LET THE IDEAS FLOW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650021-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: February 9, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650021-5
p T-( -l 1IN-F M FEARED
1 Vat . en.toff
Let the ideas Flow
One morning in. October 1981, Rep. Don Edwards (D-
Calif.), who considers James Madison and Thomas Jefferson
to be among his constituents, was uncharacteristically de-
pressed. The House, by 354 to 56, had passed the Intelli-
Fence Idemtiiies Protection Act, which University of Chi-
taro law professor Philip Kurland called "the clearest viola-
tion of the First Amendment attempted by Congress in this
era."
Amone other thins the act made it a crime to publish
info: rna:ion that could lead to the identification of covert in
ieuueence agents. even if-and this was a first in American
h:storv-the information had already been in the public do-
t-:n. i to day alter the act swept through the ouse,Don
towards told me, "During the vote, I looked around and
saw alumni of some of the best law schools-Harvard, Yale,
Berkeley and my own law school, Stanford. They were vot-
ing w:thoat any understanding of the First Amendment.
That shocked me."
More recently, it looked for a while as if certain future
alurnni of Georgetown University Law School might have
been among future congressmen ignorant of the essence
and spirit of the First Amendment. Last November, a ma-
jority of the editorial board of the Georgetown Law Journal
voted not to renew the subscription of the University of
South Africa, a public, racially discriminatory institution.
The majority explained this move by saying that anyone
who does business with the apartheid state, whether that
business is the sale of "machine guns or law reviews," must
evaluate the morality of what he is doing. As for them-
selves, these law students had found they could not in good
conscience "continue a consensual contractual relationship
SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY
with a university that is an arm of a racist and repressive
government."
A saving minority of associate editors on the law journal
began campaigning to reverse the decision. After all, the
Georgetown dissenters pointed out, "South Africans prob-
ably experience eno;igh censorship without our 'help."'
The dissenters also suggested that the moral majority on-
the editorial board might henceforth want to carefully
screen new subscribers to make sure that none has such of-
fensive ideas that he should be disqualified from taking out a
subscription. For instance, they said, what if checks came in
from the FB1, the CIA, the Supreme Court of t e i-
WASHINGTON POST
9 February 1985
lippines or the American Enterprise Institute?
Its not so funny," a Georgetown University law profes-
sor said to me. "If a scholar wants to submit an article, will
he or she now have to wonder if it will be accepted or re-
jected on the basis of whether its political ideology is 'cor-
rect'? "
I asked a leading American anti-apartheid strategist,
Randall Robinson, executive director of TransAfrica, what
he thought of the civil war at the Georgetown Law School.
"While I applaud students' struggling to be principled,"
Robinson said, "I have problems with the specific action
taken. The divestment movement is intended to cover only
investments in South Africa, not ideas. We need a free flow
of ideas. As a matter of f?ct, South Africa can only benefit
from knowing what is thought about it by American law stu-
dents and scholars. I like the idea in The Washington Post
editorial which suggested sending to the University of
South Africa hundreds-I would say thousands-of free
copies of an issue of the Georgetown Law journal focusing
on South Africa."
Meanwhile, the sons and daughters of James Madison on
the editorial board-aided by a series of articles on the dis-
pute in the National Law journal-kept pressing to make
the "spirit of the First Amendment" whole again at their
journal. At last, an amendment to the constitution of the
Georgetown Law Journal has been passed by the full staff
membership. From now on, the journal will "not- consider
the political, ideological or religious views of present or pro-
spective subscribers in deciding whether to terminate, initi-
ate or review subscriptions."
"Well," a Georgetown law professor, Eleanor Holmes
Norton, says, "I can say the students have certainly learned
something from all of this."
Norton, a renowned civil libertarian, former head of the
..Equal Employment Opportunity. Commission and active in
various anti-apartheid operations, told me-about an intrigu-
ing hypothesis with which she was recently confronted at a
meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. A
South African law professor, known to be a supporter of
apartheid, who is also an expert on contract law, wants a
position at an American law school. Should he get an ap-
pointment on the basis of his acknowledged expertise in his
specialty? Eleanor Holmes Norton thinks he should. The
principle is called academic freedom.
Perhaps this might be debated in the issue of the George-
town Law journal to be sent free to the University of South
Africa. Along with the idea of having Prof. Norton invited to
0-2,t university to lecture on her specialty-freedom..
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000402650021-5