In a puritan streak, Harvard University has forced several student groups who were planning on hosting a "Barely Legal" party to change the name -- or they otherwise couldn't hold the party, according to the Harvard Crimson and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). (Disclosure: Free For All writer Harvey Silverglate is Chairman of the Board of Directors of FIRE.) One student involved in the party's planning explained that the name was meant to imply the party "is going to be so crazy it should be illegal," but other students complained about the allusions to pornography. It's unfortunate that students are so sensitive on college campuses that they force their classmates to apologize even though their party ideas aren't "intended to imply statutory rape," but it's even more unfortunate that Harvard has shamelessly capitulated to student complaints and prevented students from expressing themselves. In the words of FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, "If Harvard is willing to censor something as small as a party with a mild theme, how can we believe that it will defend the expression of truly controversial views on its campus?"

Updated (6/10/08 1:30pm): Readers who access The Free For All through the old site rather than the new site might see this post misattributed below to Wendy Kaminer because of software limitations with the old system. The post was penned by James Tierney, a research assistant for Harvey Silverglate.

By Harvey Silverglate

As engines of creativity and innovation, colleges are always pushing the envelope on scholarship. While this is usually good – since it broadens our culture’s collective knowledge – occasionally you see some really idiotic proposals and research agendas coming out of the American academy. And each time you think you’ve seen the last truly dumb idea – at least for a while – emerge from a college campus, along comes an even dumber one to challenge your grasp on reality.

The Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, G. P. “Bud” Peterson, has proposed a new endowed chair in “Conservative Thought and Policy” that would (not necessarily, but most likely) be held by a politically conservative professor. The announcement comes as Peterson is seeking to raise the funds necessary to create the professorship. Peterson is a rare Republican at the helm of an American public university – especially one of national prominence like Colorado’s. Indeed, the picture is the same at most private universities, though less so at private religious institutions and the service academies. With this kind of background, it’s understandable that he would notice the grip that the academic left has on higher education.

It’s important to note that the academic left is not coterminous with traditional liberalism. Quite the opposite is true. I’m referring to the whackjob sociological, political, literary and other such theories and authoritarian tendencies of critical theorists and others in dubious academic disciplines. Alan Charles Kors and I dealt with this phenomenon – I hope – in our 1998 book, The Shadow University.

Despite Peterson’s political leanings – and his presumptively good-faith desire to develop more ideological diversity in higher education – if the problem is higher education’s intolerance for views outside the left’s agenda du jour, the solution of hiring a token conservative professor would exacerbate rather than cure the problem.

For one thing, the problem on campuses isn’t a perceived schism between “liberals” and “conservatives.” The idea that campuses are “liberal” is a myth. As I said earlier, the academic left differs markedly from those who fit the mold of traditional liberalism, with its focus on, for example, free speech. Though the litany of censorship cases on American campuses is legion, it’s not that “liberals” and “conservatives” are suppressing student and faculty speech. Instead, that’s the job of campus totalitarians on the far right and the far left alike. (That today there are far more totalitarians of the far left than of the far right on college campuses is not a comment on the relative merits of one over the other. It is just that the crazy left happens to have the upper hand right now in academia.)

For another, the notion that only a conservative is qualified to hold a chair in “Conservative Thought and Policy” is a parody on affirmative action. Should universities require that endowed chairs in Judaic Studies, for example, be held by a Jew? (So far it’s not clear that Peterson’s proposal would limit the position to conservatives, but the implication is that the school would be looking for a scholar/true-believer to fill the spot.) Is it the academic discipline – the study of conservative thought – that Chancellor Peterson wishes to bring to Colorado, or just a conservative? It doesn’t seem like a well-thought-out plan. (And besides, what does it say for the general conservative distaste for affirmative action programs when they drop their presumptively principled opposition when the policy instead benefits a group they do happen to like – namely, themselves?)

The fundamental problem with the proposal is that it does not deal with the underlying outrage that besets higher education today: the fact that our university campuses are among the least free institutions in our society. Ideally, campuses should be among the most free since academic freedom is, at least in theory, central to the pursuit of knowledge and the practice of higher education. Until we solve this central problem, one has to give conservative polemicist George Will some credit for his response to the Wall Street Journal's query: “Like Margaret Mead among the Samoans, they’re planning to study conservatives. That’s hilarious.” By the way, Will’s name has been bandied around as a possible candidate to fill the new chair, but it looks like they’ll have to find another specimen – perhaps one less sensitive about being treated like the subject of an anthropological study.

