We Should Live - Ben Bateman

Entering college in 1988, I vividly remember the unbearable smugness with which we were lectured about the new cardinal virtues of academia: tolerance and diversity.

‘Tolerance’ in their lexicon turned out to mean tolerance of liberalism, no matter how extreme. It did not mean tolerance by liberals of anything they didn’t like. Diversity worked the same way: If you didn’t like their opinions, then you weren’t respecting diversity, and could be punished for that sin. If they didn’t like your opinions, then your opinions were always so extreme and unconscionable that they weren’t protected by the halo of diversity, and you could be punished or ostracized for having such horrible opinions.

It bears noting that very few of the students and professors actually agreed with this not-so-subtle thought-control program. Probably only five to ten percent were really gung-ho about it. But five to ten percent is all you need, if the rest are sheep. And they were. Most professors are content to study and teach in their chosen fields. They don’t want any trouble with politics; they have too much at risk. So they keep their heads down, their mouths closed, and their thoughts to themselves. I don’t blame them. I would do the same if my job, reputation, and career depended on not being smeared by left-wing lunatics.

Vandalism as Free Speech

Dr. Sally Jacobsen, interim director of Women’s Studies at Northern Kentucky University, was upset. Some pro-life students had erected an anti-abortion display on campus consisting of about 400 white crosses to represent aborted fetuses. (That’s about two-and-a-half hours’ worth of abortions nationally.) Dr. Jacobsen didn’t like those crosses. She felt that they were a “slap in the face” to women who might be making “the agonizing and very private decision to have an abortion.”

So she invited some of her students (all female) to help her vandalize the display. The campus newspaper reports that “The group knocked the crosses down and piled them in trashcans around the plaza, and removed the “Cemetery of Innocents” sign.” They did this in broad daylight, apparently convinced that they were exercising their right to free speech.

The pro-life group is pressing charges. The Dean of Students is making appropriate noises about how maybe vandalism isn’t free speech. But don’t hold your breath waiting to find out whether Dr. Jacobsen will suffer any professional repercussions.

The Renegade Librarian

This story really upset me. I’m not sure why. I guess it’s that the harm that people suffer from academic bias is real and specific, not just general poor education. Real people—nice people—go into academia with intellectual curiosity, thinking that they’ll get a fair shake. But they won’t. They may think that they’re safe, because politics doesn’t interest them. So they spend years of their lives training for academic careers, and then it’s all wasted in a matter of days if they express a politically incorrect opinion.

Scott Savage is Head of Reference and Instructional Services at Ohio State University, Mansfield campus. Just two months ago he agreed to server on the university’s First Year Reading Experience Committee. The committee’s task was to select books to be assigned in a required freshman reading course. Other committee members suggested predictably liberal books. Mr. Savage criticized many of their choices as too polarizing, and proposed something more neutral.

His fellow committee members didn’t appreciate the criticism. Some said that the books weren’t polarizing. Others said that they were polarizing—and that was the point. Mr. Savage responded to the latter criticism this way:

In my view it would be good for students who tend not to read to be given the choice of a book that actually interests them. But if we are decided that we want to engage our students in the kind of exchange of ideas on which the “secular” university is founded, then let’s choose something that confronts the accepted wisdom of Ohio State University! Like students and young profs did in the ’60s, man!

He then went on to recommend four very conservative books, one of which is sharply criticial of the movement to normalize homosexuality. He closed with: “I haven’t read all of these, but I would like to, and I am sure they would spark significant discussion on campus.”

We can’t quite tell what happened next, as we only have this cease-and-desist letter from the Alliance Defense Fund. It gives a narrative of events, the original email, and responses further into the discussion. The committee members didn’t get his point about orthodoxy, and they were horrified by the anti-gay book. Mr. Savage dug in his heels and fought back.

The email responses to Mr. Savage bring back memories of my college days. On the one hand, there is no liberal campus orthodoxy, and you’re delusional for thinking so. Associate Professor Hannibal Hamlin wrote to Mr. Savage:

Selecting one book does not imply that all others are neglected or suppressed, so it seems perverse to suggest that there is some active attempt to promote some notional “OSU” orthodoxy, against which you are valiantly struggling. . . . It is no stifling of free speech to point out that an author is a quack, if the author is clearly basing an argument on bigotry rather than actual fact. And while such a book might make for an interesting focus of discussion, this freshman program seems not the place for it, unless we are prepared to spend the time (and give the freshmen the supplementary reading required) to debunk the falsehood.

It only seems like academia is in the iron grip of political conformity. But that’s just a big misunderstanding. Yes, they only assign books by liberals, but that’s just because the liberal books are true, while the conservative books are full of lies and bigotry. There’s no political bias here at all! If the conservatives want their books to be read on campuses, then they should quit spouting such outrageous ideas and come up with more interesting and acceptable ideas, instead of complaining about some imaginary political orthodoxy.

On the other hand, in the next paragraph, and without missing a beat, Hamlin warns Savage that there is an orthodoxy, and an anti-discrimination policy, about which he should be careful:

On the matter of homophobia, I think you should be rather careful, Scott. OSU’s policy on discrimination is not simply a matter of academic orthodoxy, but a matter of human rights.

The real opportunist is Associate Professor of English JF Buckley. I think that he has a very promising career in modern academia, and I mean that in the worst possible way. First, he’s openly gay, which is obviously a big plus. Second, he has good political instincts. He smells an opportunity for advancement, and jumps on it. He wasn’t even on this committee, yet within hours of receiving Savage’s (unpublished) second email, he goes on the attack. In an email, he criticizes the book for about a page, and then goes for the jugular:

As a gay man I have long ago realized that the world is full of homophobic, hate-mongers who, of course, say that they are not. So, I am not shocked, only deeply saddened—and THREATENED–that such mindless folks are on this great campus. I am ending now, with the hope that I have seriously challenged you Scott, and anyone who “thinks” as you purport to do. You have made me fearful and uneasy being a gay man on this campus. I am, in fact, notifying the OSU-M campus, and Ohio State University in general, that I no longer feel safe doing my job. I am being harassed.

You might imagine that an English professor capable of writing phrases such as “I have long ago realized” might want to publish his prose only in the most obscure of academic journals. But Mr. Buckley isn’t a scholar; he’s a politician, which is why he has such a promising future in academia. So he sent that email to all@mansfield.ohio-state.edu. That might have been only all the faculty on the Mansfield campus, but more likely it was everyone with a Mansfield campus email account. In politics, as in war, you must be bold.

Mr. Buckley then joined with another openly gay professor in filing a sexual harassment complaint against Mr. Savage. Scroll on down to the last two pages of the linked document. It appears that neither Mrs. Savage, nor anyone else involved in this affair, has actually read the anti-gay book. This was all based on the Amazon.com summary, and some online columns by the author.

Regardless of how the complaint is officially resolved, I predict that Mr. Savage will soon lose his job, and he will then be unemployable at all but a handful of universities. That’s how liberal tolerance works.

HT: Clayton Cramer