As his communications director, I attended the event at the New School with former Speaker Newt Gingrich on September 13 and I wanted to share with you my experience. First, I thought that Newt was treated (for the most part) respectfully. I also think that it is a bold policy for the New School to welcome credible speakers from different and challenging perspectives thus allowing students to formulate their opinions by connecting intellectual dots from a diversity of viewpoints.

Since this appears to be a free forum where comments are invited, I did, however, want to clear up a few things and confirm some others.

First, no Gingrich security detail was involved in the removal of the 3 students who had interrupted the presentation. They were removed by school staff or security hired by the school. No one on Gingrich’s staff was involved in removing anyone.

Second, there is no truth to the assertion that “most of the audience was comprised of carefully-placed Gingrich supporters.” While Newt did know some people who attended the New School speech, some of whom he acknowledged from the podium, the only person that was invited to attend by us was a member of Congressman Charlie Rangel’s staff. I personally invited him because he and I are working together with Congressman Rangel on a future NYC visit and it provided a good opportunity for me and Newt to meet him.

Next, I don’t believe that it was only Newt’s (few) “supporters” who “weren't thrilled with the interruption” made by the 3 students who took it upon themselves to try to keep others from hearing someone they had voluntarily come to hear. I do believe the fire alarm was pulled as a protest as there was no fire and yes, this was an extremely childish and dangerous thing to do.

At the dinner, later that night, the student who somewhat incoherently yet, respectfully expressed his disappointment by “confronting Kerrey for his failure to allow for dialogue at an event which was publicized as a ‘conversation’” also voiced his agreement with Newt that there was an intelligent way to dissent and also agreed that the 3 dissenters (and presumably whoever pulled the fire alarm) did not meet that standard. The dinner attendees politely tolerated his complaints for a number of minutes until his argument started to go around in a circle where he was offering nothing new but did not want to relinquish the microphone nor did he direct a question to Newt or President Kerrey. Some in the audience then asked him to either finish his point or ask a question. He did neither. It was at that point former NYC Mayor Ed Koch spoke up. Mayor Koch did not call him a Nazi. Koch did deliver an important lesson on decorum and respectful debate but perhaps it was missed by the student.

I don’t know anything about a “local Republican mailing list” being used “to fill the seats,” I am dubious because if it was done, it was done by the New School. However, I find it just too hard to believe that the New School keeps or had acquired such a list or even if there is such a list in the Village. Nor do I believe that the New School had any interest in stacking the audience in Newt’s favor or in favor of any other invited speaker for that matter.

Moreover, the evidence is to the contrary. I have been to hundreds of events with Newt. I know the difference between an audience of “supporters” and an audience that came with an open but skeptical mind and this was certainly the latter. A typical “supporter” audience will frequently interrupt Newt with applause not protests and those who were at Newt’s speech know that there was no spontaneous applause during the presentation. There was only brief polite and respectful applause after his introduction, after his conclusion, and at the end of the event. The largest applause, ironically, came when the 3 students were removed.

As I often do, I was standing in the back to observe audience reaction. I can tell you that there were a significant number of people who did not clap their hands at any time during the event. Suffice it to say, this was most definitely not an audience as Newt supporters.

Finally, the beef students had because they were not able to ask Newt questions in an event that was billed as a “conversation” is very legitimate and I agree completely. Newt had fully expected and was looking forward to taking questions from the students.

Here is what was on Newt’s schedule for the New School event that day:
“You will be introduced by Fred P. Hochberg, Dean, Milano at The New School for Management and Urban Policy. They would like you to speak for 30-40 minutes followed by Q&A. President Kerrey will moderate the question and answer section. They expect 350 attendees comprised of Milano students, faculty, board members, donors, alums, foundation officials, press, and other members of the interested public.”

There were indeed microphones in the auditorium for this purpose and there is no doubt in my mind that the forum would have been greatly enhanced by hearing from the students. I know Newt was personally disappointed not to have been able to engage with the students at the forum. For me, it was regretful because it is always my favorite part of any of his presentations and I think most audiences enjoy this part as well. Newt routinely takes and enjoys taking questions and it is the part where we (Newt and his staff) learn the most.