Every few weeks a story pops up about how someone – often a college student or an employee who has been fed propaganda to the effect that he or she is entitled to live an offense-free life – was “harassed” because someone else left nasty comments on their door dry-erase board, or some such thing. The most recent example comes from the University of North Dakota, where one student was just charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct for smearing ice cream on the wall of the dorm elevator to write the words “Scott is a Jew.” Of course, the local DA’s office was right to charge the kid with a crime: smearing ice cream on an elevator wall is arguably a crime of defacement – although permanent things like spray paint would make a more air-tight case – and if a jury agrees, the smearer should be punished. Writing slogans on public dormitory spaces, other than your own, or on bulletin boards and other spaces reserved for personal, non-communal use is also defacement. In neither case does it, nor should it matter what the content or point-of-view is. According to the article, “North Dakota law carries no special designation for hate crimes,” but in other states and on college campuses all around the country, this is not the case. Students elsewhere often find themselves in trouble on the basis of what they said, rather than on the basis of the defacement itself.

Graffiti has the ability to offend whether it says “Scott is a Jew” or “Fuck the Police!” -- or even an artistic rendition of Jesus Christ on a building’s exterior wall. So instead of using massive administrative infrastructure (in the college setting) and wasting juries’ time (in a criminal justice setting) trying to determine whether something was subjectively offensive (thus constituting some loose definition of “harassment”), colleges should adopt content- and viewpoint-neutral rules concerning what is essentially graffiti when written anywhere other than public bulletin boards (or the equivalent). This simple fix would save schools and police departments money, and would prevent students and other citizens from being punished for their opinions.

Last month, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (disclosure: for which TheFreeForAll blogger Harvey Silverglate serves as Chairman of the Board) noted that Colorado College had punished several students who published a parody of a campus feminist publication. FIRE is now reporting that the College has denied the students' appeal. Though the College claims that the parody violated the "student code of conduct policy on violence," it's not clear how writing can be violent when -- as in this case -- the writing wasn't inciting readers to violent action. FIRE is assisting the students in challenging the disciplinary ruling because Colorado College's free speech policy says that "[on] a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful that it may not be expressed." This is just the latest in a sadly long series of penalties inflicted by college and university administrators on students and student publications who have the audacity to use humor in order to make political points concerning various sacred cows in higher education. Read more at the FIRE website.

A popular viral video making the rounds on the internet shows New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman getting hit with a pie as he begins a speech at Brown University. The Brown Daily Herald reported yesterday that one of the students was taken into custody (but then released) by Brown police, while the second, who calls himself “Captain Custard” and may not have been a Brown student, remains unidentified. (So far, it seems that criminal charges will not be filed, though the identified student, Margaree Little ’08.5, has been referred to the Office of Student Life for disciplinary proceedings.)

The Herald also reported that someone affiliated with the “protest” against Friedman explained to them that “it’s not just Thomas Friedman. It’s what he stands for and what he promotes. It’s a pie in the face of corporate environmentalism and capitalism.”

The First Amendment protects speech – what Friedman was about to engage in when he was attacked – and also protects protesters’ countervailing right to speech, as long as their protest speech is not sufficiently loud or disruptive so as to interfere with the speaker’s ability to continue – the “heckler’s veto.” However, the First Amendment does not protect assault and battery against a speaker, which is what the students’ pie-throwing incident likely would constitute under the law were Friedman to press charges, or were local prosecutors inclined to proceed even against Friedman’s wishes. In addition to the violation of a criminal law, the students’ protest “action” runs contrary to most universities’ – including Brown’s – professed adherence to free speech and academic freedom principles. While it’s unclear what will happen to Little, Brown’s history is instructive, since not every incident of disruption or unlawful interference with free speech has been punished by campus authorities. (In these cases, you’ll often find that the administrators share the political views of the protesters, so their lack of action is a silent ratification of the protesters’ speech.) Several years ago, on campuses across the country – including Brown – students destroyed or stole press runs of student newspapers that contained a politically-incendiary advertisement placed by David Horowitz opposing reparations for slavery. Even though those actions constituted both theft as well as suppression of the newspaper’s free speech rights, few of those incidents resulted in punishment.

