On Sunday, April 18 The Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial on the DP incident
noted Hackney's implication that there was "no room for the 'peaceful coexistence
at Penn between the imperatives of diversity and free expression," and advised him
to solve that problem "before heading off to his new job" at the NEH.33 In the
Village Voice, the progressive civil-libertarian Nat Hentoff castigated Hackney's
"patronizing paternalism," terming the belief that blacks could not live with the
First Amendment "yet another prejudicial stereotype."34
The president of the
DP Alumni Association, Howard Gensler, then working at The Philadelphia Daily News,
wrote to all DP alumni (many of whom worked in the media) expressing outrage over
Hackney's failure to understand that "diversity must also include the opinions of
white male conservatives."35
The story was picked up widely. Eden did not know it,
but the theft of the DP and Hackney's feeble response had created a new moment.
Now, there was genuine curiosity about Hackney as a presidential nominee and about
issues of liberty at Penn. When the water buffalo story went public, it was
received with interest. Once received, it fascinated the nation more than anyone
would have imagined.
When Eden took his case public, he was exercising his clear right under Penn's
Judicial Charter, which guaranteed that a respondent could disclose otherwise
confidential information about his experience, in which case, "any person whose
character or integrity might reasonably be questioned as a result of such
disclosure shall have a right to respond in an appropriate
forum."36 If Eden
Jacobowitz had chosen Read's deal, then his parents, the campus, and the world
would have known nothing of the charges against him. In similar circumstances,
almost every student accepts settlement offers. Admitting guilt and undergoing
"thought-reform," protected by the confidentiality of records, is an easy way to
end an ordeal. Eden would not do it. He knew that he never had directed a word
of racial hatred at anyone, and he refused to say that he had, whatever the
consequences. He was candid, thoughtful, and kind, and these qualities were
obvious to virtually every journalist who interviewed him during the next few months.
From The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, to the major television networks, to
Newsday and The Washington Post, to The Wall Street Journal, those who investigated
the truth of this absurd case caught Eden's spirit and innocence.
Eden's story entered the world by chance. One of Kors's New York friends,
hearing of the case during a social phone call on April 20, mentioned the story
to an acquaintance at the Forward, the former Yiddish-language New York daily that
was now a widely respected English-language weekly with a special interest in
cultural, political, and Jewish affairs. The story broke in the Forward's April
23 issue, a few days before Eden's hearing. The Forward ran the story above the
masthead, under the ineffable headline, PENNSYLVANIA PREPARING TO BUFFALO A YESHIVA
BOY. The former Yiddish newspaper explained that "water buffalo" was a reasonable
translation of "a non-sectarian Hebrew put-down often heard at his Long Island
yeshiva--'behema,' a word that means 'livestock' or 'buffalo' but whose slang
meaning is idiot." The Forward linked the story to Hackney's nomination to the
NEH and to the theft of the DP, and included elements of Eden's story (later
confirmed by Hackney in his Senate testimony) that were essential to understanding
the injustice of the case: "'I just described the noise and not anything
that would do with their race....I decided to help the police, so I volunteered
myself. I told the police what I said and they wrote it down." The Forward
concluded its lengthy story by a reference to Monday's upcoming trial: "A Penn
spokeswoman, Carol Farnsworth, declined to comment on the case, citing
confidentiality. 'This is not like a regular court system,' she
says."37
That same morning, the editor of The Wall Street Journal brought The Forward into
an editorial board meeting, and columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz decided to pursue the
matter. An investigative journalist and editorialist with courage and a will of
steel, Rabinowitz has one overriding public passion: She hates abuse of power, by
governments, by businesses, by prosecutors, and by educators. She long had been
one of the few editorial voices in the country to understand the abuses of
"political correctness" at the universities, and she has written powerful pieces
against the new imposition of intolerant orthodoxies. When she called Hackney,
she pressed him for serious answers about what was going on at Penn. Apparently
thinking that she was some inconsequential staffer, he said, "I don't need to take
this from some reporter," and hung up the phone on her. Indeed, several other
reporters and editorialists had called the University, which now knew that the
story was fully in the open.38
Back To The Shadow University Home Page
shadowu@world.std.com
9/19/98
