Censorship

In Maine

LANCE DUTSON is a hyperopinionated blogger, but that's no reason to shut him down, as an advertising agency is trying to do. To further freedom of speech, the Warren Kremer Paino agency ought to drop its lawsuit alleging defamation and copyright violation.

Dutson doesn't like the ad campaign devised by the agency for the Maine Department of Tourism, and says so acidly on mainewebreport.com. But the ad agency is acting for the state in the marketing campaign, and the First Amendment gives Dutson wide latitude to criticize its actions. Just like any department of government, Warren Kremer Paino ought to respond to his criticisms of misdirected Web searches and conflicts of interest with rigorous rebuttals, not lawsuits.

The ad agency wants the federal court to assess Dutson hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. This is an attempt to use the law to force him into bankrupt silence.

Jack Cashman, commissioner of economic development and overseer of the tourism office, said in a telephone interview yesterday that he is powerless to order the agency to drop the suit. ''This has gone way beyond where it should," he added. Warren Kremer Paino needs to stop this punitive action and make its case in the court of public opinion.

At Brandeis

WITH THEIR depictions of bleeding victims and menacing bulldozers, the paintings that Brandeis University ordered removed from its library were one-sided depictions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but that does not lessen their value as expressions of opinion. They ought to have been kept up. Brandeis could easily have countered by adding more speech explaining the pro-Israel point of view.

Israeli opinion is far from monolithic. Lior Halperin, an Israeli and a Brandeis student, asked Palestinian young people to paint these images so that their viewpoint could be seen on campus. The paintings may be tough to look at, but they provide insight into why the conflict resists resolution.

Israeli-Palestinian relations are a sensitive subject on the campus, where 50 percent of students are Jewish. It would have required courage for administrators to keep the paintings up in the face of complaints.

But aren't universities the place where unpopular views are supposed to get a fair hearing? The Israeli-Palestinian struggle is complex, intractable, and full of ambiguities, but it is also one where many unwilling participants feel fear, loathing, pain, and isolation. These raw emotions ought to be represented at Brandeis in any balanced debate on the conflict.