Then again, Friedman went on to finish his speech, so it’s not quite the same as these more successful heckler’s vetoes. But censorship of unpopular (to campus radicals) views is not acceptable, so we have to wait and wonder whether Brown will do anything to punish Little. (Of course, we may never hear anything, because so many campus disciplinary proceedings are held in complete secrecy. But that’s a separate issue.) They might do nothing. What is astonishing, and dis-spiriting, to advocates of free speech and academic freedom on our campuses of higher education, is that so many college administrators would not hesitate to publicly penalize a student newspaper or magazine and its staff writers for publishing a mere parody seen as offensive to some social group, but might hesitate to punish a student who engages in assault and battery in order to attack opinions deemed “regressive.” The double-standard that would occur were they to not punish Little would be breath-taking, particularly in an academic community supposedly devoted to the most heightened notions of free speech.

    The Waltham-based university named after the late and great Supreme Court Justice, Louis D. Brandeis, champion of free speech and free thought, has just achieved the dubious distinction of winning one of the “muzzle awards” given out annually by the highly respected Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, located in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    Twelve “winners” were picked this year, and Brandeis was chosen for its utterly incomprehensible efforts to punish a tenured faculty member, long-time Professor Donald Hindley, for his having used the word “wetback” in what turns out to be a perfectly appropriate and relevant manner during a lecture on Mexican politics and culture. It’s an offensive word, Brandeis’ Provost concluded, notwithstanding the available evidence that Professor Hindley was actually criticizing the racist use of the term. (Of course, even if Hindley approved of such use of the term, it would be his right. But the irony of punishing an anti-racist classroom lecture, on grounds of racial or ethnic intolerance or harassment, is just too much.)

    The battle against the Brandeis censors in the Hindley case as well as other recent attempts at suppression of speech has been taken up by the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education , of which I am co-founder and currently serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors. It is nice to see that the First Amendment Center agrees that battling censorship at Brandeis is a worthy goal. Maybe Brandeis President Yehuda Reinharz will begin to get the hint and undertake a conversion of Brandeis’ culture into something that Justice Brandeis would recognize and of which he would approve.

                                        Harvey Silverglate

Just when you think you’ve heard the last politically correct, holier-than-thou pronouncement coming out of our university campuses for a while, you open the morning’s newspaper and find more inanities. This morning’s two-minutes-outrage is a rant from campus professors, researchers and administrators criticizing Big Tobacco for giving – and universities for accepting – no-strings-attached grants for health-related research at Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of technology, and the University of Massachusetts. 

“Taking money from the tobacco industry to conduct scientific research is like the DA taking money from the Mafia to conduct investigations of crime,” Gregory Connolly, a prof at Harvard School of Public Health, is quoted by the Boston Globe as saying. Connolly may be an expert in his field, but he clearly is ill-informed about how the government funds its anti-Mafia investigations. In fact, state and local prosecutors rely on mob and other criminal money, collected through the asset forfeiture programs enacted in many jurisdictions, to run those investigations and otherwise fund law enforcement offices. Private ill-gotten gains are thus redirected into the law enforcement coffer, then subsequently turned around and aimed back at the criminal syndicates.

Of course, Mafia kingpins aren’t being generous or philanthropic when they “fund” activities that are clearly against their own self-interests through this process. By contrast, the Globe article shows that Big Tobacco is actually voluntarily forking over big bucks for health-related research – especially into those diseases that the companies’ products help cause in the first place. There’s a certain justice to this, no? Besides, what would Professor Connolly prefer Philip Morris do with the money instead of donating it to universities – add to its tobacco advertising budget?

Dr. Michael Siegel of B.U.’s School of Public Health fears that the tobacco companies will be “using the good name” of the various academic institutions. Isn’t that what virtually all donors are trying to do – and does Dr. Siegel propose that our colleges and universities do morality checks before accepting money from donors, much less before naming classrooms or even whole buildings after them? One can barely imagine how lists of alumni and other donors would quickly shrink. And, besides, whose test of morality would apply – Dr. Siegel’s?

