Civility and Free Speech on Campus
Donald A Downs, The University of Wisconsin, Madison


Over the years, observers have proffered many explanations for the rise of repressive policies and programs on college campuses. Explanations include the onset of such things as political correctness, the rise of so-called educational consumerism as a mindset of students and administrators, the predominance of the commitment to diversity defined in narrow terms, and the lack of intellectual diversity on campus. These explanations certainly cast light on the problem. But a recent conversation made me aware of a neglected explanation that is worth considering: the decline of civility on campus.

At first glance, this proposition seems preposterous. After all, have not many speech codes and related policies been promulgated in the name of “civility”? The answer is no: enforcement of such mea ures has typically paid only lip service to civility. Civility has often served as a pretext for the enforcement of codes that are actually motivated by the desire to impose intellectual orthodoxy. Political correctness, not civility, is often in the driver’s seat.

A recent conversation with a former naval officer renewed my interest in civility and free speech. The officer stressed that navy personnel at sea take care to uphold formal and informal norms of civility because “you have to maintain interpersonal respect in an environment in which dozens of individuals must live together in such close quarters for weeks on end.” The formalities of civility are a primary means by which community and order are maintained despite the inevitable presence of individual differences and prejudices.

Civility has two primary meanings. The common understanding involves manners and treating others with due respect and basic courtesy. Even this aspect of civility is in jeopardy in our society today, in luding on campus. Researchers have reported that college students are unprepared for the business world because they lack appropriate manners and etiquette when they graduate.

The second meaning of civility builds on the first meaning; it is best articulated by the sociologist Richard Sennett in his classic book The Fall of Public Man (1974). This meaning defines civility as the maintenance of an appropriate degree of distance between or among individuals as they interact in the public realm and in professional contexts. In such exchanges, we treat teachers, attorneys, or public officials (to mention just three such roles) as individuals who have assumed a special kind of role with concomitant responsibilities. The same principle applies to interactions among individuals acting in their capacities as “citizens.” When acting as citizens, we assume a different posture than we assume with friends or family members, where the “personal” is much more prominent. In public interaction, we wear a “mask” that depersonalizes differences. Preserving an appropriate distinction between the public and the private realms is important to maintaining a healthy polity in which disagreement can flourish, as political theorists from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt have taught.

This is why, for example, members of Congress address one another formally even as they engage in intellectual and moral combat. The formality depersonalizes conflict and exchange, thereby fostering an environment more conducive to disagreement. The same point applies to the exchange of ideas in the public forum, the marketplace of ideas, and the campus.

Sennett feared that the virtues of civility were in decline in 1974, when he published The Fall of Public Man. The trend has no doubt accelerated since then. Many causes are to blame for the decline of citizenship and, by extention, of civility, but Sennett focused on two. First, the onset of t e therapeutic ethic (what sociologist Philip Rieff famously called the “triumph of the therapeutic” in his 1966 book of that title), which defines individuals in terms of psychological, personal needs rather than more universal and objective standards of citizenship. The second was the progressive political movement originating in the Sixties that proclaimed that “the personal is the political.” Though the latter movement has had its constructive moments (for example, domestic violence, though once considered a matter of personal familial privacy that should not involve the state, is indeed a proper concern for law enforcement and the state), its undue expansion and acceptance has undermined the civility that is so essential for citizenship and the ability to handle vibrant disagreement.

Another force has entered the picture since Sennett wrote, especially on campus: identity politics. At its worst, identity pol tics combines therapeutic logic, personal identity, and politics. This combination is inimical to the free exchange of ideas, because it treats vibrant disagreement in matters of race, gender, etc., as a form of psychological assault. For example, this is how many advocates of identity politics reacted when student newspapers published David Horowitz’s provocative advertisement concerning racial reparations in 2001. Considering Horowitz’s advertisement a “verbal assault,” identity politics theorists at Brown asked the school’s interim president to investigate the Brown Herald for “harassment” for merely publishing Horowitz’s provocative essay. To her credit, the interim president refused to do so.

Today’s campus environment witnesses a host of programs and administrative agendas that contribute to the decline of citizenship and civility as defined above. The residential life program at the University of Delaware, which recently has attracted so much national attention, is but the tip of th iceberg. Therapeutic logic, identity politics, and the infantilization of students have compromised belief in the type of mentality that makes public citizenship feasible. The values associated with public citizenship still exist and struggle for recognition, but they are seldom given even equal weight in university politics and administration.