I am grateful to the New School and President Kerrey for inviting Newt to speak, and I appreciate the opportunity to share with you my perspective of what I would call a successful event.

i love it that every student at the new school is immediately a trust fund brat so that someone's point against them can be more easily made. how's that for being an adult?

Another version, with video, posted HERE and pasted below. . .



Newt Gingrich was invited to the New School by Milano students specifically so he could be challenged on his political views. This is what the organizer of the event told me and many others. This reason is both respectable and flawed. It is respectable since it calls for a very powerful person to be challenged publicly in an open forum and to be held accountable to his words and actions. This is, ostensibly, what democratic dialogue is. However, there is a simple flaw here which stalks the discussions of "free speech" at the New School and wherever it is invoked. Usually, "free speech" is invoked as the only right that exists, it is used as a club, a tabula rasa idea which came from the universal blank slate of humanity, has no context, gives no context, and is absolute, pure, and unquestionable. That this idea hearkens back to classical liberalism is obvious; that it also runs through the critical theory embodied at the New School's is sad. The rub is that "free speech" NEVER exists in a vacuum, whether that be a vacuum or politics or power, race or gender, wealth or violence, or all of the above. What happens is that privileged people invoke "free speech" at the expense of other rights in order to silence action for the sake of a mythical "equality" of debate. Sure, everyone's equal, Newt Gingrich, Bob Kerrey, there just like you and me, and hence a debate between the two of them is an exact simulation of a debate between regular citizens. This myth of balanced objectivity sought in the tension of two equal and opposite viewpoints (the myth that runs throughout all major news stations which do debates only with government officials, think tanks, experts on the "right" or "left") already hides all of the choices we are not given; it already hides all of the power already exercised in the formulating of the terms; and most of all, it hides the power inequity inherent in giving someone like the former Speaker of the House another platform to shop his ideas around.



What does it mean to be a politician? First, it means you talk. A lot. That's what you do. Anyone who disagrees with this is living in a cartoon movieland where politicians are hero's saving the day from evil men with beards (or perhaps, that’s the News?). Talking is their life. Politicians are talking machines, and they plug themselves into events, spaces, cities, issues, nations, or whatever seems hot, relevant, important, or sexy enough that it passes through the filters of their secretaries and bureaucrats. Being talking-machines, politicians have more platforms to speak than most people could ever dream of. I mean that literally. The only challengers are Hollywood, Car Commercials, and the Mega-Media companies. But those aren't individuals; they are industries and corporations who have other roles than to just talk all day exp licitly about their political views. Their roles are to make money for their shareholders. Politician's roles, especially the ones with lots of clout, are to talk, persuade, convince, and control. To talk to everyone, persuade the public, convince their partners, and control the power. By some magical doing, this happens all equally with the best idea winning every time, just like the invisible hand of the Market making everything turn out alright. If you have studied anything at all at the New School, then you know just how powerful and deliberate this lie of the market is. It is powerful in that it mobilizes thousands of people to relieve their own power and collective strength for individual gain and drudgery. The myth of the market, like the myth of the equal, rational dialogue, ignored the violent and power-stained conditions which give rise to such particular events as individual markets and specific debates. There is no “market” in general and “debate” in general. Totalities like this cloud our thinking, allowing for ideological misuse. We have to think in the specific. How did this debate get formed? What were its conditions? Why were there no black people in the discussion? Why does the discussion invoke undocumented immigrants yet without any undocumented migrants there? What allows for politicians to get to power? Why? How did this specific commodity rise? What corporations, government subsidies and laws allowed it to form? What is its use and for whom was it made? Where does the money go? These are the simple, critical questions we are taught to ask and follow through with rigor and clarity, not generality and ideology.



So what happened when Newt Gingrich came to the New School?