One of the rare voices of sanity to come through this morass of pious bleating is that of researcher Rami Tzafriri of MIT. He defends his use of tobacco money “that does not compromise my independence.” It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that such sanity and honesty emanate from MIT, an institution still devoted to rational thought rather than to the latest intellectual and pseudo-political fashions of the day. (That’s why speech is freer at MIT than at most other academic institutions plagued by speech codes, but that’s a column for another day.) Academics at MIT are secure enough in their own professional scruples to understand that the source of their funds will not (at least in the case of no-strings-attached grants) compromise the methodologies or outcomes of their research. What does it say about the integrity of other schools’ faculties when professors start wringing their hands self-consciously, worrying about interference with research?

This interscholastic debate parallels a similar contretemps which broke out in the 1990’s at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). By that time the organization was experiencing severe tensions between, on the one hand, true-believer civil libertarians, and, on the other, those who wanted to turn the venerable organization into a “progressive” political group that would carry forward a political program rather than focus on free speech and other such liberty issues. (Such politicization would devastate the organization’s credibility as an honest broker for liberty. In fact, this battle continues today.) Then Executive Director Ira Glasser defended the group’s acceptance of no-strings-attached grants from Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. Morton Mintz strongly criticized Glasser in a series of reports and articles, including a Nieman Report (PDF) and an article in The Progressive. One did not have to be cynical to realize why Big Tobacco would support the ACLU – the companies were dependent on the nation’s tradition of allowing people to harm themselves if they really want do, as well as on the free speech arguments in favor of “commercial speech” (read: tobacco advertising). But as long as the ACLU was in control of how the money was spent, Glasser rightly refused to knuckle under to the PC crowd.

Hey – if the universities decide to do investigations of the good moral character of their donors as well as the ways in which they made their fortunes, I’d like to volunteer to be on that committee. I can probably get material for a few truly awesome columns, if not a screenplay or two.

                                                                    Harvey Silverglate

The Boston Globe reported this morning that although Attorney General Michael Mukasey will still speak at this year's Boston College Law School commencement, the school has decided that it would nonetheless "deny Mukasey the Founder's Medal," which celebrates "traditions of professionalism, scholarship, and service which the Law School seeks to instill in its students." Some students had protested against the decision to honor Mukasey, in part "because his position on waterboarding conflicts with the university's Jesuit mission." (Incidentially, would the students and faculty members who are up in arms in defense of BC's 'Jesuit mission' be equally upset having a speaker from Planned Parenthood, Death with Dignity, or Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders -- all of which advocate legal and social positions at odds with Catholic theology?)

Retaining Mukasey as the speaker while not bestowing an honor upon him has the effect of defanging the criticisms of campus activists who are opposed to the viewpoint espoused by the speaker. Indeed, by disaggregating the symbolic function of the invitation (giving him the Founder's Medal arguably puts the law school's imprimatur on Mukasey's views) from the expressive function of the invitation (exposing law students to the highest-ranking lawyer in the Executive Branch), Boston College has made it so no one can claim that the school is ratifying Mukasey's views. Instead, it becomes clear that those who still object to Mukasey's speech simply do not like the idea of hearing speech they disagree with.

Update: The story was originally broken by student reporters at BC Law school's eagleionline.com, which the Globe report failed to mention. Gotta give credit where credit's due.

On the front page of today’s Boston Globe, higher-education beat writer Peter Schworm reports on the emerging power struggle between, on the one hand, universities that boast increasingly large endowments, and on the other, members of Congress. Several politicians have proposed using the tax code to pressure those institutions to use more of their endowment money for decreasing the sky-high costs of private college educations, making such educations more affordable to working class and poor families.

The universities claim that they need to hold on to the money for a rainy day – and that while investment results and alumni donations have proven healthy in recent years, they are unlikely to keep up that pace. Congressional representatives counter that they have granted favorable tax status to donations to universities (the donors deduct them from gross reportable income for income tax purposes) and to endowment portfolio investment returns (which are non-taxable, as for all certified charitable and educational institutions). On this view, the public interest requires that the universities’ largesse, which can be credited in part to this preferential tax treatment, be devoted to socially beneficial purposes in real time.

