UC San Diego debate over Woody Allen belongs on campus

At a 2015 town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, President Barack Obama offered an impassioned defense of college as a place where open debate and free speech should be treasured. “Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them,” the former University of Chicago law professor said. “But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, ‘You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.’”

Fast forward to this year at UC San Diego, where theater major Savanah Lyon has created an online petition campaign — with 20,000-plus signatures so far — to get UC San Diego to cancel a class devoted to the films of Woody Allen because he has been accused of molesting his adopted daughter a quarter-century ago, which Allen strongly denies. Cultural standing and college course lists change over time, so it is important for the university to have this conversation. And of course, university officials should listen to their students. But they shouldn’t feel compelled to change based on an online poll where three-quarters of the signatures are from outside California.

This is not a defense of Allen, but it’s unfortunate no UC San Diego official is ready to echo Obama, or go where UC Berkeley law dean Erwin Chemerinsky went when he observed, “it would be frightening if campuses were making decisions based on the personalities and wrongdoings of people rather than the academic merit of the course.” The university should be able to offer the course, just as students have a right not to enroll in it. Let the debate over this course take place on campus.