With Rights Come Responsibilities

Congressional legislation typically comes phrased in tendentious language. But a recent bill proposed by California representative and long-shot presidential aspirant Duncan Hunter has perhaps set a record for bluntness.

Entitled “Restoring Patriotism to America’s Campuses Act,” this legislation would cut every dime of federal funding to Columbia University, for both inviting an alleged sponsor of terrorism and President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus and dissolving their Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

No doubt most denizens of the Ivory Tower laughed off Mr. Hunter’s affront to academic freedom. This very newspaper published a staff editorial parodying the bill as a simple-minded and jingoistic sop to the congressman’s far-right constituency. Academic freedom—or, more precisely, the freedom for academics to say, and host forums for others to say, the most outlandish things—has become such an unexamined prerogative that few find it necessary to defend it.

But academics—especially those responsible for President Ahmadinejad’s invitation to Columbia—should not take their precious privileges for granted. Nearly all universities depend heavily on federal disbursements. And if universities persist with such controversial publicity stunts, then, some time in the future, Mr. Hunter’s sentiment may find sufficient agreement in Congress. Prudence would dictate not to rouse a sleeping giant just to be controversial.

But even understanding academic freedom as carte blanche to say anything or invite anyone to campus—with the proviso of keeping controversy to a minimum—leaves the concept incomplete. Society grants researchers and academics the right of free inquiry, but they in turn have a duty to act responsibly.

Those engaged in the pursuit of truth may, at points, deem it necessary to affirm propositions likely to offend or contradict popular opinion. They deserve our society’s protection to shield them from impulsive legal sanction, enacted by a bestirred populace. The United States is not Socrates’s Athens—we allow our philosophers to pursue truth with impunity, even if we do not always honor them. The roused passions of the mob should not infringe upon the liberty of the intellect.

Yet much of what masquerades as academic freedom can scarcely claim to be the unsightly but necessary garb for those who search for truth. University campuses have been radically politicized, with progressive departments such as the committee on degrees in studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies implicitly aspiring to “raise consciousness” and produce the next cadre of leftist activists. Outside speakers—like President Ahmadinejad at Columbia, Mohammed Khatami at Harvard, and the plagiarizing former professor Ward Churchill at Hamilton College, although the last was ultimately cancelled—contribute nothing but the universities’ effective condemnation of American foreign policy. Universities demand and expect academic freedom, by which they mean freedom to make unrelated and extremist political statements.

Political speech in America, however, receives protection from any legal ban as well. Yet this simple fact does not nullify Mr. Hunter’s legislative logic or the claims of the Academy’s critics.

Anyone can express, without fear of legal reprisal, their political convictions, as extreme as they may be. And, in Cambridge, one has only to wander the Square on a seasonable afternoon to witness the excessive exercise of that right. Yet the difference between the La Rouche representatives or the parading union activists and Columbia University president Lee Bollinger—beside the Ph.D.—is that the affectionately-termed “Cambridge crazies” are not subsidized by American taxpayers. That is, unless they are on the dole as well.

The duty of academics—like many tradesman, and like us students, who thrive on the generosity of others—includes approaching their work in a dignified and responsible manner. While they may be legally free to say and do almost anything, they ought not expect their patrons to appreciate frivolity. Or, as in the case at Columbia, to gladly welcome an insult.

If universities did not so regularly insist on pushing the envelope with radical and often anti-American politics, perhaps their speech and actions would not deserve careful and critical scrutiny. But, if Mr. Hunter’s legislation is a portent of things to come, perhaps this is—like so many of our own grade-school pedagogues had warned—a lesson better learned the hard way.



Christopher B. Lacaria ’09 is a history concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears regularly.