When smart people blog dumb things

What Peretz — the long-time Editor-In-Chief of The New Republic magazine and a professor at Harvard — posted in his blog on September 4 upset many, including (and this is where the controversy made the leap into the mainstream media) a New York Times columnist.

Context is almost always lost in the media’s coverage of “he said what?” stories, so let’s look at Peretz’s controversial statements in the context of his argument.

Peretz’s September 4 post reacted to a New York Times poll of New Yorkers that asked 41 questions about the proposed construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from the Ground Zero sites and a September 2 Times editorial supporting its construction.

In the first paragraph of his blog post, Peretz wrote:

The newspaper has done a poll of New York City residents which found that 33% of them thought Muslim-American “more sympathetic to terrorists” than other citizens. Frankly, I don’t trust opinion surveys on matters like this. But I’d guess that if respondents were truly honest with the pollsters and with themselves the percentage would be considerably higher. Which, of course, means that the Times could go into even higher dudgeon than it actually has.

He goes on to question the reliability of the poll, arguing “there has not been a single rally or demonstration in America aimed at Muslim or Arab interests or their commitments to foreign governments and, more likely, to foreign insurgencies and, yes, quite alien philosophies.”

Peretz then talks about terrorism and war in the Arab world — “the unrelieved murders in Islamic lands” — and asks why Muslims don’t “raise their voices against these at once planned and random killings all over the Islamic world.”

He concludes:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

In his September 11 piece, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof called Peretz’s statement “a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become.”

A prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms.

Two days later, Peretz finally thought twice and published a blog post titled “An Apology,” calling his statement that Muslims may not be “worthy” of First Amendment rights “embarrassing.”

I wrote that, but I do not believe that. I do not think that any group or class of persons in the United States should be denied the protections of the First Amendment, not now, not ever.

He does not answer the obvious question: If he doesn’t believe it, why did he write it and publish it? He must have believed it, if only for the angry moments in which he wrote and posted the statement. But let us accept his apology as sincere — we all say (and write) things in the heat of the moment we don’t believe and later regret. Did the apology mollify his critics?

Not for a moment. And Peretz make it quite clear he will not apologize for writing “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, especially for Muslims.”

This is a statement of fact, not value. … Every week brings more and more gruesome evidence of this, in the Middle East and Central Asia and elsewhere. The idea that in remarking upon the cheapening of Muslim lives I was calling for the cheapening of Muslim lives, as some have suggested, is preposterous. There is no hatred in my heart; there is deep anxiety about the dangers of Islamism, and anger at the refusal of certain politicians and commentators to adequately grasp those dangers, but there is no hatred, none. In these unusually inflamed days, I am glad to say so clearly.

You may agree or disagree with that argument, but at least it is cogent argument.

Harvard plans, on September 25, to hold a ceremony honoring Peretz for his nearly 40 years of teaching there by establishing at half-million dollar research fund in his name. Some faculty members and students have demanded Harvard rescind the honor because of Peretz’s blog post.

The university issued a statement Wednesday saying, in careful corporate PR-speak but firmly, it will do no such thing.

It is central to the mission of a university to protect and affirm free speech, including the rights of Dr. Peretz, as well as those who disagree with him, to express their views.

It’s an odd way to defend Peretz, since no one is calling into questions Peretz’s free speech rights; the objections some have are not that he wrote, but he that wrote statements that offended them.

I’ve been reading the work of Peretz for 30 years in The New Republic and other publications, and he is a rigorous and erudite thinker and a graceful and persuasive writer. Does he deserve to have his name stripped from a scholarly fund raised in his honor for two statements he published, one of which he recanted and apologized for, and the second of which he stood by and further explicated? I’ll leave that to Harvard (although it appears to have already decided).

For what it’s worth, I find the statement Peretz retracted offensive (and am satisfied by his apology) and the statement he stood by a little dicey but inoffensive.

What I find interesting and instructive is how even the smartest and most cultured among us can stumble when they write and publish in the turmoil of anger.

Take heed, bloggers.

Follow Mark Leccese on Twitter at @mleccese.