Seeger discusses Helen Thomas decision
During the Arab American Student Union protest at Wayne State on Dec. 10, Matthew Seeger, interim dean of the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts, was spotted walking along the Reuther Mall in front of the Faculty/Administration Building – the very place the demonstration was taking place. Although Seeger has been named by sources along with Michael Wright, associate vice president of marking and communications, as responsible for the decision to pull the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award, it was not a mistake that he crossed paths with the demonstrators.
“I wanted to see the protest,” he explained in his lush office behind a large sliding door within the Linsell House. “… I’m trying really hard not to throw gasoline on any fires. And I think that we all need to sort of take a breath, at least that’s my view, and sort of think about what this means and how we can make this a constructive dialogue. And so that’s why I chose to kind of walk in another direction. I wanted to see what was happening.”
More than a week after WSU decided to pull the Thomas award, but only a couple of hours after the AASU demonstration ended, Seeger agreed Dec. 10 to sit down with The South End and talk about the controversial decision.
Due to length, The South End decided to break the interview into two parts only. Both parts of the interview took place on the same day and the same time.
TSE: Thomas’ remarks were printed Thursday Dec. 2, what happened following that? Who made the phone calls?
Seeger: Well we had been getting phone calls from the community. I mean, when the episode first broke (in May) there was this huge firestorm. And, you know, there was a conversation among the journalism faculty and others about how to go forward. We really tried not to do anything rash or precipitous. We tried to take it slowly. I mean Helen is an incredibly important figure, and she’s been a good supporter of the university. And, you know, I personally, I don’t think the university wanted to do anything quickly in response to this. So we really tried to take a slow approach. Those earlier statements, as you recall, that was sort of ambush journalism. It felt like a really unfair approach … because they sort of caught her on camera. So we really decided to be slow and not saying anything at that particular point.
The truth of the matter is that this controversy had become very big and started to damage the program. And with the second round of comments – where it wasn’t ambush journalism, where she stood up and she intentionally made those comments – we had just a firestorm. And the controversy had reached the point where it was really detracting from the program and what he had designed the program to do. It’s important to remember that the award was created as a development program – as a way to raise money to support students in the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity. And there’s a point at which the controversy becomes so overwhelming that it just detracts from our ability to do anything to support or promote the program. And we had people – lots of people – say … ‘I can’t contribute anymore.’
I have to be responsible to students, and the award was no longer helping us do that. It was really taking us away from that particular goal. Now the actual conversation on Friday, I don’t know exactly how that decision was made. I was called and told that the decision had been made. The decision was really a university decision. It wasn’t my decision. It wasn’t a decision made by the journalism program. It was a university decision. It was above me. I did not make this decision. I was called and told that this decision had been made.
TSE: Will outside pressure, particularly from the Arab-American community, change the mind of the university?
Seeger: I don’t think (so) – and I’m not going to second guess what the university is going to do – I think the university will look for ways to try to engage this very important community more successfully. And I think there will be efforts to reach out to that community. I think there already are efforts to reach out. I mean it’s a very important community in terms of the number of students. It’s very a dynamic community. It’s an important part of who we are as Wayne State. And I think the university is going to look for ways to engage that community more fully. I don’t know what that might be. Obviously when a group like this starts to speak more fully, the university has an obligation to listen. And this event has been a catalyst for us to think about how we are engaging that community.
TSE: Will there be a stronger outreach to the Arab-American community after this?
Seeger: I can’t speak for the university in regards for that issue. I believe personally that this is a catalyst and this is a moment for the university to explore ways to engage more fully. But I can’t speak for the university with regard to those issues. I think that we have all been surprised – I have been shocked quite honestly – about the strength of the responses on all sides. And I’ll tell you, I got some doozy e-mails. I got some em-ails that probably some people should not have sent because they’re so border-line in terms of some of the stuff they are saying … from all over the area. And they’re on both sides of the issue. Not a lot of people in the middle interestingly enough. I’d like to hear from some people in the middle. But I probably got 75 e-mails yesterday. And I just saw that I’m posted on a couple of websites. I’m on Helen Thomas’ Wikipedia page now, so, you know, lucky me.
So I’ve been shocked at the level of heat and the level of controversy that’s been going on here. And I think the university has been surprised as well. And I think this is a way for the university to say, ‘Wow, there are concerns out there. There are issues out there that we need to hear.’ I don’t know what will happen. But, you know, I think it is likely that there will be some conversation about that.
