The shouts of “War criminal! Murderer of innocent [Iraqis],” “Blood on your hands… Blood on everybody here” and “I don’t want to listen to your crap” by Amherst townspeople that pierced former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton’s highly-anticipated lecture on Monday night in the Cole Assembly Room did not speak well for the supposedly “liberal” anti-war cause. These interruptions—challenges to Bolton’s military record, violent attempts to make a “Bolton War Criminal” sign visible, efforts to halt Bolton’s talk and prevent the Amherst community from learning from such an accomplished speaker — were foolish and counterproductive. In fact, whether or not we agree with his views, the outcry from the protestors and the subsequent decorum with which Bolton carried himself garnered the former ambassador more esteem, even more credence. Bolton happily engaged in the type of open dialogue that the “liberal” protesters so vehemently opposed, and which is so central to the College’s mission.
While we were dismayed by the interruption of the protestors, the response of students to the lecture and the disturbance gave us reason to take pride in the Amherst College community. President Tony Marx’s statement in response to one disruptive heckler, “If America stands for anything, it stands for freedom of speech,” and the subsequent wild applause, indicate that most of the College’s students seek open dialogue and value their right to hear different, sometimes unpopular points of view. Students, liberal and conservative alike, were excited to hear Bolton talk and many spoke afterwards of how much they valued the experience.
The College should wholeheartedly support the work of the Committee for the American Founding, the sponsor of the event. We were disheartened to learn that the College had originally recommended that the Committee take a lesser grant that would have prevented the Bolton lecture. The College has reportedly also discouraged the group’s important work in the past. The politically conservative Committee provides a forum for three generations of Amherst men and women to come together several times a year to engage with high-profile, accomplished speakers such as Supreme Court justices, members of Congress and distinguished academics and writers. They foster debate on issues central to our country, discuss important moral and political problems we face and preserve views rarely heard at Amherst.
Jed Doty ’05 wrote in his fundraising appeal for the Committee, “We know that students at Amherst are amply instructed on ‘identity politics,’ and on issues of gender lurking everywhere. Of variations in those themes Amherst cannot seem to get enough. In the meantime, the fashions and orthodoxies on the campus have been unwilling to embrace those teachings of the Founders and Lincoln and the claims of moral truths grounded in an enduring ‘nature.’” On this campus, there is room enough for such diverse ideologies as feminism, Marxism and natural law conservatism to coexist intellectually. Amherst students deserve the right to hear from a multiplicity of perspectives on political philosophy and current events. To this end, we must support the Committee in providing students, liberal and conservative alike, with a novel way of thinking about moral and political problems more vigorously. Projects such as the Committee are vital to maintaining free discourse and ideological diversity so essential to all of our educations.