The status of civility on campus is a problem for American freedom, for, as Tocqueville wrote when American democracy was in its adolescence, manners and civility constitute the “forms of liberty” that are necessary to support freedom in the long run. Manners and civility are universal norms to which all citizens are expected to adhere, regardless of the many things -- race, gender, religion, class, and identity -- that divide us. And they foster the conditions that make vibrant debate and disagreement more tolerable and feasible. Is it any wonder that the decline of civility and the decline of free speech on campus have gone hand-in-hand?
NAS1:07 PM

The Lost Love of Books
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

The film 84 Charing Cross Road appeared in 1987. It starred Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, and Judi Dench and Maurice Denham had supporting roles. We saw this splendid film again the other evening and it recalled a world in which the love of books was held sacred in a way that would seem unimaginable today. Indeed, the movie couldn’t even be made in contemporary Hollywood or shown in any commercial theater. It is too tender, too subtle, and too thoughtful. The wonder is that it was made at all. Ironically, the financing came in large part from Bancroft’s husband, the wild and wacky comedian Mel Brooks.

This true story, published in book form in 1971 and later made into a play, is about a 37 year old spinster, Helen Hanff. She was a genial, eccentric Jewish lady who lived in a small apartment in a New York brownstone and did odd jobs and some writing to earn a meager living. She had only a year of college but read and adored great books. Sitting alone at home, smoking and drinking, she spent much of her life in the company of great minds. The history, the ideas, the stories, the language of people in other times fascinated her. And she was enthralled with the way books were designed and bound; she wanted old, unabridged, and rare volumes, even though she often was unable to afford such quality. If the copy she obtained was marked, she found it interesting to be guided by the hand of an unknown reader. Helen Hanff was not in the business of buying and reselling books. She was not even a collector. She wanted simply to absorb and cherish the finest books ever printed.

In 1949, she came across an ad for a London bookseller and responded with a request for several rare items. The head of the staff of five in the shop at 84 Charing Cross Road was Fra k Doel, played in the movie by Anthony Hopkins. A correspondence of some two decades began. The letters were almost always about books but soon became personal. Doel was a highly literate, quiet, dutiful, family man. His fellow staff members were of various moods but all shared a love of the past and literature. Hanff began sending special foods to the bookstore staff, ordered from Denmark and shipped into an England still suffering wartime shortages. Doel and several on his staff wrote to Hanff, expressing their thanks, sharing personal information, and hoping one day to meet their benefactor and good customer. The New Yorker often longed to be in England, to be with her friends and to roam throughout the firm’s ample bookshelves.

Hanff was about to fly to London when dental bills made traveling impossible. So the letters between London and New York continued, and so did gifts, photographs, and books. It was only some 20 years later that Hanff made it to London, and by then Doel had d ed of a ruptured appendix and the shop had closed. Hanff consoled herself with the fact that she had at last made it to the place where she had been given genuine friendship and intellectual delight.

I have known and experienced such a love of books. As a graduate student and young professor I pored through catalogues, especially those from Britain and France, and spent more than I could afford on our small library. I occasionally had students who did the same. But as the decades passed, I saw this rather romantic world, which I associated with academia, erode and then virtually disappear. By the early 1970s, I viewed huge lines of students “getting rid of” assigned volumes, often before the final exams. I saw anti-intellectualism in the classroom reach an astonishing and disheartening level. I saw faculty members enamored far more with ideology and classroom popularity than with the tools of their disciplines. I watched campus libraries slash the purchase of scholarly journals and books, nd saw bookstores become largely the dispensers of candy, gum, tee shirts, and tabloid magazines.

I watched sadly as the Wisconsin Historical Society popularized its fine journal. When I wrote a history of one of Wisconsin’s best modern governors, a member of one of the state’s wealthiest and most distinguished families, the Society was uninterested in publishing or even reviewing the book. When the book appeared last year, the state’s major newspapers chose not to review it. I didn’t take this personally. It’s the way things are.

So here’s a film about a strange world in which people used typewriters, had card catalogues, and searched for books by hand; a world in which books were cherished, at least by some, and bookstore employees were literate, knowledgeable, and interested in their work. It’s a gentle and unpretentious little movie about people who in their own small way were searching for and finding wisdom, beauty, and charity.