First, people chalked up all over the sidewalks in front of the 12th street building and in the foyer between the 12th and 11th building. Chalk comes off with water, it is not illegal, it gets across a message, it is creative, beautiful, and fun (the very opposite definition, word for word, of politicians). What did the chalk messages say?








LET THE POOR SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES

FREE SPEECH IS FOR THE POWERLESS, NOT THE POWERFUL

WHOSE AMERICA?

YOU DON'T SPEAK FOR US

KERREY/GINGRICH '08!

THE NEW(T) SCHOOL FOR CORPORATE RESEARCH

RACISM NEVER SOUNDED SO PC

CONTRACT FOR AMERICA? (OR JUST RICH, WHITE, MALES)

"I THINK ABORTION SHOULD BE ILLEGAL" - NEWT

"MULTICULTURALISM. . . .IS A PLAGUE ON THE NATION" - NEWT

LETS HAVE REAL FREE SPEECH, NOT MORE PLATFORMS FOR RICH WHITE, MEN

NEWT GINGRICH: SPONSORED BY NEWS CORP (WHICH OWNS FOX NEWS)

THE RICH DON'T NEED ANYMORE WELFARE, STOP STEALING FROM THE POOR

THE NEW SCHOOL: A CORPORATION



Let's go over some of them. Saying "Let the Poor Speak for themselves" is the most concise and straightforward critique of the entire event. Billed as a talk on "poverty" and the new "contract for america", we as social critics and engaged activists should prioritize the voices of those directly affected and involved in social issues and not those who already have the power and clout to represent them. Letting the poor represent themselves is not an abstract call to justice or America or free speech, it is a rather concrete demand or critique of how politics is done at the New School, in Academia at large, and the United States government. The voices of those who live poverty, who experience it, who write about it, who reflect, who suffer, who succeed, who struggle and who know what it means to fight poverty - the known and unknown individuals and groups across the country, especially in NYC, who fight poverty from poverty, or at least those directly affected in roles of leadership – these are the ones that are not invited to speak, not brought into the classroom unless someone has “studied them” or written an article or book. The logic of university research trains scholars to have an object of knowledge – “poverty” – that is separate from the researcher, capable of being analyzed, and also, interesting enough for people to read. Poverty as both a subjective condition and objective reality which is produced even by researchers and universities is not investigated. For this would call into question the moral righteousness of the researcher. How do you beat this inherited power-lens of social research? One way is to let people speak for themselves, which is “the fundamental lesson that Foucault has taught us” according to French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. The indignity of speaking for others - that was the moral space we inhabited the night of Gingrich’s talk and that ethical condition colored everything else.



Writing "Free Speech is for the Powerless and not the Powerful" reiterates the point that giving the microphone and platform to Newt Gingrich - someone who is sponsored by and works for The News Corporation (the Mega-Mega Media Conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch which owns Fox News), someone who spent years promoting his "conservative opportunity society" during the days of the republican revolution, someone was has hinted at the presidency in '08, someone who is part of the arch-conservative American Enterprise Institute, someone with many books, speeches, publicists (like Rick Tyler!), donors and more - does not signify in any meaningful way "FREE SPEECH." It might signify Free Speech in an unmeaningful way - an empty phrase for politicians, liberals, and conservatives to use as a weapon against structural and formal critiques, criticisms that include the frame of the debate within them.

“Kerrey/Gingrich ’08” highlighted the presidential campaigns that both have mentioned as well as the non-difference between both of the political views.

“Racism never sounded so PC” highlight how politicians and others have coated/coded their language consciously or not to avoid explicitly racist claims in favor of implicit racist claims which needs the work of the reader/audience to decipher. I applaud the speak for thinking so highly of us, but I doubt that’s what he had in mind. For instance, who was the subaltern in the room? What was the category of human that overshadowed the whole debate, yet was avoided by calls to statistics and chance: young black males. The figure of the young black male – the scariest image for white America today, only recently supplanted or accompanied by Arab and Muslim men – was the problem, the issue to be discussed. His trace was everywhere, yet nowhere. How do we solve the young, black male problem? Hmm, sound familiar to any other problems or questions throughout history that politicians have asked their populace about a race or ethnicity? But is it really a problem of young, black males or is it of rich, white men? Is maybe America itself the problem? Or maybe its not rap and drugs, but the Prisons and Drug War themselves?

