President Bush on Free Speech

President Bush’s speech at the University of Michigan (front page, May 5) suggests that what’s really politically correct nowadays is to join in the attack on “political correctness” on college campuses. The President has called for the need to uphold the values of tolerance, the practice of free speech and the goal of social harmony. All these from a man who has sought to gut the First Amendment to protect the flag; who would hold the passage of a civil rights law hostage to some spurious issue like “racial quotas”; who has resorted to the grossest racist imagery to win a presidential election, and who, in using his considerable influence to oppose abortion rights, has clearly displayed little tolerance for the views of the majority of American women.

The polemics raging around “political correctness” is in fact a tiresome diversion from the real challenge we face in our universities: that of democratizing the substance and scope of education. This has meant striving for the greater inclusion, not exclusion, of different voices that represent the diverse experiences of our people; confronting, not repressing, the history of societal conflicts that have led both to the creation and mitigation of racial, sexual and class inequalities; broadening, rather than restricting the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship among those who have long been treated as less than full participants in the American polity.

George Bush cheapens the complexity of this task by raising the red-herring of “intolerance” and “dictatorship” in our universities.

VICENTE L. RAFAEL, Associate Professor, UC San Diego