Sara Russo

     An editorial critical of President Clinton was pulled from The Daily Princetonian on the day of the President’s arrival at Princeton University, raising accusations that editors bowed to pressure from a conference planning committee composed of students, faculty, and administrators to kill the piece.

     The charges stem primarily from the testimony the senior editor handling the article (whom the New York Times identifies as Dana Roper) gave to Professor Robert George, the author of the editorial. The day before his editorial was due, she came to his classroom to personally deliver the news that his piece would not be run on the day of Clinton’s visit. Roper told George that many people were very upset an anti-Clinton editorial was going to run in The Daily Princetonian (or Prince as it is called on campus) on the day of the president’s visit, and their pressure led to the editors’ decision not to run the anti-Clinton article.

     In an effort to confirm what Roper had told him, George wrote up his understanding of the events leading to the cancellation of his article, and e-mailed it to both Prince editor-in-chief Richard Just and Roper.

     "Today you informed me that the paper does not want to publish my piece on Thursday [the day of Clinton’s visit to campus]. You said that there are two problems: (1) the conference planning committee and the White House people say that the President’s visit is not "political," but rather "academic" and that a piece like mine appearing on the day of the visit would send the opposite message; (2) Professor Wilentz [the conference organizer, whose article was scheduled to run opposite George’s] concerned about the same issue, will refuse to publish his piece if either (a) my piece is published on the day of the President’s visit and speech, or (b) my piece is published on the same day as his even after the President’s visit," George wrote to Roper in an e-mail.

     "Further, you said that you have been serving as a member of the planning committee for the conference and the President’s visit, and the matter of publishing opinion pieces in the Prince on the day of the President’s visit was
discussed there and received quite negatively. (I think you mentioned that there was ‘banging on the table!’ I’ve been in such meetings myself!)," he added.

     Commenting on Roper’s role in the decision not to run his piece, George told Campus Report, "The senior editor who dealt with me and who was in charge of handling my piece was on the conference planning committee. It was obviously outrageous that she allowed herself to serve on the planning committee while she was editor of the newspaper.… If you’re a journalist and there’s going to be a newsworthy event, you can’t put yourself on the committee of the event that your newspaper is going to cover," he added.

     Responding to George’s allegations that the Prince had ample opportunity to let him know if his version of events as gleaned from his conversation with Roper was incorrect, the Prince editors admitted in an open letter within their pages that, "[George] correctly states that he e-mailed us to confirm his understanding of events, and that we failed to e-mail him back. It was an oversight not to reply to George’s e-mail, and for that we apologize."

     The editors of the Prince, holding to a very different version of events, vigorously denied that anyone had influenced their editorial decisions. "No one—liberal or conservative—will be permitted to bully the editorial staff of The Daily Princetonian into making decisions. And whether that bullying comes from a professor or a world-famous editorial page, we will not allow it to compromise the independence and integrity of our newspaper," the editors claimed in an editorial.

     According to the Prince, George’s article was dropped because Professor Sean Wilentz, the orchestrator of Clinton’s visit to campus, withdrew from publication an editorial praising Clinton that was supposed to run opposite George’s negative piece. "With Wilentz trying to dictate the terms of how his column would be presented—and facing the prospect of having only one article to run in what we had hoped would be a carefully balanced debate—the editorial board made what we felt was the best decision: We refused to run either column," the editors explained.

     George also points out that on the very day the Prince refused to run his anti-Clinton piece on the grounds that "balanced debate" would be disturbed without a pro-Clinton rebuttal, the paper published an editorial by politics graduate student Jason Brownlee, praising Clinton’s record in office and arguing that he would make a "perfect successor" to departing Princeton president Harold Shapiro.

     Commenting on Brownlee’s article, George said, "They had said the reason they were pulling my piece was they didn’t want to run an anti-Clinton piece if there wasn’t a pro-Clinton piece.…Well, then I opened the paper, and what’s there? There’s a piece saying Clinton has been a great president, and appointed lots of women and minorities, and therefore he should be appointed president of Princeton."