TSE: Have journalism faculty members or staff been told not to speak on this matter?
Seeger: No, none whatsoever. I had a reporter call me the other day and ask if it was true the journalism faculty had been told not to speak about this. At this institution no one is going to tell someone not to talk about something or not sign a petition. I can’t imagine that happening. I would never ever, ever tell a faculty member not to speak about something. I would never ask a staff member not to sign a petition.
If I wanted a faculty member to speak about something, the best thing to do would be to tell them not to speak about it, you know. This is an academic institution. We have a deep and profound respect for people’s right to express their opinion. They can say whatever they want. They can talk to whoever they want.
Now they may choose to explain why they’re not choosing to talk to you in different ways. Sometimes people do that. They say, ‘Well, I don’t want to sign a petition because I may get in trouble.’ I talked to a journalism faculty member yesterday who said he had been interviewed and sort of related to me what he said. And he said, ‘You know, I just didn’t want to go any further about this, but you know, this is what I believe.’ So, people are talking.
TSE: Any difference (in meaning) to the university between what (Thomas) said in May, when she told Jews specifically to leave Palestine for Europe and the United States, and what she said Dec. 2 in Dearborn, saying Zionists controlled Hollywood, U.S. Foreign Policy and Wall Street?
Seeger: I don’t know how to interpret those terms. I don’t know whether individual communities make distinctions around those terms that I’m not making. As a communications scholar, I can tell you a lot of the meaning of the term exists in the mind of the receiver of that term. My expectation is what that term means is a whole lot different for Helen Thomas than it means for people in other communities. I do know that when we are trying to engage other communities in the spirit of diverse conversations, we need to be sensitive about how other communities understand those terms. When I engage any community that is a different community from my own, I need to try to understand how they view the world – try to understand what terms mean to them and try to be sensitive to that. And I don’t think that’s happened in this case at all.
I think a lot of people have been throwing around terms, which may be meaningful to their community but not trying to understand nor be respectful that those terms mean something to other communities. And this is a conflict; this is an issue that has been going on a long time – decades, maybe thousands of years, I don’t know. I don’t know how long it’s been going. But we aren’t going to resolve it today.
So, it’s good that there’s conversation. I think we had a wonderful example of free speech today on campus, and I was delighted to see that. I always like having protests on campus because it reminds me of my youth. Protests are always good, especially when they’re peaceful and respectful … which these were. A lot of people are saying this is a free speech issue. This is not a free speech issue. We are very respectful of everybody’s rights to express their views. We’ve had that happen, and we encourage that to happen today. And while Helen Thomas has a right to say whatever she wants, and I’m very respectful of her rights to say whatever she wants – I’m a free speech scholar – I also believe that the university has a right to respond. So, I think framing this as a free speech issue is really not an accurate characterization. I’ve read the First Amendment many times. This is not a free speech issue.
TSE: If not a First Amendment issue, what issue is it?
Seeger: I think it is a political issue. I think it’s an issue about power. I think it’s an issue about various groups and how they’re manifesting their particular issues. Obviously, it’s an issue about conflict. But if you read the First Amendment, it talks about government restriction and about prior restraint. There are no government restrictions here. Nobody’s imposed any restrictions on Helen Thomas.
If I were to say something really stupid, you have the right to say to me, ’I think that was really stupid and I’m not going to talk to you about that anymore.’ So, the idea that we wouldn’t be able to respond to something Helen Thomas said is just ridiculous. We have a right to respond. She has the right to say what she’s going to say, and we have the right to respond. This is not a free speech-issue in terms of being First Amendment at all.
TSE: So, this is Wayne State saying to Helen Thomas, “What you said was dumb and we are choosing not to talk to you?”
Seeger: What I said – and I’ll just leave it there – is that this program is no longer serving the purpose for which it was created. It’s no longer helping us promote the journalism program for media diversity. It’s no longer helping us raise funds for that. So, I need to go in a different direction because I need to be able to raise funds to support student scholarships in that program. And many of the students who are on scholarship in the program are Arab-American students. At some fundamental level, (I’ve got) to be concerned about students, and I can’t solve this conflict between these two groups. I don’t have the ability to do that. I don’t feel that it’s appropriate or it is fair for the university to be put in the middle of this conflict. I can’t solve that. But I can help students. And that’s what I’m trying to do here. And I hope that the university has a very specific role here. I’m trying to be true to the needs of the students, and the needs of the program.
Robert Guttersohn
The South End