I agree with you, Paul. Too often we give dudes who might provide a service
related to the work we do a platform as if they were the expert scholar on
constitutional law, or critial race, queer, and gender theory. They are
not. Kurt certainly is not. The letter should not have been included in the
Newsletter.
Rosie Rowe

On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 3:03 PM Paul Stamler <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On 7/20/2020 9:13 AM, Rebecca Chandler wrote:
> While I and others on the board do not agree with the
> > contents of the letter, it is important to the integrity of the
> > organization to allow our members to express themselves without
> censorship.
>
> This is a statement with which I profoundly disagree. Mr. Nauck
> publishes a catalog of auction offerings, and he used to occasionally
> append his opinions on political matters to the catalog. There is no
> censorship of those expressions; he has an absolute right under the
> First Amendment to express those opinions and publish them in his
> catalogs, and I would vehemently oppose any attempt to censor their
> expression in those catalogs -- for example, by the denying to him of
> bulk-mailing privileges.
>
> That doesn't mean or imply that ARSC is under any obligation to provide
> a platform for those opinions; it is not, and in my opinion it should
> not be. All opinions are not created equal, and this opinion at this
> time is inflammatory and potentially harmful. The editors may, at their
> discretion, grant the privilege of appearing in the newsletter to
> members who have expertise in a particular area. Mr. Nauck can claim
> particular expertise in the compensation curves appropriate for playing
> 78 rpm records; he's co-authored a book on the subject. He does not
> carry any matching expertise in the enormously complex area of race
> relations in America; he's simply a guy with strong opinions on the
> subject. As I said, Mr. Nauck has an absolute right to hold those
> opinions, and to express them in the catalogs he publishes; if he wants
> to feature a record called "There's a Coon in the White House", as he
> did at the beginning of the Obama Administration, that's his right under
> the constitution, but I see no reason for the ARSC to provide him with a
> platform for promulgating those opinions, and think that the editors of
> the newsletter made a significant mistake by doing that.
>
> Peace,
> Paul Stamler
>
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