Double Jeopardy

The key to the first half of the staff editorial is "an insult...to feminists." Yes, the parody was offensive--its authors have admitted that and have apologized. But it was offensive because it mocked the death of a fallen members of our community, not because it mocked feminism.

As Law Professor Charles Fried said, the memory of a loved one is sacred, and should be immune to parody; feminism is a political doctrine, and as such is open to scorn, ridicule and quotation.

As for the second half of the staff opinion, the poster did exactly what the staff editorial above does: It reproduced harmful (much worse than "insensitive") epithets in order to strike them down.

The problem with the poster is that it required too much prior knowledge. To the poster's designer and Peninsula staffers, it was obvious that the poster's allusion to ugly stereotypes of Blacks (promoted by white heroes of the sexual revolution like the Jack Kerouac and the Paul Tillich) was an attempt to discredit those who have promulgated them. To others, it wasn't obvious, and that's Peninsula replaced the posters.

Call the terms "hate speech" if you want, but the poster was a good-faith effort to use others' hate speech against them.

Finally, the staff's factual inaccuracies speak for themselves:

1) Representative from Peninsula did talk to Epps and Jewett, but not to Hernandez-Gravelle.

2) The title of the symposium was not changed.

3) Peninsula's decision to replace the posters was unilateral, and was made out of concern for the community--not due to any "convinc[ing]" by the duplicitous deans at University Hall.