The Clareification controversy

Clareification, the student newspaper of Clare College, has a tradition of ridiculing the racism or bigotry it ostensibly portrays though its sheer outrageousness. Even for those schooled in its unique brand of satire, however, last week’s renamed Crucification issue appalled. An attack on Islam and Christianity, it featured both the most controversial of the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons and the most vile and unambiguous Islamophobia. It was the material surrounding the former which has found its way into the press, however, suggesting that the Clare authorities are attempting to conceal the general content of the issue behind the controversy of cartoon republication. This may be designed as a damage limitation exercise on their part, but it comes with its own dangers.

On the basis of what was in the public domain, I felt compelled to argue the following for TCS:

“We disagree with what you say, and, although we shall censure it, we shall not punish you for saying it.” This, with apologies to Voltaire, should be the attitude of the Clare College authorities to the guest editor who last week printed one of the notorious Danish Muhammad cartoons in the college publication, Clareification. It is beyond doubt that printing the image was highly inflammatory, and that the sentiments expressed were offensive to many of a religious persuasion. Crude and cruel, the renamed Crucification issue should be thoroughly condemned, and Clare College was right to quickly distance itself from its content. But setting up a Court of Discipline with the prospect of sending down the guest editor will succeed only in stifling student opinion with noxious self-censorship.

Punishing an individual on the grounds of causing offence creates a dangerous precedent. Many people and groups in Cambridge hold and express opinions which are offensive to others. There are undoubtedly those in Cambridge who openly condemn homosexuality on religious grounds, for instance, but, however abhorrent I find such views, I would still not wish to see them sent down. Part of a vibrant Cambridge culture of tolerance and diversity has to be a tolerance of free debate.

Yet the offending issue of Clareification was, in the view of many - including myself - both frightening and unnecessary. Just because we should have right to free expression does not mean we should feel compelled to express everything and anything at any opportunity. There was a time, at the height of the global cartoon controversy, when the national media had good reasons to republish the images. Doing so would have constituted a principled stand for free speech when the right to print the images was being questioned, and was justified as the central component of all the news stories on the furore. But the national media of both Britain and America shirked this responsibility. Cardiff University student newspaper gair rhydd’s publication of one of the cartoons accompanying a balanced article on the controversy resulted in the suspension of its editor and two of its journalists. If even a reasonable use of the images results in such punishment, what hope for the guest editor of Clareification, who was using them in a piece which went out of its way to insult?

The principle at stake is that even if we find someone’s opinions misguided, they should still have the right to express them, and it is for them to decide whether and when to do so. Clare College is rightly alarmed that its publication was used to indulge such incendiary sentiment, but stressing that these were the opinions of an isolated individual, and, in a hopefully largely symbolic and temporary move, cutting Clareification’s funding, should be sufficient expression of its disgust. Disciplining individuals to contain student opinion would be a worryingly reactionary move for a traditionally liberal Cambridge College to make.

From what was reported in the student, local and national papers, it appeared heavy handed for Clare to establish a Court of Discipline with the prospect of sending the guest editor down, which seemed to suggest that the College would no longer tolerate simply the causing of offence. Having since been able to get my hands on one of the few copies of Crucification left after Clare called them all in to be destroyed I can now appreciate the severity with which they are treating the matter - and I pulled the article before TCS went to press. But those without the contacts to get behind Clare’s wall of silence can only guess at where the authorities are coming from, and will draw the appropriate spurious conclusions. The danger of a partial cover-up is that the message sent out will not be the unacceptability of Islamophobia, but that a bastion of student free-thought is calling for timidity in cross-cultural critique. Clare’s ambiguity to save its reputation risks fuelling the misunderstanding and suspicion of cultural difference that only frank discussion can dispel.