A heated argument concerning minority arts funding erupted between African-American students and Harvard English Professor Robert Brustein following Brustein's speech entitled "Government vs. the Arts" in the Rockefeller Center last night.
The discussion ignited after Brustein, who called for the privatization of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), made comments on rap music, which he said is not a serious form of music.
"Thousands and millions of children are growing up without any feeling for arts," Brustein said. "No wonder people will think graffiti is an art, and rap is music ... it's a form of music but it's not the highest form of music."
Several African-American students disagreed with his comment, citing that Brustein spoke without knowledge of African-American culture.
"You said rap culture is not a form of good culture. You are insulting my culture," one African-American student said. "You should apologize."
Brustein countered by saying, "If you are asking for an apology, you won't get it. I am just saying that I personally don't like rap music ... I hope I have the privilege of not liking certain kinds of music."
The argument heightened after Brustein commented that public funds for the arts should be used for more "serious" art forms than rap.
"I just said that public funds should be used for arts that are dying, such as opera, symphony and ballet, because they are not popular. Rap and other pop culture is supported by commercial sector," Brustein added.
Other students argued that current arts education and funded programs are mainly Eurocentric and do not account for the diverse American population.
An African-American female student said that various arts programs should take more minority artists into account to reflect the whole society.
"Our country created baseball, which originated from cricket and changed it to our own sport. I think we can do the same thing in arts," she said.
Brustein countered that each person should be able to express his or her opinion, and said he welcomes different opinions.
"I don't think the nature of problem is racism," Brustein said. "I think the main problem is suppression of racism. "It's like Nazi Germany where people weren't allowed to express themselves freely. I would rather know who my enemies are. I think there's a real danger involved here."
"It's prevalent in colleges all over," he added. "It's called 'political correctness.' The whole idea of it came from Maoist China where everybody had to think alike, dress alike and pretend to be one another. That's not healthy."
Brustein called Congress "greedy," urging the government to spend more money on arts programs.
Brustein said that Congress makes the arts "political." Countries like Germany spends up to $6 billion on arts programs, and the Austrian city of Vienna spends three times more money on the arts than the entire United States.
The United States currently spends less than $100 million annually for the NEA. Congress spends only a minimal amount of the government's budget on the arts, he added.
Arts funding "will always be a furball in the throats of conservatives," Brustein said.
"We need to get the Congress off our back. They try to politicize the whole issue," he said. "They have control over the money, so they want to control how it will be used and whether [it will] be used."
Brustein called for the privatization of the NEA, which he said would remove politics from the creation of art.
Brustein is the director of the Loeb Drama Center in Boston, a professor of English at Harvard University, a drama critic for The New Republic and the founding director of the Yale Repertory and American Repertory Theaters.
