Reply to Rick

Thanks to Rick for reading, and asking good questions about, our statement objecting to the university's decision not to welcome Abp. Tutu to campus.  (As an aside, it's by no means clear to me that Tutu compared Israel to Nazi Germany.) I can only speak for myself on these points, but I'll offer my initial reactions.  First, I'm not sure why a Catholic university should ever exclude a speaker who is engaged in the search for truth on the ground that his speech is offensive.  Off the top of my head, I'm having trouble thinking of an example.  Holocaust deniers are not engaged in the search for truth.  Perhaps the timing of a visit is inappropriate, such as when the NRA might seek a platform to trumpet gun rights in the immediate aftermath of a campus shooting.  And of course, the university need not give the offensive speaker a platform to himself; the inclusion (even forced inclusion) of other messages might be warranted.  But what sort of speaker engaged in the search for truth should be categorically excluded from a Catholic university based on the offensiveness of his speech?

Rick's second question concerns the need for some sort of "abortion disclaimer."  If we require a disclaimer before any pro-choice speaker admired by students opens his mouth on the campus of a Catholic university, we'll be quite busy, I imagine.  And I'm not sure what the justification would be for limiting the disclaimer to abortion -- the next time President Bush delivers the commencement address at a Catholic university, should we add a torture disclaimer or a just war disclaimer?  (Before anyone jumps on me for conflating areas of prudential judgment with a bright-line moral absolute, I don't think it's beyond the pale to say that President Bush has disregarded the boundaries of prudential judgment on those issues.) 

If the speaker is noteworthy primarily for their position in opposition to Church teaching, I can see the need to invite either an opposing speaker or include a brief explanatory statement before the speech.  If, for example, a student group at a Catholic university invited a Planned Parenthood official to be part of a panel about prenatal care for women in developing countries, it would still be important to have some sort of disclaimer in the introduction because she is so closely associated with abortion rights.  Desmond Tutu is not noteworthy as an abortion rights advocate.  He is a champion of peaceful resistance to injustice.  No disclaimer needed, in my view.