Michael Moore’s visit demeans the venerable institution
Carlisle is a quaint central Pennsylvania town that oozes charm and is movie-set picturesque. It lies in the heart of Keystone state Republican territory, part of a region that has been identified in national studies as the “most conservative” in America.
If you were to pick a place for the controversial and widely derided film-maker Michael Moore to speak, Carlisle would not be it. But, the town’s venerable Dickinson College has invited Moore – and he has accepted their invitation to bring his brand of radical discourse to the school in October.
To add additional irony to the situation, Carlisle’s other institution of higher learning, Dickinson Law School, has as a prominent member of its board of governors the Bush Administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge. And the law school recently rejected overtures by Penn State University to move it to State College – largely because the law school wanted to preserve its small-town appeal.
Apparently, the folks across the street at Dickinson College have a different view of the world. It is, of course, the role of colleges and universities to promote a healthy dialogue on issues great and small, and in the process to sometimes invite unpopular people to present unpopular points of view. But, the Michael Moore invitation goes beyond even that broad pale of academic freedom.
The core fact of the matter is Michael Moore is not a documentary film-maker. He is a political partisan. And balancing the Moore appearance with a speech from columnist Jonah Goldberg of the conservative National Review does not adequately reflect that fact. Paring Goldberg with a liberal journalist, which should be easy enough to find, would achieve that goal.
Michael Moore’s anti-Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11 has been so widely discredited it stands as a fraud rather than a documentary. David Kopel of the Independence Institute has produced a report detailing 59 examples of deceit employed by the Moore film. Kopel concluded Fahrenheit 9/11 is “a twisted, dishonest, paranoid, and hateful fantasy.”
In deciding who to invite to speak on its campus, Dickinson College should at least require its speakers to abide by a reasonable degree of academic and/or journalistic standards. Otherwise, the college makes a mockery of its own existence by opening the door for any charlatan with an opinion to take to its podium.
By any academic or journalistic standard, Fahrenheit 9/11 fails to pass muster. The film belongs in a category with the worst propaganda productions of history, right up there with the Nazi and Soviet propagandists who mislead the populations of an earlier time. It might have made some sense had Moore been invited to speak in that context.
Alternatively, Moore could have been invited to speak on the Dickinson Campus as part of a properly billed partisan exchange. Although, I have to admit it would be hard to find someone on the Bush side of the equation who sinks close enough to Moore’s level to be considered a counter-balance.
Dickinson College should rethink its invitation to Michael Moore, or at the very least revisit the context in which his address is delivered. Otherwise, Dickinson’s credentials as a serious academic institution will be seriously compromised. It will have revealed itself to be just the central Pennsylvania office of the Democrat National Committee.