NAS11:06 AM

Academic Freedom Unaffected by PC, AAUP Glibly Suggests
Donald A Downs, The University of Wisconsin, Madison

I have been asked to weigh in on the debate regarding the nationally disseminated statement by the American Association of University Professors, “Freedom in the Classroom.” The AAUP released the statement to counter the thrust of such movements as the Student Bill of Rights, which seek to enlist outside political pressure to foster balance and ideological neutrality in class. The AAUP statement makes some valid and important points, about which I will pay due heed. Indeed, a few months ago I wrote an essay for the web page of the National Association of Scholars in which I laid out my reasons for opposing the Student Bill of Rights and similar measures. But this does not mean that we should be sanguine about the state of higher education today, and that we should eschew other means o improve our condition. Alas, “Freedom in the Classroom” is far too dismissive of problems in higher education that critics -- not unreasonably -- have raised. In particular, the statement ignores a proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room, which I will discuss below.

Let begin with a caveat that should be considered in assessing “Freedom in the Classroom.” The caveat deals with the difficulty of making credible -- let alone definitive -- assessments about the quantity and quality of pedagogy inside of classrooms. Are abuses of pedagogical standards typical, or less than commonplace? We do not know the answer to this question in any systematic sense, so we need to be careful about making generalizations. But awareness of this caveat does not mean that we should assume everything is rosy in higher education. Anecdotal and other evidence at the very least suggests that we should be concerned about the claims raised by critics, rather than dismissing them out of hand.

And many disturbing anecdotes do abound. One example is provided by Peter Wood in his critical analysis of “Freedom in the Classroom” (See Wood, Truths "R" Us). Wood could have picked any number of examples, but presented only one. I have read of countless worse examples, and have been informed personally of worse examples on my own campus, usually by very credible students. Last year I had the opportunity to look at a course reader prepared for a large introductory course for one of the largest social science majors (not political science) on a campus other than my own. Among other things, the reader depicted leading Republican members of Congress in highly slanted and ideological terms designed to prejudice students against conservatism. Even if we grant that the instructors acted within the broad scope of their right of academic freedom -- which I am prepared to consider because of the importance of the principle, and because he scope of the right must provide ample breathing space -- who could say that such a choice is beyond criticism, and that it should not be the subject of discussion and analysis?

Returning to my own campus, all of the examples have dealt with leftist professors mocking conservative ideas, principles, and actions in an ad hominem manner. And it is worth noting that many of my complaining students were themselves members of the political left who nonetheless disdained what they considered unprofessional politicization of the classroom. So there is good reason to think seriously about politicization, even if one avoids drawing sweeping conclusions. Perhaps the matter is similar to the Supreme Court’s famous assessment of obscenity: it is hard to define it and to ascertain its scope, but we know it is out there, and we know it when we see it.

The consideration of anecdotal examples raises another caveat, however. Universities teach hundreds of courses in the social sciences and humanities, o citing examples of abuse does not constitute systematic evidence. Abuses of pedagogical standards are never justified, but we need to distinguish between individual cases and systemic abuse. And should we be prepared to defend a few abuses in order to protect the broader principle? Will “doing something” about abuse open Pandora’s Box, creating new problems we did not anticipate? To answer these questions, we need more work.

“Freedom in the Classroom” does provide a useful abstract guide to help us distinguish between “indoctrination” and “education.” Indoctrination is a form of dogma. Dogmatic instructors “promulgate as truth ideas or opinions which have not been tested,” (here the statement quotes John Dewey), and they refuse “to accord their students the opportunity to contest them.” Education, on the other hand, proceeds in the spirit of critical inquiry, which can include taking a stand on a controversial question, so long as the stand is taken in a manner consistent with “ rgumentation and discussion” and respect for students’ “critical independence.”

This approach is fine as far as it goes; but in presenting it, “Freedom in the Classroom” fails to present or discuss any real-life examples of abuse. (As is often the case, the devil in this matter lies in the details.) The effect is to endorse the view that critics of higher education are either chasing after windmills or pushing their own ideological agendas. At times, the AAUP statement reads like a defense team’s appellate brief, making a strong case for its side while playing down the claims of the other side. For example, we hear nothing about the notorious flare-ups in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Culture Department at Columbia University a couple of years ago that prominently displayed the tension between student and faculty academic freedom. Even the noted civil liberty columnist Nat Hentoff -- who has been unyielding in his defense of professors charged with the sin of being politically incorrect -- concluded in The Village Voice that the students’ academic freedom rights were violated in that case. (I am not comfortable with this conclusion, but I acknowledge that the students’ rights were an important consideration in that case.)

