Squib from Inside Higher Ed:

Many students at Northwestern University are upset over the blackface Halloween costumes of some white students, NBC Chicago reported. Morton O. Schapiro, Northwestern's president, sent an e-mail to students saying: “While I fully support the principles of free expression, at the same time I am deeply disappointed to see any example of insensitivity that demeans a segment of our community." A forum on the incident Thursday night attracted many students. The Daily Northwestern ran a live blog on the forum, attracting many comments. Northwestern is far from the first campus at which blackface or racially stereotyped Halloween costumes have created racial tensions.

The proper response to offensive speech is not censorship and punishment, but, as FIRE has said many times, "more and better speech." That's what Northwestern is doing. The president is drawing a distinction between the content of the expression--which he deplores--and the students' right to express. The forum and blog, likewise, lets people who care (and many don't, and that's their right, too) have their say, and talk things out. It's voluntary and self-selecting. It's open, transparent, and within the parameters of what our campuses ought to be doing--creating opportunities for vigorous debate, no matter where it might lead.

Sometimes it seems like the situation with speech on campus is just endlessly sad and stalled. And that has a lot to do with administrators who don't adapt, and who continue to make the same old censorious mistakes, even though that is so 1998. It's good to see little stories like this. They say a lot.

Aside: On a recent episode of America's Next Top Model (yes, I confess that it is a guilty pleasure), Tyra Banks dressed up the mostly white contestants in variations of ethnic dress. Every white girl in the competition was in blackface, as was the one Asian girl. They looked beautiful and exotic--which was the idea. But it made me wonder--for people who get upset about "blackface" incidents on campus, what would something like this mean? At Northwestern, the present fracas was set off by two Halloween costumes -- one student dressed as Bob Marley, and another as a black tennis player, presumably a Williams sister. What, if anything, differentiates the kind of expression involved in a Halloween costume worn on a politically correct campus and a make-up job worn for a high fashion photo shoot? Anything? Nothing? How important is context? Does it matter that the costumes could be associated with mockery--while the photo shoot was about creating layers of exoticism that added up to beauty? Does it matter that Banks is black--and that she was the photographer on the shoot? Where are the lines? Where are the differences? What matters and what doesn't?