Altschuler and Kramnick's piece on exorbitant speakers fees hits the mark from many angles (Opinions, "How Much is Speech Worth at Cornell?" Sept. 7, 2000). Most celeb speakers offer, at best, a worn perspective, an intellectual stump speech which usually can be accessed easily elsewhere; more commonly they string together one-, two- or three-liners that entertain but rarely represent thoughtful analysis or meet even the lowest criterion for "news"; and, if they deign to spend a few hours on campus, contact is often hoarded by campus elite, the "connected ones" -- so "seeing them in the flesh" is fleeting if not mythical for most of the campus community.


But allow me to recall a real exception from Cornell times past. In 1962, Malcolm X debated James Farmer...I believe the venue was the moot courtroom.


For that day, Malcolm's theme -- advocacy of racial separation -- was genuine news. And the event was hailed by Malcolm as the first time that a prominent black integrationist (Farmer) had agreed to test his position against a separatist in the crucible of public debate. During the course of the two-hour debate, the speakers had to respond to each other's remarks in rebuttal and question and answer periods; thus the content of the evening went far beyond the analysis of predictable speeches. One had the sense that evening that much of the rhetorical invention was taking place at the moment of utterance. Moreover, Malcolm hung around the very casual parlor of Watrermargin (a campus veterans fraternity which had cosponsored the event with Cornell United Religious Work) into the wee hours of the morning in an open exchange with all comers. I know not how much the speakers were paid, but certainly the event otherwise met the very legitimate concerns expressed by Altschuler and Kramnick.

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