Pollan saga highlights shortcomings in Poly’s commitment to free speech

Michael Pollan should have been the only man on stage when he came to speak at Cal Poly regarding farming sustainability last Thursday. After all, that was the original agreement when the Sustainable Agriculture Research Consortium decided to bring him to campus.

Instead, the bestselling author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” was forced to share the stage with a hastily assembled panel, which was formed to balance out the “significant backlash” that would come with giving him center stage, according to Cal Poly dean of agriculture David Wehner in an LA Times article.

While the hot topics surrounding Pollan’s appearance should have been sustainable farming practices, the real issues turned out to lie beneath the environmental hype. Instead of focusing on what Pollan had to say, the buzzwords changed to money, speech, ideas and the censorship thereof.

Instead of being left to  consider how the Cal Poly community, both individually and collectively, can lead a more sustainable way of life, Cal Poly is left with the reality that the higher-ups will turn to cover-ups when it might cost them a pretty penny.

It’s true that some people find Pollan’s ideas to be too radical. But as a university, Cal Poly shouldn’t shy away from presenting controversial ideas to start discussion. Throwing together a panel with people who don’t come close to having Pollan’s sort of recognition made the university look silly. More importantly, it called into question the university’s commitment to new ideas and its faith in students and faculty to make their own decisions when it comes to heated topics.

Harris Ranch C.E.O. and Cal Poly alumnus David Wood, who threatened to take back some of his hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts to Cal Poly over the event, has criticized Pollan for being “against conventional agriculture.” It was partially this criticism that prompted the powers that be to place Pollan on a panel.

But as a respected agricultural school, Cal Poly shouldn’t equate a well-known and highly-respected voice for agricultural reform with two people who represent the old system, one that already has a huge voice on this campus. With something as important as food, progressive ideas should be taken seriously when they’re presented instead of getting lost in half-hearted attempts to give equal press time to old ideologies.

The fact that Wood was upset enough over Pollan’s planned one-hour presentation to “reconsider” a several hundred thousand dollar donation should make one wonder what exactly made him feel so threatened. His extreme reaction prompts a deeper look into who gives Cal Poly money and what influence they have over speech on campus. Members of the Cal Poly community should be wondering what other times ideas were suppressed to make a big donor happy. How many other times has President Baker received threatening letters and changed the agenda at the last minute in order to save face or funding? As students who picked this university to spend four years of our lives learning, we should be wondering how often ideas are quieted to keep donors happy.

Obviously, outside funding and community support are good things and money allocated toward specific programs is beneficial for university enhancement. But it should be expected that donors will sometimes disagree with what happens on campus. Furthermore, money that comes at the expense of transparency should never be welcomed.

When this happens, the people with the money are the winners, while everyone else is left in the dark as to what’s really going on. Just because Baker’s letter correspondence with a big donor hasn’t leaked before, doesn’t mean similar conversations haven’t occurred over other ‘controversial’ speakers or events. All Cal Poly community members, from freshmen to the (not-so-famous) alumni should be suspicious about what’s being concealed.

Cal Poly is often criticized for not being an ideologically-progressive school and for hiding behind terms like ‘diversity’ while doing little to progress ideas across the campus. Not only does this event add to that harmful image, but it begs the question of how much further along Cal Poly would be in terms of goals like diversity and sustainability if more ideas were given the opportunity to flourish.

Baker released a statement last week to offset some of the controversy, in which he defended his decision of forming the panel, saying “I believe the panel discussion served our students well and cannot even remotely be considered a disservice to academic freedom, a core value that I have dedicated my entire professional life to protecting and defending.”

While academic freedom is an admirable thing to aspire to, the leaked letters beg to differ.

Instead of bowing to the power of money, Baker should have stood up to the big agribusiness bullies and refused to let their strongholds on agriculture transfer into a stronghold on ideas on campus while hiding behind terms like “free speech” and “diversity.” Censored speech isn’t free, even if it comes with a half-million dollar gift.

Michael Pollan put it best this weekend in an LA Times article.

“The issue is about whether the school is really free to explore diverse ideas about farming,’’ he said. “Is the principle of balance going to apply across the board? The next time Monsanto (a multinational agricultural corporation) comes to speak at Cal Poly about why we need (genetically modified organisms) to feed the world, will there be a similar effort? Will I be invited back for that show?”

I doubt it.

Emilie Egger is a history and English senior and Mustang Daily editor-in-chief.