An Oppressive Cancellation part 2

Last April, in response to several protests and a student outcry, the university of Michigan cancelled a screening of American Sniper at one of their Umix events. The cancellation, which was  meant to put an end to the controversy surrounding the event, caused a severe backlash from many groups on campus. A petition was created in response and the cancellation caught the attention of national media. It also inspired a response from Michigan’s football coach, Jim Harbaugh, who supported the movie via a tweet which garnered an impressive 31,000 retweets.

Many of the people who came out against the cancellation stated that they had an issue with the way the movie was being classified, and how the cancelling of the screening seemed like the University was agreeing with this classification. They took issue with certain claims from the protest of  the movie including Chris Kyle, the man whose life inspired the movie, being a racist, the movie promoting a sense of Islamophobia, and certain aspects of the movie glorifying war. While it was important for the people in favor of showing American Sniper to combat these accusations there was another issue surrounding the cancellation that concerned them just as much if not more. They were concerned with the University censoring a movie, without deliberation, because of the protest.

To find out more about the motivations behind the protests I talked with Grant Strobl, a member of Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Michigan, who led his organization’s efforts to try and reverse the decision of the University to cancel the screening of American Sniper.When asked, specifically, about why his Organization came out strongly against the cancellation Strobl said “cancelling American Sniper is against the idea of freedom within society and promotes the ideas of censorship and intolerance on our campus.”  Strobl was insistent that the cancellation went against American Democratic ideals and values that are important for college campuses. When asked if the cancellation of the screening was a democratic failure Strobl said that it was and that this cancellation does “not allow for freedom of speech and expression and would not allow for tough issues to be tackled, because that would allow for an equal opportunity for people to express their views and an equal opportunity and platform for certain views to be conveyed.” He conveyed that his organization was concerned with the University was seemingly only fixated on one side of the story, and didn’t allow for other views to be voiced in their decision making process. His organization felt they were not heard.

What these organizations experienced, and what the University did when they cancelled the screening of American Sniper was a democratic failure. These organizations experienced censorship without having a say as to why the film should or shouldn’t be censored. Instead of having a discussion about the screening with each side being allowed to express their views, the film screening was simply cancelled. Jurgen Habermas discusses the importance of discourse like this in his Further Reflections on the Public Sphere “This is why political public sphere is appropriate as the quintessential concept denoting all those conditions of communication under which there can come into being a discursive formation of opinion and will on the part of the public composed of the citizens of a state. This is why it is suitable as the fundamental concept of a theory of democracy whose intent is intent is normative.” By being deprived of the ability to discuss certain issues surrounding the movie publicly these organizations, who clearly wanted a say, were not allowed to take part in the democratic  process.