But another caveat is in order at this point. While we know of many cases of inappropriate politicization in the classroom, there have also been cases in which what I consider overly-sensitive conservative students (who have sometimes been politicized in their own rights) have made damning complaints that seem out of line. This happened to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. A conservative student accused my colleague of exhibiting a left-wing bias in the arrangement and discussion of topics in the course. The accusation was very public, and my colleague’s name was tarnished in a prominent way. Upon examination, however, it was clear that the student was the ideologue, not the professor. The tone and tactics of this accusation amounted to a replay of the tone and tactics employed by politically correct students in years past to bring down professors for harboring the wrong thoughts. History has shown that neither conservatives nor liberals possess pure virtue when it comes to respecting academic freedom. This is why both the Student Bill of Rights, inspired by the right, and the speech codes promulgated by the left are problems.

In the abstract, “Freedom in the Classroom” makes important points in section A (“Education, Not Indoctrination”) about advocacy and instruction. Instructors should be empowered to advocate normative positions appropriately in class. As the authors write, “Vigorously to assert a proposition or a viewpoint, however controversial, is to engage in argumentation and discussion -- an engagement that lies at the core of academic freedom.” The single best course I took as an undergraduate was an introductory course on American government, in which the professor took a decidedly pro-liberal-democracy stand against the many r dical critics who were thriving on campus at the time. His posture was not dogmatic, and he challenged us to consider competing arguments. But he did not shy away in the least from letting us know where he stood. That same year, this conservative professor won the campus-wide award as the best teacher at the university. Students rightfully expect us to stand for something. Is this not part of what it means to “profess”?

“Freedom in the Classroom’s” major flaw, in my estimation, lies in its discussion of “balance” in section B; and the analysis of this section affects other parts of the statement. The question of balance has micro and macro aspects. At the micro level, it pertains to the choice of readings and the tone of lectures and discussions in class. The AAUP is right that instructors should be given broad discretion regarding balance. The key question in First Amendment law and policy is “who decides?” The same question is crucial in academic freedom policy. On my campus, for example, defende s of academic freedom have worked hard to protect instructor discretion from attacks mounted by various insider do-gooders pursuing political correctness.

But it is at the macro level of the balance question that “Freedom in the Classroom” ignores the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Individual discretion is important, but what if the ideological orientation of teachers in a macro sense tilts decidedly toward the left or the right? The cumulative effect of individual discretion would be ideological one-sidedness, would it not? This would be a problem even if most professors in the social sciences and humanities make an effort to avoid ideological one-sidedness (which I believe most do, at least on my campus), for the lack of intellectual and normative diversity on campus inevitably slants or distorts thinking in a variety of venues, from the classroom to faculty meetings to what is acceptable in the public forum.

Several studies have found ideological or partisan one-sidedness in many maj r social science and humanities departments in recent years, and this one-sidedness is clearly toward the left. We have anecdotal evidence of this effect in some classrooms (which we should consider along with the caveats raised above), but such evidence is not limited to this venue. Conservative speakers consistently find themselves besieged when they come to campus to speak, and conservative newspapers often find themselves under improper (and sometime illegal) attack.

Most recently, the Regents of the University of California (home of the putative Free Speech Movement) declined to bring former Harvard president Larry Summers in to address them because his presence might offend feminists. (Summers’ fate at Harvard is itself a telling example of campus orthodoxy having its way.) In a recent editorial, The New Republic compared the controversy surrounding Columbia University's reception of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the University of California Regents' withdrawal of their nvitation to Larry Summers to speak. TNR’s conclusion about these two events speaks volumes about the political state of higher education today:

Ahmadinejad, with his pledge of genocide and sponsorship of attacks against American soldiers, arguably falls into the category of power-wielding crank who doesn't deserve any of the legitimacy that comes with such a prestigious platform. The Summers invitation, on the other hand, shouldn't be the stuff of controversy. And that Summers is the one deprived of a microphone tells you something is terribly amiss in the American academy. ("Free Larry Summers," New Republic editorial, 2 October 2007)

Last year representatives of the Minutemen anti-illegal-immigration movement were physically removed from a stage at an event at Columbia University by angry students who could not brook the idea of this group’s presence on the progressive campus. The list goes on and on. In my view, the lack of intellectual and normative diversity on c mpus is one of the most telling shortcomings in higher education today. We have become like country clubs for the left, and some important concepts never it make into the marketplace of ideas on campus. As Allan Bloom wrote in The Closing of the American Mind, the greatest tyranny is often the one that makes certain thoughts unthinkable, not one that overtly punishes the wrong thoughts.

