Hatred on Campus

Thomas L. Metzger, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who advocates separation of races worldwide, continues to record his brand of bigotry on cable-television tapes at Cal State Fullerton’s Instructional Media Center. For the last two years Metzger has been recording his tapes on the Fullerton campus for distribution and broadcast, using cable-television facilities that federal law opens to the public.

Too often hatred begets hatred, and some people are trying to kick him off campus. But however unacceptable Metzger’s presence at the university is to some campus and community groups, it’s even more unacceptable, and unconstitutional, to try to stifle his freedom to express his views.

No government at any level has a right to restrict free expression or decide which ideas are acceptable and which can be stifled.

Unfortunately, that bedrock principle is occasionally overlooked by well-meaning people who are outraged by the doctrine of hatemongers like Metzger. They forget that the loss of any one person’s freedom of speech is a loss for all. And that the free expression of all ideas, popular or not, must be protected.

Fortunately, officials of Cal State Fullerton--including President Jewell Plummer Cobb, who is black and active in anti-discrimination groups, and Edgar Trotter, chairman of the communications department--understand the First Amendment.

However sympathetic they may be to the protest, and as “despicable” as they believe Metzger’s programs are, Cobb and Trotter remember the rules--something that the Orange County branch of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and Cal State Fullerton’s Afro-ethnic studies department, which want Metzger off campus, seem to have forgotten. The freedom of thought and the ability to present all sides of even the most controversial issue are fundamental to democracy. The last place anyone ought to try to suppress that freedom is on a university campus.