If those are the positions, that means that there’s a lot of misunderstanding on both sides of the debate.

Politicians inadequately appreciate how government mandates as to how private institutions must spend their money pose a great potential for mischief. As happens altogether too often when the government seeks to exert control in exchange for doling out public funded largess, catastrophic failure can result. University lawyers already face hassles in wading through bureaucratic requirements and dictates that make traditional educational values take a back seat to government mandates. For example, colleges have often wrongly interpreted government regulations prohibiting “harassment” of various kinds as trumping free speech and academic freedom – even where these values are most important to preserve in an educational context. And the general counsel of on Ivy League school a couple of years ago complained to me that he spends more time trying to understand government regulations than on any of his other duties.

And for their part, universities are inviting government intervention by acting as if they were business corporations. Their behavior certainly quacks like the proverbial duck, as colleges are morphing slowly into the model of business corporations, increasing their coffers while decreasing the quality of their product (which is supposed to be the traditional educational mission, not the promotion of the “brand”). Presidents of colleges and universities have increasingly become fund-raisers and overseers of institutional expansion, rather than educational leaders. This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education, for example, reports mind-boggling recent fund-raising figures (subscription required), with huge annual takes from alumni and other donors despite record-breaking multi-billion dollar endowment investment returns. The article reports that

“Stanford University raised the most of any institution, $832.3-million, followed by Harvard University ($614.0-million) the University of Southern California ($469.6-million), the Johns Hopkins University ($430.5-million), and Columbia University ($423.8-million).”

Locally, Harvard is planning an expansion into Allston, while Boston College intends to alter part of Brighton near its own campus.

A more recent phenomenon is equally indicative of the direction in which colleges and universities are intent on heading. Recent reports in The New York Times (here and here) tell us that an increasing number of American universities are opening branches abroad, particularly in the oil-rich sheikdoms of the Middle East. Given that these monarchies and oligarchies are not the most obvious and friendly environments for liberal arts institutions -- which are supposed to operate under conditions of academic freedom -- one naturally has a strong suspicion that the universities are doing it for the money, as well as for whatever other commercial and corporate advantages accrue to spreading one’s “brand” abroad.

Remember, too, that former Harvard President Lawrence Summers was forced out of his position by faculty who were upset at his remarks on science, education, and culture. (I wrote about that campus putsch in the Boston Phoenix, here, here, and here.) The Harvard Corporation, a self-perpetuating group of six members with life tenure and near-absolute authority, caved in and sent Summers packing. They likely did it out of fear that the controversy might negatively impact fund-raising. Even the President of the nation’s richest and most powerful university did not have academic freedom when other “values” (such as the value of the $30-plus billion portfolio) conflicted. And when Summers tried to answer his critics shortly before his departure, his response came from the university’s public relations office, rather than from Summers himself. Talk about how corporate culture has overtaken academic culture!

If universities want to ward off government regulation – a goal with which I agree heartily – they need to begin acting like educational institutions once again. For as soon as they start heading down the corporate path, they should expect the kind of governmental regulation and intervention imposed upon business corporations. The allure of money, power and influence may be too tempting, however, so I wouldn’t hold my breath.

                                       -- Harvey Silverglate

By Jan Wolfe  

            University Presidents have developed a strange knack for lauding the First Amendment even as they dispense with it. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see Gene Nichol, President of The College of William & Mary, match his anti-censorship rhetoric with action.

            According to The Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia, Nichol has permitted students to bring to campus the Sex Workers' Art Show, a sort-of X-rated Vagina Monologues in which strippers, prostitutes, and porn stars apparently rave about how much they love their jobs (much to the dismay of campus feminists of the anti-pornography school, I’m sure).

In a statement, Nichol said the First Amendment and "defining traditions of openness that sustain universities" required he permit the show be held at the college. "My views and the views of others in the community about the worth or offensiveness of the program can provide no basis for censoring it," he said.

That’s refreshing to hear. And even more refreshing to see being put into practice.

            As my colleague Wendy Kaminer wrote in this space on Wednesday, the school opened an investigation into Professor Donald Hindley, a 40-year veteran of the Politics Department, last October after two students complained about comments he made in class. No one can say for sure what Hindley is accused of saying, however, because to this day the university’s provost has not told him, or his attorney Andrew Good (a partner in the law firm of Good & Cormier, with which I’m associated in an “of counsel” capacity), in writing, despite numerous requests, the specific words he was accused of having uttered – a maneuver right out of Kafka’s The Trial.

