In 1969, Belgian economist—and self-described “revolutionary Marxist”—Ernest Mandel was denied a visa for a planned speaking tour to American universities on the grounds that deviat...
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In 1969, Belgian economist—and self-described “revolutionary Marxist”—Ernest Mandel was denied a visa for a planned speaking tour to American universities on the grounds that deviations from his itinerary on a previous trip constituted “a flagrant abuse of the opportunities afforded him to express his views in this country.”
A group of American professors—determined to “engage him in a free and open academic exchange”—took Mandel’s case all the way to the Supreme Court. Though Mandel lost on a point related to immigration law, the case is now best remembered for Justice Thurgood Marshall’s impassioned, stirring dissent. “The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin,” Marshall wrote. “The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is ‘the means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.’”