Full disclosure

Remember when IPFW put on "Corpus Christi" and all the resulting furor? I was one of the ones who questioned Chancellor Mike Wartell's judgment in letting all that unfold. It wasn't a matter of whether the school had the academic freedom to put on such a controversial play. It was the idea that mounting a production so scornful of Christianity in a place that takes its Christianity so seriously would make campus-city collaboration a lot more difficult than it needed to be. The answer from the university at the time was that the point of a university was to explore and to challenge, even if that meant offending prevailing sensibilities.

So now I have to give Wartell credit for sticking to that principle in the current controversy over the cartoons so many Muslims find offensive, to the point of death. Newspapers across this nation (including both in this city, including my employer), usually so fervent in their defense of freedom of the press, have declined to publish the cartoons. Their reasons are defensible. Just because we have the freedom to do something doesn't mean it's always the responsible thing to do it; why give offense needlessly, whether it's poking a stick in the eyes of Christians or Muslims? But after a certain point, the reasons make less sense. Our primary mission should be to give readers all the information they need to make informed decisions in a democracy. How can readers possibly know what they should think about the cartoon controversy if they haven't seen the cartoons?

IPFW students who have picked up their student newspaper, The Communicator, now have a better idea of what the controversy is all about than most readers of Fort Wayne's two dailies. The Communicator decided to publish all 12 cartoons, accompanied by an editorial that is cogent and persuasive:

We do this not simply for the sake of doing it, but rather to serve the public interest by providing primary sources in a debate where they have been conspicuously lacking.

How is it OK, in this post-9/11 world in which curiosity about the Islamic religion has become understandably widespread, for national media not to pay closer attention to the crux of the issue?

For them to run footage of angry Muslims protesting in the street, burning flags and holding up threatening signs, but not to show the cause of these acts?

If you want to see the cartoons, go here (just keep scrolling down until you see them). Only one is remotely funny (the one about the virgins), but most of them are offensive. The point in providing the images for people, though, is not to be offensive. It's to let them decide for themselves how much they value dissent in a free society and how they are going to respond to people who would riot in the street over cartoons.

Wartell could have stopped publication of the cartoons. He didn't. I don't know that that makes him either brave or foolhardy. But he is being true to the university's mission as he sees it, and I think IPFW students are better off for it.