Context Needed for Paglia's Namecalling

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I have observed with growing alarm that namecalling is replacing academic debate and that your reporting of this and other trends is increasingly superficial and sensationalistic rather than respectable journalism.

Recent coverage of Camille Paglia's provocatively titled presentation "What's Wrong With Harvard?" (March 20, 1992) did give the reader some idea why Paglia was invited to campus, when in mentioned Professor Harvey C. Mansfield's flattering introductors remarks. Howerver, the reporter highlighted Paglia's personal attacks upon members of the Harvard faculty, especially members of the Women's Studies Committee and the program chair.

This may have been the sum total of Paglia's message, but if diatribe replaces dialogue and character assassination substitutes for content, I expect your reporter to provide some kind of context for the reader.

To solicit confirmation that someone is a "conference groupie," a shoddy scholar or any other mud Paglia might sling is not at issue.

Rather, I would hope that your staff could provide more insight concerning the snipings of a feminist speaker sponsored by the Program on Constitutional Government. The forum as well as the content needs explication.

Only a few months before my department chair, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was slandered by a City University of New York (CUNY) professor. Whithin weeks the CUNY professor was brought to campus to lecture, meriting more Iavish coverage.

I am not suggesting that you fail to report such attacks nor expecting your reporting to exonerate such ridiculous attacks as professional who lapse into calling rivals "punk faggots." Rather I would encourage your staff to explore the motives behind such garbage charges, the context for these vicious personalized campaigns.

The growing popularity of gutter language, academic froums for purveyors of hate speech and the failure of the press to offer any substantive insight worry me. Free speech, yes. But the speakers--and the sponsors--must pay the price of scrutiny.

We deserve discourse, dialogue and communication. If there is no courtesy of reply, indeed no courtesy whatsoever, I challenge you to bring your critical faculties to bear on those excessively critical faculty members elsewhere. Catherine Clinton   Professor of Afro-American Studies