Concerning the other chalkings, think to yourself what they mean and see if they hold.



Second, students gave out a (fake) program for all to see stating the points of disagreement not only with Newt Gingrich, but with Kerrey and the New School for using the school as a platform for a simulated political debate that has nothing little or nothing to do with the school. Except, in one respect. Like Parsons, Newt will probably bring lots of money into the New School through donors and trustees. “Look, we’re so great, we can even bring the far right into our house and have tea with him too!” A crowd pleaser, for sure.



Third, a banner was dropped saying "Gingrich not welcome." Up for at least an hour on the 12th street side, it was clear and to the point. Not sure who did it, but thank god some students spoke up.

Fourth, some students tried to get up in the middle and voice their dissent. With almost no support from the mostly older-white person crowd, they were immediately removed and booed down before they could even talk. This was the only genuine democratic part of the night. No other real dialogue took place. No other challenge to power took place. What is the only ethical constant then runs from the birth of the school to the content of the classrooms today? ONE MUST CHALLENGE POWER. How and why is up to every individual and group, but the ethical imperative of challenging the strongholds of power is what keeps the force of the New School alive. But alas, I spoke too soon. It's what kept the force of the school alive. Now, and perhaps for longer than we think, challenging power only means doing it through books, articles, classroom discussions, and simulated critique. Anything more or less is "not the proper form of dissent." Thank you for determining our channels of dissent. That is what everyone in power does: determine the conditions for politics to occur, and if you challenge not the content but the conditions, you are outcast from the citadel of power. No wonder Ranciere calls modern politics “policing”, for that is exactly what happens.



I didn't stand up, but I wanted to scream so loudly at every word coming from his mouth that I almost fainted. When he began by blaming the "uneducated" residents of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans for their own deaths (for not being educated enough in how to get out), I almost puked, cried, screamed, and committed suicide. But I'm an organizer, not a whiny liberal, so I held my breadth and waited for the question and answer period to (not) say what would have been this: "HOW DARE YOU invoke the citizens of New Orleans! The citizens of the lower 9th did not die because of their "inabilities", they died because a) they were being shot at by both the National Guard and private contractors like Blackwater, b) because the richer citizens of New Orleans took all their big cars with them or locked them so they would drown, c) because the city let hundreds of buses drown in the water when it was protecting the richer neighborhoods. Please read any articles by Jordan Flaherty on this, or talk to Malik Rahim who lives there, or to the People's Hurricane Relief Fund who organizes there. If you would have understood the concept of letting the poor represent themselves, then you would have known this. But alas, you blame the victims. Like in a rape case, you have blamed the victim for her clothes, her style, her education. The only difference is that this rape is still going on. This metaphor of New Orleans has determined the entirety of your speech: we have to educate the poor so they don't do what they're doing (going to jail and doing drugs). This is the most common and distasteful argument of the right and left concerning poverty. This argues that Drugs and Jail themselves are bigger problems then any individual could ever be. Not once did you mention the prison-industrial complex or the Drug War - both which are powerful tools in the continual oppression of black communities. You will NEVER get rid of poverty, violence, and bad education until you stop the government and industrial incentives to make money off of poor people. And yet you avoid this. Saying what we need is more "marine training schools", which is so perfect: send black youth to die for more greedy white men. This gets rid of two problems: conquest abroad and repression at home, which - as founding and former chair of anthropology at the New School Stanley Diamond once said - "are the founding hallmarks of civilization." "



