A balancing act at Columbia University

Closing Al Gore’s lecture course to the press was meant to protect academic freedom, but it touched off a firestorm of protest about ‘gagged’ students

By Tom Goldstein

So just how, you might ask, did Columbia Journalism School come to offer the most reported upon — and misreported upon — course in the country this year? (Come to think of it, Al Gore’s non-credit lecture course might qualify as the most reported upon — and misreported upon — course of this nascent decade or this millennium.)

We achieved our dubious fame out of the simplest of motives: we did not want the course to become a press conference. Instead, we wanted to keep the course as normal as possible, and to be run for the benefit of our students, not the press.

Columbia Journalism School is first and foremost a school, and follows the practices appropriate to such an institution. Customarily, classes at our school are closed to all except registered students. Openness to ideas can be inhibited if outsiders are present in the classroom. Academic inquiry must invite risk-taking. Tentative suggestions and tangled thoughts are way-stations along the path to clearer thinking and more direct expression.

Many times a year, we have guest speakers—including dozens of prominent figures in journalism, business and politics—who wish to speak frankly on matters that may be of interest to the press. These speakers often choose to speak to classes privately. For instance, one group of students recently spent a term in private sessions with Andy Lack, president of NBC News, who offered them his candid views on how television really works.

We wanted the Gore class closed to the press. But we were surely imprecise in referring to the class as “off the record”—a phrase freighted with so many meanings that it should either be better defined or discarded. Certainly, many teachers at our school, at our university and at universities across the country consider their courses “off the record.”

But in this class we did not wish to be that restrictive. We did ask students to be students and not to act as paid stringers. We felt it was not tenable to have a class where some students would ask questions and take notes for their own education while others were doing so with the thought of getting published. Some students did, however, parlay the class into a byline. They were in no way punished. Students were free to talk to anyone about the course, and it was painful for me to read that we had “gagged” and “muzzled” students. We were accused of doing everything but choking them.

What a story! Journalism school imposes ground rules on a class! Journalism school obstructs journalism!

In the vortex of coverage, our explanation got lost, and the story line that mocked the school for being non-journalistic was just too good for the facts to get in the way. We were simply unable to keep an event of academic interest from becoming an event of wide public interest.

Setting the record straight has been hard. I wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times, which had printed several mistakes. The piece was rejected. I immediately had the rejected op-ed posted on the school’s website late on a Thursday afternoon.

So I was quite surprised to read in the Times on Friday that I had “announced” a “new” policy “just after” two other schools where Gore was teaching had touted the openness of their classes. Now I knew my motives. (As far as I can determine, what these other schools did was precisely our policy all along—no press in the classroom, with students free to talk about the class once it ended.)

Had the Times reporter called, I would happily have straightened her out. The “new” policy she wrote about was merely the op-ed piece the Times had rejected. It had nothing to do with what other schools were doing.

But she had written the story without calling, an apparent violation of the paper’s policy. It is a standing rule at the Times, I am told, that reporters must describe the circumstances and timing of a quote.

One alumnus did call me—during the middle of his live radio show. His assistant had called my office four times earlier that day and had been told four times that I could not appear on the show because I had a longstanding unbreakable meeting scheduled for the hour his show was on-air.

When our persistent alumnus called during his show, saying he was on live, my petrified secretary turned the phone over to an associate dean. Not good enough.

This particular alumnus, a multi-media threat, wrote a newspaper column (he never called before writing the column), ridiculing me for my unavailability.

The subtext of all this was that I should have cancelled my meeting and appeared on his radio show instead.

I plead guilty to attending a meeting that afternoon. Indeed, I plead guilty to attending far too many meetings. I suspect that many editors would sympathize with me on that score.

Goldstein is professor and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University.