Thus, when conservatives encounter the assignment of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed to incoming students at North Carolina (discussed in “Freedom in the Classroom”), they do not view this assignment in a vacuum. One could agree entirely with “Freedom in the Classroom’s” defense of this assignment as a form of “education” as opposed to “indoctrination.” But this defense would still fail to address the macro question just posed. It would be instructive to do a survey of such assignments among the leading research universities and colleges in the United States. What might we find?

In the end, “Freedom in the Classroom” was written in a vacuum that bestows an almost other-worldly atmosphere to its discussion and analysis. Nowhere is this limitation more telling than in section C of the statement, dealing with “Hostile Learning Environment.” On the one hand, the AAUP is certainly right to point out the dangers of applying this concept to protect the assumption “that students have a right not to have their most cherished beliefs challenged.” Too many conservative students are learning the wrong lessons from the era of political correctness, and are resorting to coercive measures to protect their beliefs and identities from criticism. This is yet another reason I oppose the Student Bill of Rights.

But “Freedom in the Classroom” continues the AAUP’s denial of the negative effects of political correctness and speech codes on true intellectual freedom on campus. In 1994, the organization published a statement that essentially discounted the negative effects of speech codes and related measures on academic and intellectual freedom. Many life-long supporters of the AAUP were stupefied by this position. Though codes were usually originally designed to punish true harassment on grounds of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, etc., there is substantial (if not definitive) evidence that they were often applied simply to prevent protected groups and individuals from being offended or criticized. In other words, speech codes and related policies often reinforced political and identity agendas, and reinterpreted speech critical of progressive ideologies as constituting a hostile environment. In distinguishing the new conservative use of the hostile environment concept from the previous use by the campus left, “Freedom in the Classroom” suggests that the AAUP is not about to abandon its double standard on this important matter. It will oppose the conservative use of that concept with all its might, but turn a deaf ear to abuses emanating from the other political direction.
In the end, “Freedom in the Classroom” had an opportunity to educate us on the uses and abuses of academic freedom, and to show us how academic freedom is a universal standard that can be endangered from both the left and right. But universalism is an embattled principle these days, and precious few universities promote programs that teach such common principles, focusing instead on what makes us different. “Freedom in the Classroom” reflects the AAUP’s acceptance of this reality. The AAUP could have set the record straight, and regained its position at the forefront of academic freedom politics in the United States. Sadly, that task is once again left to others.
NAS8:04 AM

Wherefore the Military on Campus
Donald A Downs, The University of Wisconsin, Madison

A year ago I rather poorly moderated a “discussion” between the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin and a group opposed to the presence of ROTC on campus because of their opposition to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding homosexuality. The Chancellor more than held his own against some virulent criticism that made the event more of a confrontation than a discussion.

Chancellor John Wiley defended the traditional argument in favor of maintaining ROTC’s presence on campus, which is based on the model of the “citizen soldier.” The citizen-soldier model maintains that ROTC is good for both the military and the country, because it exposes future officers and commanders to civilian campus life and to an educational process that differs from the more ordered education of the military academies and officer training schools. Such exposure broadens the backgrounds of officers, and contributes to closing the gap between the military and civilian life, which is always a concern in a liberal democracy.

The Chancellor also alluded to other benefits from ROTC, though he did not delve into them at length. He mentioned that all students have a right to be exposed to military recruiters and ROTC programs, and that the ROTC’s presence added to the diversity of campus life. This latter emphasis sparked me to think: could a case for ROTC on campus be made that turns the citizen-soldier model around, so to speak? In other words, could ROTC and related programs (such as courses in military history, which are attended by ROTC and non-ROTC students) be justified on campus not merely because of their impact on future soldiers -- however important this justification is -- but also because of their impact on the campus itself? That is, could the presence of such programs constitute a meani gful element of civic education itself?

In addition to concerns about homosexual policy, opponents of ROTC on campus make two other claims. First, that ROTC courses are not intellectually rigorous enough to merit academic status. Second, that linking the university so closely to the military compromises the university’s independence from the outside world. Such independence is necessary for academic freedom to thrive. But these two arguments fall short. During the 1970s and 1980s, ROTC programs across the country were upgraded to make them consistent with university standards. (Both the military and universities favored this development.) And universities today are awash in courses, programs, and practices that are designed to make the university more “relevant” to the outside world, or to connect the university to such outside activities as politics, business, social services, and sports. Accordingly, claims to autonomy vis-à-vis the military ring hollow.