The offended students anonymously told the student newspaper that their complaint centered on Hindley’s use of the word “wetback” in class. Hindley recalls, and other students in the class have confirmed, that he commented that when impoverished Mexicans come across the U.S. border into what used to be Mexico, they get called, pejoratively, “wetbacks” (espaldas mojadas in Spanish), referring to their crossing the Rio Grande River. Hindley went on to say that when he went to Los Angeles many years ago, there was absolutely nothing pejorative in the term. Only more recently did it pick up a negative connotation.

In other words, a professor of Latin American studies, teaching a course on the subject of the politics of Mexico, gave the class an explanation of the origins of what is now considered a pejorative term for Mexican immigrants, and it was deemed offensive by two uninformed students.

What is worse, however, is Brandeis refusal to grant this long-time professor any semblance of due process. After a three-week investigation (that Hindley had not been informed of at the time), Provost Marty Krauss told Hindley that he had been found guilty of violating the campus’s harassment clause. A monitor would be placed in his classroom, he was told, and he would need to attend racial sensitivity training sessions. Hindley has never been granted an opportunity to appeal this summarily-inflicted punishment, and pleas from other students to testify favorably toward the professor were ignored. Two separate opinions from the Faculty Committee for Rights and Responsibilities that sharply criticized Krauss’ handling of the complaints were likewise ignored by her.

When the battle heated up, with the intervention not only of legal counsel, but also of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Brandeis’ administrators suddenly closed the case, effectively retreating and then, bizarrely, declaring victory. (Further disclosure: I’m a co-founder, and current Chairman of the Board of Directors, of FIRE.)

            But it ain’t over; it’s just heating up. The higher education press has gotten wind of the absurd case, and, as Justice Brandeis sagely observed, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” In their bunkers, Brandeis’ administrators likely cannot stay silent for long, especially since alumni, donors, and perhaps even members of the Board of Trustees are bound to get wind of the university’s assault not only on academic freedom and due process, but also on reason itself.

            But for now, Brandeis administrators persist in refusing to respond to FIRE’s letter and to news media inquiries. Justice Brandeis must be turning over in his grave.

By James F. Tierney

Two weeks ago, Harvey Silverglate blogged about a federal Magistrate Judge, Wayne Brazil, who overturned a “civility code” at San Francisco State University on the grounds that it targeted speech and expression that falls under the protection of the First Amendment. (The case was brought by the officers of SFSU's College Republicans, who were investigated under the civility code when students complained they had insulted Muslims by stepping on the Hamas and Hezbollah flags -- which contain the word “Allah” in Arabic script -- during an anti-terrorism rally.) The opinion is available here.

By Harvey Silverglate

            H. L. Mencken, late in life, allowed himself to be interviewed by a young reporter from his hometown newspaper. The interviewer asked the grand old curmudgeon, "why, if you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, do you continue to live here?" Mencken answered the query with another question: “Why do people visit zoos?” Well, living right smack in the middle of the zoo that Harvard has become in its dotage, I now understand Mencken’s reasoning perfectly.

            The latest head-shaking Harvard story is that anthropology professor J. Lorand Matory introduced a one-sentence resolution at a faculty meeting stating that “this Faculty commits itself to fostering civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas.” Professor Matory, according to the Harvard Crimson, “has claimed that critics of Israel, like himself, ‘tremble in fear’ of repercussions for their views.”