Did Bob Kerrey really challenge any of this? HA! He agreed with him on nearly everything except minor points like the budget of a local school. The frame of the debate was NEVER questioned: that the war in Iraq and on terror is just; that poverty happens only because of bad education. This was nothing like a debate and I’m ashamed that it happened at the New School without any challenges. I take that back, it did go challenged, just with so little support that the exception proves the rule. Newt is on the far right and Kerrey is on the less far right. But as they say, Kerrey is the "liberal", Newt is the "conservative." What a skillful, manipulative joke. Yet, this is what freedom (and free speech) is today. The (non)choice of two products with superficial differences. The Supermarket is the perfect image for freedom in America, for it signifies the ability to choose one’s chains in the process of believing to choose freedom. Galbraith, a famed economist whose ideas are taught at the New School, argued that the creation of “wants” through advertising is central to American business interests. This is not even controversial (any advertising class will tell you this), but we have forgotten is it’s political application: the skillful creation of wants grants the illusion of freedom at the expense of consensual agreement. .





Fifth, someone pulled the fire alarm. This was totally unplanned and unknown to the students inside the auditorium who were planning on criticizing Newt and doing a performance, and also to all the students outside who did chalk and programs. But it was great. The look on their faces dropped, they, like real political differences, tried to avoid it and smooth it over. It was pure hyperreality, with lights flashing and loud beeps breaking the facade of the "political debate" with a drill that signifies a rupture, yet pulled as a simulation in order to break another simulation. Now whoever did this had the guts to go beyond the simulation of free speech and actually cause a disruption that would call into question the conditions for people like Kerrey and Gingrich to debate in the first place. It puts a force to the debate and this is it: we don't have a say, we can't have a say, so we will say something without saying it. It didn't stop the talk, but it did subjectively cause the audience and politicos to re-think their justifications for the entire show. "Why would someone go that far?" one might ask. But most likely, they probably though to themselves "Freedom-hating-Nazi-islamo-fascists!"Now do I agree with this action? Yes and No. Yes because there was literally no other venue to voice dissent during the whole event, and it challenges the event as a whole, and not just one part. No because I really wanted to tear Newt to shreds in the Q & A. But Kerrey took the Q &A in a non-debate. So what was there left? Now, we in the auditorium were a bit shocked at the whole thing, but it exposed the ridiculousness of it all. Was this really politics? Are we repeating the McCain debacle already? First as tragedy, second as farce? What will be third? As revolt?



Sixth, Kerrey took away the Q & A. This thoroughly pissed off the liberals in the crowd and the few students who actually came to debate what was nominally labeled a "conversation." Thankfully, people spoke up, shouted at Kerrey, and he was forced to respond, albeit with no real answer except "it's not my event. We scheduled something else." If Clinton is caught for saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman", and Bush for saying "Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction", then Kerrey's would be "this is not my event." A sentence that captures everything meaningful about the performance of politics done by Kerrey by exactly reversing its meaning. It was ONLY his event; it always was and always will be. The intonation of his stutter "it's not- -my--event" was caught by the perceptive audience members to signal exactly what was going on. Who really had the power that night? Who really controlled "Free Speech?" What owned the floor? What really was the purpose of the event?



Seventh, at an after dinner, a brave student, who agreed with the speech a lot nonetheless, directly confronted Kerrey about the handling of the "conversation." Being more disappointed that day with the New School than ever before, he said "that Democracy was not displayed here tonight." And this was an organizer of the event! (Or at least, someone privileged and respect enough to be let into the after dinner.





And last: the future. It's up to us. What will happen in times to come? Will more powerful, rich, white, male politicians come here to perform free speech for us, like a scripted reality TV show does to its passive audience member? Will students and faculties organize, discuss, debate? Will they push the questions farther? Will they make more creative actions to get the message across when it's not allowed? But there are bigger questions here. Where is the New School going and where has it gone? Is it really, as the chalk said, becoming more of a corporation and less of a school? Can we change it? Can we re-invigorate the spirit, fury, rigor, creativity, unpredictability and radicality that this school so vacuously invokes every time it's thoroughly challenged? Or should we move on? Must we stop looking backward for empty nostalgia and start looking at the present for what we are and why? Is it time to finally smash the gap that characterizes our words vs. deeds, faculty vs. administration, content vs. form, past vs. future? That gap is the present, and it only there that change will occur.