The homosexual issue is toughe , in my view. But it does not justify removing ROTC from campus for at least two reasons. First, most universities have very active programs promoting gay rights, and are very hospitable to homosexuals. It is hard to argue that the presence of ROTC signifies that universities are hostile to gays. Indeed, many universities actively strive to persuade the military to change its policy concerning homosexuals. Second, ROTC’s benefits are very substantial, which justify its presence on campus, especially given the gay-friendly environment that prevails on most campuses.

But the question remains: beyond the citizen-soldier model, what benefits accrue to the presence on campus of ROTC and related programs? As mentioned, the presence of ROTC can contribute to the civic education of students and the academic community. How might this be so?

One clue to answering this question is provided by the postures of several schools that abandoned ROTC in the 1960s and early 1970s. This movement was most p ominent in the Ivy League, where such schools as Harvard, Yale, and Columbia dropped their ROTC programs because of those institutions’ anti-military beliefs. On many campuses today, the military is held in the same regard as religion: it is at best a necessary institution, but it deals with realities that are best left to others. This posture stands in stark contrast to the sense of obligation to national service that once characterized the Ivy League, which used to contribute a disproportionate share of the nation’s military and intelligence leaders.

A proper military presence on campus can serve as a reminder or example to students of individuals who are willing to make sacrifices to the nation out of a sense of duty. Both conservative and liberal theorists have defined civic education partly in terms of such values. But there are further pedagogical justifications that I will explore in a forthcoming essay.
NAS9:43 AM

A Place for Teaching, Not Indoctrination
Jay Bergman, Central Connecticut State University


College professors sometimes make perfect fools of themselves, when they comment on issues of public interest.

This happened at Duke University last year. Three white Duke lacrosse players were accused, falsely and in flagrant disregard of their constitutional rights, of raping a black woman.

Before their culpability had been determined legally, and even before the public had information on the facts of the case, Houston Baker, the George D. and Susan Fox Beischer professor of English at the university, wondered "how many more people of color must fall victim to violent, white, male, athletic privilege" before Duke finally will be a place "where minds, souls, and bodies can feel safe from agents, perpetrators, and abettors of white privilege, irresponsi ility, debauchery and violence." Baker assumed the players had raped the woman because they were white, male, and athletic. According to Baker, that is what males who are white and athletic do, or secretly wish they could do.

Of course, professors are citizens and like everyone else are free to express their opinions, no matter how repugnant or foolish these may be, outside the classroom.

But within the classroom, teachers' freedom is limited, and not just in the obvious requirement that they teach their subjects, so professors of mathematics cannot teach Spanish and professors of Spanish cannot teach mathematics.

There are other, more substantive and significant limits that exist, or should exist, on what professors can say and do in the classroom. According to the 1940 Statement of Principles of the American Association of University Professors, "tea hers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject." In other words, professors are prohibited from indoctrinating their students and are required, correspondingly, to teach their students. There is a profound difference between the two activities.

At Central Connecticut State University where I am a professor, this distinction is sometimes ignored. Last fall, a professor sent the students in one of her courses more than 100 e-mails containing articles advocating the professor's opinions on matters entirely extraneous to the course -- for example, that Israel committed war crimes while fighting Hamas in Gaza last summer, and that comparisons between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany are reasonable. She also invited students to join her in attending seminars, such as Workshops on Peace, that were designed to advance the pr fessor's political agenda.

What is even worse, during one class, as a way of demonstrating how the American colonists stole Indian land, the same professor took a student's backpack without permission and in front of all the students emptied its contents onto the floor, naming each item one by one. It is hard to imagine a more egregious violation of a student's privacy, or a more flagrant abuse of the power professors have over students by virtue of their grading them and writing recommendations for them for jobs after they graduate.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. In my 17 years at CCSU, about half of my students have told me, on their own initiative or in response to my asking them, that one or more of their professors not only interjected their political opinions in class on a regular basis, but did so in an effort to convert their students to their point of view.

This figure is consistent with the results of a survey -- admittedly of small number of students -- the student newspaper conducted in 2005: 54 percent of those polled agreed "some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views," and 53 percent agreed "there are courses in which students feel they have to agree with their professor's political or social views in order to get a good grade."

The remedy for these abuses is oversight, followed by appropriate action when necessary, by administrators and trustees. In the case of state institutions, legislators and other government officials whose responsibilities include the supervision of public education can make clear their disapproval without dictating the content of the courses professors teach, or how they teach them.

