MEDFORD, Mass.
A Tufts University dean earlier this week reversed a campus board’s requirement that a student-run conservative journal include authors’ names with articles — a rule imposed after the magazine published an unbylined parody that many found racist.
Dr. James Glaser, the private school’s dean of undergraduate education, said the byline requirement was an unfair restriction on free speech, a view echoed by Tufts President Dr. Lawrence Bacow in a statement issued before the start of a new school year.
Glaser ruled on an appeal by the publication, The Primary Source, of a decision last spring by the Committee on Student Life. The panel, a board of professors and students that hears complaints against campus groups, took issue with The Primary Source’s Christmas carol parody called “O Come All Ye Black Folk.”
“Imposing such a (byline) provision on one publication in the context of a judicial decision can only be construed as punishment of unpopular speech,” Glaser wrote in his decision. “To protect freedom of expression at Tufts, I must reverse this aspect of the outcome.”
Glaser left intact the committee’s decisions that The Primary Source was guilty of harassment and creating a hostile environment in violation of the school’s nondiscrimination policy.
Glaser wrote that “constructive dialogue does not come from poking a sharp stick into the eyes of others and then inviting them to the table to talk.”
