by Andrew J. Rotherham

HBO's Shouting Fire Is More Congratulatory Than Analytical on Free Speech Issues | iHaveNet.com
Shouting Fire Documentary

Andrew J. Rotherham is cofounder and publisher of Education Sector. He blogs at Eduwonk.com.

Despite frequent admonitions from our political leaders to do so, it sure is proving hard to move past the last eight years. Add to the retrospectives Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus' Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech, which debuts on HBO.

Through accounts of flashpoints since 9/11 about the freedoms Americans enjoy under the First Amendment, the documentary film is intended as a sobering check-in on what's happening on the ragged edge of free-speech debates.

Garbus chronicles University of Colorado Prof. Ward Churchill's dismissal in the wake of his inflammatory comments about the 9/11 attacks, Debbie Almontaser's removal as principal of the Khalil Gibran Arabic-English dual language school in New York City, Chase Harper, whose anti-homosexual T-shirt ignited a firestorm at his high school, and the protesters at the 2004 Republican Convention in New York City. The film also weaves in key First Amendment history from President Adams, Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the debate over the planned Nazi rally in Skokie, Ill., to the publishing of the Pentagon Papers.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shouting Fire is personal. Garbus involves her father, trial attorney and First Amendment expert Martin Garbus, in a running commentary on the issues the film raises. Martin Garbus, whose personal history on the issue helped make him political, is an articulate and convincing advocate for a staunch First Amendment viewpoint. His engaging personality and low-key but passionate approach make the film.

Less interesting is the portrayal of the various contemporaneous cases. The episodes are intriguing, as these cases generally are. But if you begin to watch Shouting Fire thinking Republicans haven't acquitted themselves well on civil liberties and free speech during this decade, you'll likely finish thinking the same. The film is more congratulatory than analytical.

In fact, the conservatives Liz Garbus rounds up to discuss the issues seem an almost deliberately unappetizing lot. Activists David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes, stars of the Churchill and Almontaser controversies, are zealots and do not acquit themselves well in the film. The most reasonable voice is that of Ken Starr--he of Clinton impeachment fame. Couldn't Garbus have found an articulate advocate who doesn't immediately spark a visceral and negative reaction from almost anyone left of center? In a similar vein, during a discussion of academic free speech rights, the film pointedly highlights the association of former second lady Lynne Cheney and Sen. Joe Lieberman with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (signaling sinister motives, natch) but provides viewers relatively little information to make a judgment about the group. So much for informed debate underpinning free speech.

This angle is unfortunate because the issues Shouting Fire raises are vital ones. As the film notes, in times of war or great fear, Americans are more willing to erode civil liberties. "Red scares" and internments are obvious high-profile examples, but the period since 9/11 provides more recent if less sensational illustrations. That's a pattern that requires vigilance. Yet the film fails to fully engage with the complicated balancing act of civil liberties and national security, which seems almost certain to continue as a national conversation for some time. Similarly, the account of the protesters at the 2004 Republican Convention only scratches the surface of emerging questions about new electronic surveillance methods and privacy.

At the same time, Shouting Fire leaves complicated elements of these stories unexplored. The Debbie Almontaser incident, for example, is much less a First Amendment or free speech issue per se than a case of media and activists run amok. Almontaser was the victim of reckless and sensational media coverage, interest groups that need controversies to survive, and her own lack of press savvy and poor judgment amid the media storm. That brew, rather than any governmental action, created the circumstances that caused public officials and education leaders in New York to abandon her and forced her resignation. Unfair? Of course. But not uncommon, and given the new mediums of technology and communication today and the burgeoning online marketplace of ideas, issues of nongovernmental suppression and distortion of speech are ripe for examination. Ward Churchill's theatrics, for instance, largely escaped public attention until their excavation by cable news shows.

For his part, Churchill makes a poor First Amendment hero. And the juxtaposition of Chase Harper and Ward Churchill illustrates how, despite so much rich material to work with after the past few years, Shouting Fire goes awry.

The case of Harper, the high school student who wore a homemade T-shirt declaring "homosexuality is shameful" is emblematic of the challenging nature of free speech issues in our increasingly pluralistic public space. Harper's shirt was undoubtedly offensive to at least some of his fellow students, especially gay students; it greatly offends me and many other adults as well.

Still, Harper wore the shirt amid other activities at the school intended to raise awareness about gay rights. If students do not check their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door, as everyone this side of Clarence Thomas seems to agree, then figuring out where to draw the lines is a treacherous business for the public schools. It's unfortunate that the somewhat trivialized students rights case of the "Bong Hits for Jesus" banner made it to the Supreme Court while a genuinely complex one like Harper's did not (the Supreme Court declared the case moot in 2007 because Harper had graduated from his high school).

Although more than three times his age, Ward Churchill, is a weak counterpoint to Harper. Agree or disagree with Harper, he is what he appears to be: a young man with intense beliefs about what the Bible teaches. Churchill, who landed on the national stage after writing that the 9/11 attacks represented chickens coming home to roost and calling workers in the towers "little Eichmanns" is harder to pin down. Depending on whose account you choose to believe, he's either a sloppy or dishonest scholar. Meanwhile, his claims of combat service in Vietnam, various radical activities, and even his Native American ancestry, which undergirds much of his work, have been seriously called into question.

Did the University of Colorado see the controversy over his remarks as an embarrassment and a reason to fire him? Probably. However, although a court recently overturned his dismissal, it's debatable whether he ever should have been teaching in a public university in the first place. In the film, a representative of the American Association of University Professors basically says that Churchill's situation was indefensible. That's no small thing in this context. But it's also the only serious yellow light in an account that largely presents Churchill as the noble victim of a free speech witch hunt.

Put another way, both Harper and Churchill are inconvenient protagonists, but Harper's case is the kind that genuinely tests our commitment to free speech; Churchill's the kind that merely tests our patience. Besides, Churchill was hardly the only public figure making essentially those arguments. Was there no more compelling example of a chilling effect on speech in the wake of 9/11 than this charlatan?

During a panel discussion following the Washington screening of the film last week, Adam Liptak of the New York Times asked whether from a rights perspective the audience should feel equally for all the free speech protagonists in the film. Interestingly, only Martin Garbus approached a direct answer to the question or an affirmative one. Perhaps that moment, better than Shouting Fire itself, illustrates why free speech remains such a hard issue more than 200 years after the enactment of the First Amendment and especially in times like these.

 

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