UCT and free speech: the cost of punishing ideas | Michael Morris

Retired Judge Mahomed Navsa has recommended that Advocate Mark Oppenheimer be expelled from the University of Cape Town Council over remarks about campus antisemitism and an "Islamist" takeover made in an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He also recommended that fellow council member David Ansara be suspended for endorsing Oppenheimer on X. The writer disagrees with some of Oppenheimer's views. He argues, though, that punishing them shows his critics will not risk having their own ideas tested. For a country that once silenced dissent, he says, how Africa's top university rules on this is a test of whether South Africa still protects open debate..By Michael Morris*.The deepest irony in the efforts by some interests at the University of Cape Town to punish UCT Council members Mark Oppenheimer and David Ansara for opinions they don’t like is that they unwittingly concede their own ideas cannot afford exposure to contest.Much worse is that the effort risks punishing us all.At issue, as we reported on Sunday, is the recommendation of retired Judge Mahomed Navsa that Advocate Mark Oppenheimer be expelled from his elected post for remarks made last year in an interview with prominent international commentator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and that fellow council member and CEO of the Free Market Foundation David Ansara be suspended for having posted an endorsement of Oppenheimer’s stand on X.Judge Navsa’s enquiry arose from complaints against Oppenheimer and Ansara tabled before the UCT Council between March and October last year.(Oppenheimer, who serves as president of the IRR Council, and Ansara, a member of the IRR Council, are two of the four members on the 30-strong UCT Council who represent the Convocation, comprising graduates, alumni, academic staff, and emeritus professors or associate professors.) The emphasis of the complaints considered in Judge Navsa’s enquiry, and apparently informing his recommendation, arose chiefly from Oppenheimer’s statement to Hirsi Ali that “that university [UCT] passed an academic boycott against Israeli academics. And that’s because you’ve had a number of Islamist elements take control of that institution, terrorise those who would want to take a reasonable position, you know, trample on academic freedom.”For this, a punitive measure was called for, as Oppenheimer had, according to the “complaints”, cast doubt on the repute and integrity of those who had taken part in protesting Israeli action, and, therefore, on the repute and integrity of the institution as a whole, including the council on which he had been elected to serve.There were also references to Oppenheimer’s views of EFF leader Julius Malema’s “Kill the Boer” chants.GistIn his statement to the Daily Friend at the weekend, Oppenheimer repeated the gist of what he had told Hirsi Ali when he said:“When Ayaan Hirsi Ali interviewed me last year, I described in detail the anti-Semitic incidents on campus. Jewish students holding posters of Israeli hostages then held in Hamas tunnels were attacked by people wearing Hamas T-shirts and waving Hezbollah flags. A Jewish student performing the religious ritual of laying tefillin had his yarmulke grabbed from his head and thrown to the ground. Israeli flags were covered in blood, and Jewish students had the words ‘We are Hamas’ screamed in their faces.“I described what was happening as an Islamist takeover of the university. Shortly after those incidents, UCT adopted its anti-Israel boycott. These events raised serious questions about the university’s willingness to protect Jewish students and uphold freedom of expression.”Invariably, the seeming weakness of much writing in favour of free speech lies in a keenness to defend what is said rather than the principle of saying it.As it happens, I disagree with some of Mark Oppenheimer’s propositions, or the weight of meaning he assigns to events or conduct.My own sense is that an unignorable part of the visceral criticism of Israel is not antisemitic in the least, and not “Islamist” either, but an expression of outrage on the part of sane, considered people across all of society over what they – and I – think of as Israel’s profoundly ill-considered military response to the terror of 7 October that was destined from the second it began – in that confined, restricted and almost entirely urban geography – to be brutish and unconscionably costly in lives and humanity.Proof of racismCaring about the lives of Palestinians or Gazans is no more proof of fealty to murderous radicals than opposing BEE or ANC corruption is proof of racism or hatred of South Africa.This is not to say I believe there are no devotees of terror in South Africa, or even on the UCT campus. But if radicalism or antisemitism or support for terror against anyone is to be confronted, the unevadable responsibility is to be precise, or else empower the very thing you mean to defeat.As for Julius Malema and his theatrical – for-effect – yet anachronistic resort to those oh-so-malleable words of “Dubul’ ibhunu” (look up the Zulu and Xhosa words for “farmer” and you’ll get my drift), I believe it is right to be guided not by anxiety about possible connections between rural crime and an ugly chant, but to cleave to the Constitution’s demanding threshold, that speech is impermissible only if it amounts to “incitement of imminent violence” or “advocacy of hatred … that constitutes incitement to cause harm”. In this way, we may come to our senses and realise that dealing with crime against any South African is really what matters. I have written about this at length before.Of course, on both these issues I may be quite wrong.And this cuts to the heart of the controversy at UCT; what confronts the UCT Council is a matter of principle, not substance.The measure is not who or how many at UCT agree with Advocate Mark Oppenheimer; the principle is only demonstrably valid if it is used to defend his right to speak.Oppenheimer was unquestionably justified at the weekend in saying of the “finding recommending my removal on the basis of that podcast interview” that it was “an egregious attack on freedom of expression”.And to the extent that some academics and others are unwilling to entertain Oppenheimer’s ideas as a matter of intellectual debate, but punish him for them instead (and Ansara for endorsing them), they are only confirming that they are also unwilling to risk exposing their own ideas to scrutiny.It is worth reminding ourselves that the UCT Council – the council of South Africa’s oldest public university, and the top university in Africa – is charged under the Higher Education Act and the UCT Statute with setting the institution’s strategy, mission, and policies, and to ensure financial sustainability, ethical standards, and legal compliance.Self-respecting academyCan any self-respecting academy that is truly concerned with its justly earned repute engage with one of the most pressing topics of our time, but stop short of confidently encouraging a contest of all the ideas that are brought to bear on it by declaring half the argument not only impermissible but punishable? This the question the UCT Council must now settle.In my long career I have quoted more times than I can remember the following line from poet John Milton’s landmark 1644 defence of free speech, the Areopagitica:“Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.”The line that immediately precedes this one has all the punch one might wish for in any argument about speaking with courage:“I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”.Read more:.Marika Sboros: UCT under scrutiny over POPI breach it can't explain (Part 2).Good or bad ideas must be openly judged to be good or bad, an appraisal that’s only possible if there is a contest that we can all judge for ourselves. Anything less delivers only a “fugitive and cloister’d vertue, unexercis’d & unbreath’d”.And what good is that?The sobering answer is that it’s not good at all for a society that has pinned its hopes on genuine liberation, on being free and open and unafraid. When a society decides that all it can do is punish ideas it doesn’t like, the reverse is true. We should know that better than most. We have been there before..*IRR head of media Michael Morris was a newspaper journalist from 1979 to 2017, covering, among other things, the international campaign against apartheid, from London, and, as a political correspondent in Cape Town, South Africa’s transition to democracy. He has written three books, the last being Apartheid, An Illustrated History, and has an MA in Creative Writing from UCT. He writes a fortnightly column in Business Day..This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

UCT and free speech: the cost of punishing ideas | Michael Morris

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