is clearly an issue which deserves only a small amount of time and attention. It has been observed before, however, that a speaker is held accountable not merely for what he is speaking on but for all of the other remarks he has ever made publicly. When Professor Tony Martin came to speak on The Bell Curve, Hillel protested based on previous remarks he had made about Jews. Since I understand McGuire's Latin Address within the context of his other speech, the address's actual content is less relevant to my response.

When McGuire gets up on his and my Commencement Day, I will be hearing not only his Address but the other speeches he has made. I will not clap for him, just as I would not support an artist I considered intolerant of my person. I do not suggest that you do as I do (and refrain from applause, the customary form of approval), but I ask simply that you think about where you draw the line between speech and speaker. At Harvard, we have learned to write for a grade, to write what we know others want to hear. Ultimately, however, our public speech is ours and ours alone and as such does not stand apart from us as individuals. I know McGuire only through the written word, but can make the decision not to applaud him on the basis of only that.

McGuire and other members of the religious right are so positive that they are right, that their morality should be everyone's morality. I can't be sure that every thing they believe is wrong, but I can be sure that I do not want McGuire's beliefs to be imposed on me when they affect my life and not his. I congratulate McGuire on his Commencement, and hope that in time he, and others like him, develop the tolerance of others his Harvard education should have taught him. At least through my process of questioning, with McGuire as the catalyst, I have determined where I draw my line.