Perhaps because they consider what they do beyond the intellectual abilities of ordinary people, professors like to think of universities as autonomous and self-regulating. They condemn as "McCarthyism" efforts by David Horowitz, through his Academic Bill of Rights, and organizations such as the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and the National Association of Scholars, to publicize the politicization of college classrooms. Indeed, the mere possibility that the public would be concerned enough about this politicization to register their objection to it evokes cries from professors that the dark night of fascism is about to descend on American college campuses.

The unwillingness of professors to subject themselves to external scrutiny brings to mind what the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1933, namely that in righting societal wrongs, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

May the sun shine brightly on American colleges and universities.
NAS2:50 PM

Graduation Day
Thomas C. Reeves, The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute

A survey by the Young America’s Foundation discovered that of the nation’s “top” 100 colleges and universities, as ranked by U.S. News, leftist commencement speakers outnumber conservative speakers by a seven-to-one ratio. It seems almost natural for major campuses to turn to an assortment of left-wing media personalities and Democratic Party leaders. Among the former this year were New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, CNN’s Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer, former news anchor Ted Koppel, PBS commentator Bill Moyers, and anti-Iraq war actor Bradley Whitford. Stanford University took an unusual step by inviting a clergyman: leftist radical and homosexual apologist Rev. William F. Swing. YAF spokesman Jason Mattera declared, “For fourteen ears, we’ve shown that college administrators are using commencement ceremonies to send their students off with one more predictable lecture.”

I can’t remember reading about a Wisconsin college or university hosting a conservative graduation speaker. The business school at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee is named after its major donor, a conservative businessman and philanthropist, and that’s probably as close to intellectual diversity as one may expect in this state. When Marquette University opened its new multi-million dollar library, the featured speaker was leftist actor Martin Sheen, who had not even attended college. On the nation as a whole, the conservative New Criterion has commented, “In the last few decades, the academy has mutated from being an ivory tower into a hermetic and increasingly ideological redoubt.”

Some leading institutions of higher education offer special graduation ceremonies based on race, color, and sexual identity. There are separate funct ons for homosexuals at Princeton, UCLA, MIT, three University of California campuses, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and Iowa State. Some institutions even have special freshman orientation programs based on the same criteria. Syndicated columnist John Leo observes that “the core reason for separatist graduation is the obvious: on campus, assimilation is a hostile force, the domestic version of American imperialism.” (See Leo’s “Identity-Group Commencements”.) But isn’t the whole policy of preferences and reverse discrimination in college and university admissions based on the alleged need for “diversity”? And isn’t that cliché virtually a synonym for integration, the opposite of separation? Come to think of it, are degrees in women’s studies, black studies, Latino studies, and queer theory preparing graduates to lead happy and intelligent lives in a pluralistic, capitalist, and highly competitive civilization?

While a professor, I never attended a graduation exercise. I sought not only to avoid the hot air from the podium, but also because I knew that so few of the graduates had sought and been given a rigorous, intellectually demanding, and broad education for their money. Yes, there had been individual achievement in all areas; three cheers for the few. But who in those robes with the silly hats was committed to a life of learning and thought? How many would elevate their cultural tastes? How many among the graduates had even a vague interest in anything beyond making money, having fun, and being politically correct? Many of them had already sold their books. Seniors often told me how delightful life would soon be when they no longer had to study.

Even the history majors, often planning to be school teachers, rarely expressed interest in anything intellectual. Journals, even solid magazines, even the better newspapers, were beyond their scope. Many had been spoon fed with multiple-choice ests and given top grades for term papers prepared in two weeks. Their future grasp of the world, one suspects, would come largely from the news readers and commentators on television and radio, the same prattling, giggling, empty-headed Barbie dolls who keep the high school graduates informed and aroused.

Graduation ceremonies would mean something more, of course, if seniors were given examinations at the end of their four to six years to show that they had actually received a solid and well-rounded education. But the trend is in the opposite direction, as the clamor for more college graduates increases and campuses seek to grow ever larger. In the future, we may expect lower academic standards, more vocational training, more bizarre ideological majors, and higher graduation rates. In short, there will likely be even less reason to participate in the ceremonies in June. Unless you want to see Oprah or one of the Clintons in person.
NAS8:29 AM

Religion and the University
Donald A Downs, The University of Wisconsin, Madison

Writers have devoted much ink to the ways in which the contemporary campus wars entail a clash between liberal and post-liberal principles in higher education. In ideal-type form, the litany of liberal principles includes free speech and academic freedom as indispensable means to the pursuit of truth; intellectual honesty and objectivity; and the essential universality of knowledge and truth. Among other things, post-liberalism denies the validity of universalism and supports restrictions on speech and academic freedom in the name of promoting sensitivity, diversity, and a sense of inclusion (“progressive censorship”).

