For more than two weeks I could not really write about my experiences in Tirana and Belgrade.  So much had changed and so much was the same.  But as we sailed into New York, past the Statue of Liberty, blurred by a Nor’easter, my ideas came together.

So, I went over my letters home during my earlier postings to check if my memory was correct.  One theme that constantly recurred was the feeling of relief I had getting on planes leaving Tirana or Belgrade.  In Tirana in the early and mid ‘90s we were constantly under surveillance.  Our flat was bugged.  I learned this when my department chair from the University was brought to a police station and played the tape of a conversation we had in our living room.  I also knew because sometimes when I picked up the phone to make a call, I would hear my last conversation being played back to me.  It was a warning, an attempt at intimidation from the SHIK (Albanian information service, pronounced Sheik.)  All of us knew we were under surveillance, and we made up a ditty.

I’m the SHIK of Shqipëri (the definitive form of Albania in Albanian)

Your thoughts belong to me.

At night when you’re asleep

Into your flat I’ll creep

I’ll even tape your love.

On orders from above

He rules this land through me.

I’m the SHIK of Shqipëri

Always cautious, and caution takes a toll.  I got my first cell phone when I was posted to Serbia.  Whenever we were having a conversation, it was polite to put your phone on the table and pull the battery out because we knew “they” could turn on mobile phones remotely and listen to our conversations.  (As my deputy found out when she had a meeting at the office of the new post-Milosevic president.  After the meeting she was presented with a transcript of a conversation she had in an outdoor café with someone from the US Embassy.)  We had to encrypt our emails, we spent hours coding and decoding.  (I don’t want to imply that this surveillance was anything like it was under Communism. It wasn’t, but it still took its toll.)

So, getting on a plane gave me a feeling of relief.  I did not have to be guarded.  I could say what I felt.  I was not as afraid for myself as I was for my friends who could be implicated by what I said, even in my own bedroom.  As I returned to Albania (or Serbia) the fear came back.  Here is what I wrote in August 1996.

The thing I dreaded most was the return of paranoia.  When I left, I was pretty strung out…  Journalists sitting in offices passing notes because we feared we were being bugged.  I cherished the freedom to speak without looking behind me while traveling in England, and Ireland.  A big stone had been lifted from my head.  I was afraid of that stone returning.

(Note, From England I went to Denmark where 13 of my students were attending a summer school at The Danish School of Journalism. I was conducting some of the classes.)

In Denmark, the stone began hovering again.  In class I was talking about how public officials often deflect journalists’ questions with non-answers.  I used an example of deflection by Albanian President Berisha.  During a break, Bashkim (The chair of the Tirana University Journalism Faculty) said some of the students were upset.  They thought I should stay off politics and stick with reporting.  (How to handle public officials deflecting questions IS part of reporting.) Later Iris told me that Bashkim was afraid there was a plant among the students who was reporting back to Tirana…   Whether or not it was true, it had a chilling impact on the school.  I decided not to let it chill my speech.  But still, I came back to Albania worried about the stone. 

I had reason to worry.  A student did report me to the authorities and that ended up in me being fired from the faculty three months later.

Now, thirty years later, that stone has become a part of American life.  In the United States, where I used to feel free to express my views I now sometimes find myself pulling my punches.  The president and his FCC chair threaten broadcast licenses for engaging in, what in normal times, is considered protected speech. 

For foreign students, it’s worse.  America used to be a place where people from repressive countries could experience freedom of speech, perhaps for the first time.  That freedom is guaranteed to everyone legally in America, including non-citizens on student visas.  But the son of one of my former employees who is going to University in the United States now reports that his annual visa renewal interview involves having to turn over his social media passwords to authorities.  That would give ICE access to his private communications and posts to closed groups.  After the detention of a Columbia student for supporting Palestine that demand for passwords has dampened his free speech. 

On this trip I learned of two students, children of colleagues, who decided not to continue college in the United States because of the chilling of free speech that foreign students face.  They did not feel free in America.  A university should be a place of free inquiry, testing ideas that may not be popular or are out of the mainstream.  American students benefit from hearing that speech from exchange students because it opens them up to new interpretations.  In college in 1967 it was important to hear the view of one of my classmates, a Jordanian who lived on the West Bank and wasn’t sure what country he belonged to, or could return to, after the Israeli occupation.   

One of my former employees, who had legal green card status and is married to an American, self-deported, because of the fear generated by ICE.  He was running a small business, contributing to our country. The stone is here and this trip has brought that into focus.  In the Balkans America is no longer viewed as the beacon of freedom where the right of free speech is guaranteed.  My friends feel it and I feel it too.

The QM2 sailed in past the Statue of Liberty.  Every time I sailed past it with my grandfather, whether it was returning from Ireland on an ocean liner or from Keansburg, New Jersey on a harbor excursion boat, he stood at the rail with his hand over his heart.  I do that in his honor.  This time as we passed a driving rain blurred the image.  And that is the way I view it today, the Statue of Liberty, a blurred image.  But as I pass, I still recite the Emma Lazerus poem at the base of the statue.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”