     He also disputes the contention that the publication of his piece was contingent upon a pro-Clinton editorial being run. "I got a call back from [the Prince]…saying that they intended to invite somebody else who would be more favorable to Clinton also to appear," George told Campus Report. "Well, I didn’t have any objection to that at all. I completely think it’s a great idea to have competing points of view. But my agreement with them was…that there were no conditions. It was a firm agreement to publish my piece on the day of the Clinton visit," he concluded.

     George was also concerned about the fact that there would be no criticism of Clinton in the press on the occasion of his visit to campus. "Anyone interested in the campus take on the Clinton visit, instead of reading my critical piece read [Brownlee’s highly complimentary article]," he told Campus Report.

     The Daily Princetonian stands by its decision not to print George’s piece, and to print Brownlee’s instead, claiming that no one pressured them into making that decision. In the lengthy editorial they printed within their own pages, the editors of the Prince stated, "Some have suggested that George’s column should have run next to the piece that we eventually did publish on Thursday’s editorial page…but this assertion ignores the nature of the academic debate we were attempting to arrange."

     The editorial continues, "While Brownlee is complimentary of Clinton in his column, his speculative prose would not have served as an efficient counterweight to George’s piece on the legacy of the Clinton administration. Though it was well-written, Brownlee’s submission discussed an altogether different issue. Additionally, it would have been inappropriate to pit a graduate student against a world-renowned professor in what we had hoped would be a carefully balanced scholarly debate."

     When reached for comment, editor-in-chief Richard Just refused to answer any questions, instead stating, "I’d prefer at this point just to let the editorial [in the Prince] speak for itself."

     Wilentz’s motives for withdrawing his piece have also been called into question. As the organizer of the conference where Clinton was to speak, and one of the President’s principle defenders during his impeachment hearings, some have surmised that he had a great interest in making sure all ran smoothly during the President’s visit.

     In a letter to the Prince, Wilentz disputed that he had any ulterior motives in refusing to participate in the point/counterpoint debate. "In keeping with the spirit of the conference, the piece I wrote was historical and academic, and unsuited to an ideological debate. Moreover, the conference was formally an academic and not a political occasion," he wrote.

     When asked by Campus Report if he would have objected to running his piece and George’s piece on the same page, but not depicted as a debate, he responded, "If they want to run a piece of mine describing the conference and have what [George] ran [at a later date] in the Wall Street Journal alongside of it, that’s alright, I don’t care. Or indeed, they could have run his alone. I wouldn’t have minded."

     The Daily Princetonian takes quite a different tack on the question of Wilentz’s attitude concerning the appearance of George’s piece in the paper. In a letter to the Wall Street Journal, Prince editor-in-chief Richard Just writes, "We were naturally angered by Prof. Wilentz’s threats and resentful of his attempt to influence our editorial decisions by using his column as a bargaining chip."

     George also believes that Wilentz was able to exercise undo power over the student paper’s editorial decisions. In a lengthy open letter to the Prince, George claims, "The Prince believes it was necessary to exclude my piece from publication as planned because Wilentz refused to let his column appear if mine was published. Though I am confident that the editors did not intend it, this effectively gave Wilentz a veto over whether criticism of the President would appear in the campus newspaper on the day of the conference he was running."

     As is the case in many instances of campus censorship, George’s voice was ultimately amplified. His editorial criticizing Clinton was published in the Wall Street Journal, along with a summary of his account of events, which the Prince continues to dispute.

     Perhaps the real losers in this controversy, as Professor George points out, are the students of Princeton University, who were treated to a visit by the first president to be impeached since Andrew Johnson without a single word of criticism in the campus press. The university that has not hesitated to defend the controversial philosopher and advocate of selective infanticide, Peter Singer, who now resides within Princeton’s Center for Human Values, sees no harm in precluding George’s views on Clinton from being heard.

     George summed up his feelings on the effect of Clinton’s visit: "If you’re in the banking business, you don’t steal money. If you’re in the academic business, you have to be honest with words, you have to tell the truth. Everything depends on that. That virtue has got to be cultivated. We have to celebrate it. We have to teach it to our students by precept and example. Now what kind of a message does it send to have somebody with that record of mendacity coming in to be celebrated in an academic conference? What’s it say about the standards of truthfulness in academia?"