Historically speaking, the liberal university was the product of the growing emphasis upon scientific inquiry (broadly defined) in research universities and institutions dedicated to he open-ended investigation and testing of ideas. This type of institution superseded what the American Association of University Professors has called the “proprietary university,” which is the type of university devoted to promoting a particular vision of truth. Historically, most proprietary institutions have been religious in nature. In key respects, the rise of the liberal university represented the ascendance of science over religion in the hierarchy of academic values.

Ironically, the post-liberal university embodies a new kind of proprietary institution, as it emphasizes ends extrinsic to the pursuit of truth. Indeed, some critics have observed that the drive for diversity itself has taken on a quasi-religious character on some campuses. But “diversity” seldom means intellectual diversity, as post-liberal universities are often characterized by a tiresome orthodoxy of opinion.

Meanwhile, another trend related to religion merits watching: the onset of religious liberty i sues on campuses nation-wide. Cases addressing religion have emerged while many of us were preoccupied with the more typical cases involving the suppression of political ideas and speech. But religion cases could constitute the next major wave of campus liberty claims. These cases often entail restrictions on private prayer sessions (e.g., those led by resident assistants) and denial of official recognition or funding to religious groups. Unlike other campus liberty cases, which have typically pitted the liberal vision of the university against its post-liberal adversary, religion controversies pose challenges to both models of higher education.

Though the reasons for the spread of religious cases on campus are complex, three factors are most relevant for the purposes of this essay. First, religion is an important aspect of life in America, so it was probably only a matter of time before religious movements made their voices felt on campus. Second, religious groups are aware of universities’ commi ments to diversity and ask why diversity should not include their voices. Third, in 1981 the Supreme Court began crafting a line of free speech jurisprudence that treated religious viewpoints on campus as another species of free speech that is subject to the full protection of the First Amendment. Therefore, religious expression is protected by the anti-viewpoint discrimination doctrine, which prohibits unequal treatment of expression based on the viewpoint of the speaker.

In Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995) the Supreme Court held that a student Christian group was entitled to modest funding despite the university’s claim that such funding would violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. And in Regents of the University of Wisconsin v. Southworth (2000), the Court ruled that programs distributing mandatory student fees to student groups are constitutional so long as they are distributed in a viewpoint-neutral manner. Together, these two cases provided im ortant signals to student religious groups that their inclusion on campus is backed by constitutional law, as is their right to share in the booty provided by (often mandatory) student fee systems. Today religious campus groups are asserting their rights, and such legal advocacy groups as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund are poised to assist them.

Under Southworth, such funding of students groups is constitutional if it is designed to further the educational mission of the university. Accordingly, First Amendment jurisprudence now assumes, in effect, that religious consciousness has a proper place among the intellectual values of the university -- at least in the domain of student group activity.

After Rosenberger, it is more difficult for universities to deny recognition and funding on Establishment-Clause grounds. A stronger argument for denying such benefits is that some religious groups’ membership policies violate sta utory and university rules against discriminatory conduct. Two years ago, for example, the University of Southern Illinois denied official recognition to the university’s chapter of the Christian Legal Society because the CLS group excludes homosexuals from membership. CLS sued, claiming a violation of their right of freedom of association, and thus far the organization has prevailed in the courts (Christian Legal Society v. James E. Walker, et al., Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals). The University of Wisconsin is presently engaged in negotiations with the Knights of Columbus after denying the Knights' campus group funding because of the group’s exclusion of women. Other cases are active around the country. I think that the freedom of association position has the better of the argument in these cases, but the matter is not black and white.

These legal cases point to deeper issues about the role of religion in the modern university. How does religious consciousness relate to the critical r ason and empiricism that is the hallmark of the liberal model of the university? In what spirit should students and faculty approach questions of faith? To what extent does context matter? Clearly academic judgments by scholars in the classroom should be governed by a different set of standards than the actions of student groups acting on their own behalf. But what limits might universities properly put on student groups’ use of university money to promote religious ends? Furthermore, what is the relationship between religious identity and the identity politics that characterizes the post-liberal university? Some observers believe that exclusion of religious groups from recognition is but another example of political correctness’s attack on tradition. But does not religious consciousness share certain attributes with other forms of identity? In other words, does the return of religion to the university represent pre-liberal, liberal, or post-liberal thinking? -- or a combination thereof?

NAS2:05 PM