Larry Flynt’s December appearance at the University of Judaism has raised the hackles of student Deborah Silver. Flynt about free speech rights and his past experiences, in an event sponsored by the Free Speech Club, an undergraduate group. Other organizations pitched in to help with the event, including Hillel, and the event went smoothly, with no interruptions. Silver, however, feels that Flynt’s appearance was inappropriate, as she wrote in the following letter to The Casiano Chronicle, printed in the semester’s first issue:

I am disquieted by Larry Flynt’s visit to this university.
Free speech means just that – the right of every individual to express their views, no matter how controversial, repugnant or just plain wrong others might find them. Mr. Flynt has had experience of how that issue plays out in American society. His win in the Falwell litigation amounted to a defense of the constitutional right to satire. But experience - or notoriety, even - is not the same as expertise.
Mr. Flynt’s day job raises some issues in terms of how credible I might find him as an advocate for free speech. Mr. Flynt is a career pornographer. He’s said in the past that porn is a business, but politics is a hobby.
In pursuit of this hobby, in 1998, Mr. Flynt was keen to offer $1 million for anyone who would give him details of “an adulterous sexual encounter” with members of Congress or leading government officials. Was he trying to clean up Congress, or was he looking to titillate and to shock? Is he genuinely interested in the issues surrounding free speech, or in exposure because, well, exposure is exciting? Does his interest in women using their bodies as they want stem from altruism, or from the fact that one way they might ‘want’ to use their bodies helps sell magazines? I very much hope it’s the former.
This is the University of Judaism. I don’t believe in repression, but the nature of Mr. Flynt’s business runs contrary to some of Judaism’s fundamental tenets. The principles of kavod habriot (human dignity) and tzelem elokim (the idea that we are created in God’s image), to name only two, suggest that it is not appropriate to turn the human body into a commodity. In that context, I find the invitation to Mr. Flynt to be in very poor taste. I am saddened that a student body at this university, and its Hillel, has chosen him to help further their understanding of free speech.

As of yet, no responses to Silver have come to the paper.