On Friday, April 23, Brobeck called Kors to announce that the Monday hearing had
been postponed, citing "too much publicity," but then correcting himself: "The
real reason is that the women no longer have an advisor." The advisor had been
Zoila Airall of the Division of Residential Living. "She doesn't want to appear
in the case," Brobeck admitted, "and we can't have the hearing without their
advisor." When reminded if his insistence that the hearing would be held on April
26 even if Eden had to be completely on his own (while the women's case would be
presented by the JIO) and of the fact that Eden would lose his witnesses when the
semester ended, Brobeck replied, "It's my judgment call. The case is postponed
indefinitely...until, at earliest, in the fall." When Eden was informed, he asked,
"Are they going to have this hang over my head all summer?" Indeed, they were.
No one had thought to notify the media about the postponement of the hearing.
Consequently, on the morning of April 26, The Wall Street Journal ran Dorothy
Rabinowitz's lead editorial "Buffaloed at Penn." It described Eden as "the
latest victim of the ideological fever known as political correctness," and it
referred the case to the attention of "anyone concerned with the state of reason
and sanity on the campuses today." It labeled "Kafkaesque" the fact that someone
who had not shouted any racial slurs, and who had told the police what he had said,
"would pay a price for his forthrightness." It drew the deeper lesson: "He had
yet to learn what they don't teach at freshman orientation; namely he had now
entered a world where a charge of racism or sexism is as good as a conviction."
Pointing out the obvious facts that zoo, animals, or even, indeed, Animal House
were universal references to noise on college campuses, it described Robin Read's
discovery of racism in Eden's innocuous phrase as "theater of the absurd." It
also noted clearly the "settlement" that Eden had been offered, and the courage
it had taken to turn that down.39
The effect of the Forward's article and The
Wall Street Journal's editorial -- in the wake of Hackney's nomination and his
equivocation on the theft of the DP -- was electric. Eden was interviewed on
television by Tom Snyder and John McLaughlin. George Will devoted his syndicated
column in The Washington Post to Eden and to the theft of the
DPs.40 Within short
order, the international media settled in at Penn.
Although, in the final analysis, the University of Pennsylvania took a beating
in public opinion because it had, as its leading press officer said the next year,
"a stupid case to defend,"41 Penn repeatedly revealed an arrogance that the media
scarcely could believe. Hackney's slamming the phone on Dorothy Rabinowitz could
have been a metaphor for Penn's entire handling of the case. Reporters were
reconciled to hearing the University say that it did not want to discuss the
specifics of the Jacobowitz case, but Penn refused to discuss even its speech
code, its past practices, its history of enforcement, or its violations of
procedure. Reporters, editorialists, cartoonists, and broadcast journalists
understood freedom of speech. They understood double standards, due process,
and decency. Reporters live by the First Amendment, and many pretty much live
by it absolutely. On NBC Nightly News, Sara James asked Larry Moneta, "Have
you ever heard of 'water buffalo' being used as a racial slur?" He replied:
"The issue is not whether I have or not. The issue is also, you know, language
in my mind is neutral. It's a question of the context in which is language is
used."42 (Two years later, when
Penn abolished its speech code, the same Larry
Moneta would dutifully go before the media to declare that "At Penn, all speech
is free.") The reporters were doing their jobs remarkably--probing,
investigating, and developing sources. Within the administration, a growing
loathing of the cruelty and utter stupidity of this case led important officials
to channel information to the press. Thus, the Washington Times reported on
April 27 that the postponement of Eden's trial had "prompted speculation that
university President Sheldon Hackney ordered the delay to protect his pending
nomination to head the National Endowment for the Humanities," to which the
reporter added: "School officials, who asked not to be identified, echoed
[this] sentiment and speculation about the trial's
postponement."43 The
case had turned over a rock at Penn, and it was not just outsiders who did not
like what they saw underneath it. On that same day, the Philadelphia Daily News
lectured Penn that "It's hard to justify breathtaking tuition hikes when acting
like a herd of dik-diks."44
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9/19/98