            As a pretty close student of the goings-on at Harvard (I’m a graduate of the Law School, a long-time affiliate at one of the Harvard undergraduate houses, and I lecture at least a couple of times each semester at one or another Harvard Law School class), I have to say that the only faculty member I know who actually did suffer for his views on Israel was Lawrence Summers, who happened to be the university president at the time he gave a speech positing a possible link between animosity toward Israel and anti-Semitism or the appearance of anti-Semitism. That speech, plus another unpopular speech supporting the ROTC program, which Harvard's faculty stripped of university funding in 1995, capped off by Summers’ infamous musing on women’s suitability for careers in science made Summers sufficiently vulnerable so that a no-confidence resolution introduced by none other than Professor Matory caused Harvard’s governing body to vote “no confidence” in Summers, resulting in his resignation in February 2006. And so it was a bit ironic to have Matory, a leader of the faculty rebellion that forced Summers out for his unpopular and politically incorrect views on hot-button topics, claim that he felt “unsafe” for espousing his views on the campus. Presumably, had Harvard truly dedicated itself to a culture that fostered “civil dialogue in which people with a broad range of perspectives feel safe and are encouraged to express their reasoned and evidence-based ideas,” Summers would still be Harvard’s president.

            But I suppose that my disgust over the Harvard faculty’s intolerance for views with which it disagrees -- and Matory surely is not in the camp that has to worry about being “unsafe” – is matched by my amusement over the notion that tenured faculty members, especially those adhering to the politically correct fashions of the day, are somehow “unsafe.” That faculty, as Summers learned the hard way, is perhaps the most pampered tenured faculty in the nation. Harvard has become infamous, for example, for the paucity of full professors who actually teach undergraduates. They are so pampered, in fact, that it is notoriously difficult to get them even to attend faculty meetings, unless, of course, they are about to vote no-confidence in a president who expresses his views too bluntly. Indeed, the reason the Matory resolution was not brought to a vote was that it takes one-sixth of the faculty present to conduct an official vote, and attendance at the meeting fell just short of that very modest quorum.

Scholars have for centuries sought to define and promote the concept of academic freedom, and, while the exact definitions they’ve arrived at have varied, the underlying rationale has always been the same: to shield academics from political and religious pressure. For this reason, I’m a bit puzzled by the fact that many of the modern-day groups that describe themselves as defenders of academic freedom are also clearly political in nature and often seem to be promoting a political agenda rather than neutral principles of liberty.

The most recent academic freedom movement within the academy, which calls itself “The Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University,” seems to fit this mold. It eloquently extols the virtues of academic freedom, particularly in debates over the Middle East, but upon closer inspection, seems concerned only with the rights of scholars from one side – theirs, of course – of  the political spectrum.

The Committee, led Joan Wallach Scott, a history professor at Princeton, has already voiced its opinion on quite a few academic freedom controversies, and, so far, they’ve always come out pretty much on the right side, in my view. When St. Thomas University cancelled a speech by critic of Israel and Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, members of the Committee rallied behind the censored clergyman. And when the pro-Israel group StandWithUs convinced the University of Michigan press to stop publishing a book called Overcoming Zionism, the Committee helped convince Michigan to change its mind, arguing persuasively against these “efforts to broaden definitions of anti-Semitism to include scholarship and teaching that is critical of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and of Israel.”

So what’s the problem, then? As you can see, all of these controversies involve censorship of anti-Israel speakers. In order for me to take this group seriously, it first needs to defend the academic freedom of someone whose speech doesn’t fit neatly into the limited range of politically acceptable (or, as some prefer to say, politically correct) viewpoints prevalent on most campuses. The Committee stood behind Tutu, a liberal darling, but where was it when the Regents of the University of California nixed a speaking invitation to former Harvard University president and Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers because of complaints from a handful of leftist postmodernist professors? Similarly, the Committee criticized Israel supporters Alan Dershowitz and David Horowitz for involving themselves in DePaul University’s tenure dispute with Jewish-born Israel-basher Norman Finkelstein, but why hasn’t it also criticized the leftist academics who aggressively sought to bar Arab-born Israel-supporter Nonie Darwish from speaking at Brown last year? (Disclosure: I’m a long-time personal friend of Dershowitz. This said, however, I’ve been publicly critical of a number of his positions.)

As I’ve said many times, and will say again, once we cease looking at free speech and academic freedom as modal liberties – that is, as primary values in and of themselves – and begin to treat them as a means to a politicized or ideological end, we irreparably weaken thm in the long run. Either free speech and academic freedom are seamless and equally applied across the ideological spectrum, or they might as well be abandoned entirely. The founders of these important doctrines understood this. It’s a shame that their modern-day counterparts need so often to be reminded of it.

(My thanks go to my research assistant, the very talented Jan Wolfe, for assisting me with this blog entry.)