How the ACLU lost its bearings
IN 1940, THE American Civil Liberties Union expelled well-known radical leader Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from its board of directors for being a member of the Communist Party. Her expulsion embarrassed the organization and has long been considered a nadir for the ACLU. After all, Flynn was kicked out for exercising the very 1st Amendment rights that the ACLU had been created to defend. She was posthumously reinstated in 1976.
But apologizing for sins of the past doesn't stop people from repeating them in the present. Recently, the ACLU again considered censoring its board members, weighing new rules that would prohibit them from criticizing the organization publicly. This startling proposal was the culmination of a bitter internal battle over the organization's integrity and fidelity to principle that has spilled out into the media.
Why would such a rule even be considered by a free-speech organization? According to ACLU leaders, some board members had been abusing their right to speak.
They were referring about me and my former colleague on the ACLU board, Michael Meyers, so I don't approach this subject as an observer. Meyers and I had been threatened last year with removal or suspension after we publicly criticized the ACLU's reported use of data-mining practices to gather information on members and donors. The effort to punish us was aborted only after a New York Times reporter inquired into it; the board then established a committee on the fiduciary rights and responsibilities of its members in an apparent effort to pass rules that would keep us in line.
The committee's proposal, issued in May, was a stunning repudiation of the ACLU's core principles. It included provisions that prohibited board members from criticizing the ACLU board or staff publicly and that disparaged whistle-blowing (conduct the ACLU often applauds when it occurs in other institutions). Individual board members were admonished not to "call into question the integrity of the process in arriving at the board's decision."
The proposal has been derailed, at least for now, by its exposure in the media: ACLU members and supporters reacted to news of it with dismay; the New York attorney general's office reportedly expressed concerns about limitations on public policy discussions; and the organization's leaders quickly distanced themselves from this effort to squelch dissent.
