Tenured lapdogs

About 80 years ago, an obscure French essayist and intellectual published a book that, in its day, noted a rather novel—and, to the author, disturbing—trend among the intellectual elite. Julien Benda’s La trahison des clercs (1927) bemoaned the loss of political detachment that was the ideal of intellectual life for the preceding millennium. In its place, Benda wrote, the intellectual classes busied themselves with “the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” In short, intellectuals had ceased being disinterested spectators of quotidian political squabbles, but rather had become active participants among a gallery of muckrakers, back-stabbers, demagogues, and partisans. For Benda, the inevitable effect of such a shift would be the degradation of scholarship and free thought. Intellectual life would be captive to a broadside culture in which political rectitude replaces abstract political inquiry.

Upon reading Benda’s tract today, such a complaint seems, well, quaint and a touch nostalgic (even for 1927). In the intervening 80 years since La trahison, we have become inured to such behavior. Whatever pretense of political detachment that might have existed was surely destroyed a generation ago in the campus upheavals of the 1960s, so much so that the campus radical has become as stock a character in the daily American drama as the doughnut-eating policeman or the drug-addled, aging rock star. Indeed, one could argue that, with the creation and proliferation of think tanks (many of which operate as an appendage of the university), we have gone one better and institutionalized the very thing Benda had warned against. Whether it's Samuel P. Huntington (the Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University) fulminating against the toxic presence of Hispanic immigrants or the shrill anti-American rhetoric of Juan Cole (Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan), we have come to expect academics to inject themselves into political discourse. And I have to admit, given the paucity of thought that goes into ordinary public discourse, I don’t object to the professors’ presence in the public square, but the potential problem is not that the universities have poisoned the political well; rather, it’s that politics has poisoned the university.

How this occurs can be seen quite clearly from any number of recent examples. Consider the actions of New York University concerning one its student groups (The Objectivist Club) that wanted to host an event focused on the Mohammed cartoon fracas. The club planned to display the cartoons and then have a panel discussion about them (and, presumably, rights of free speech, freedom of the press, and hate speech). As pointed out dutifully by Eugene Volokh (of The Volokh Conspiracy), NYU gave the group a rather pathetic choice: either refrain from showing the cartoons or close the meeting to guests from outside the university community by disinviting the 150 or so who registered to attend. Further, Mr. Volokh conveniently provided his audience with the text from Section A of NYU’s “Guidelines Regarding Protest and Dissent,” which reads:

“Commitment and Responsibilities of the University. New York University is committed to maintaining an environment where open, vigorous debate and speech can occur. This commitment entails encouraging and assisting University organizations that want to sponsor speakers as well as informing members of the University community who seek guidance concerning forms of protest against speakers. It may also involve paying for extraordinary security measures in connection with a controversial speaker. Consistent with these obligations, the University promulgates these Guidelines, which are intended to be applied without regard to the content of any proposed speaker’s speech.”

Further, Volokh pointed out that the policy’s language also provided for the attendance of those outside of the university community, so long as the majority of seats were reserved for NYU students.

Obviously, in pointing out this gross example of hypocrisy from NYU’s administration, I am not suggesting that it has sympathies with the Islamic mob; rather, I’m suggesting that they’re gutless cowards who behaved exactly the way the mob wanted it to. After all, as the Nazis discovered, it’s so much easier to oppress folks when they collaborate in their own oppression.

Most interesting during the above controversy was the relative silence of the faculty. What happened to the tenured radicals clamoring for free speech, encouraging sit-ins, and generally making themselves a nuisance to the administration? Their voice was barely a whisper.

Consider, too, the recent flap over a paper published by Stephen Walt (Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University) and John Mearsheimer (Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago) in the London Review of Books on March 23. The paper alleged that US foreign policy is unduly influenced by a group of operators who place the interests and well-being of the state of Israel above that of America. Naturally, the rebuttals in the popular press were swift and vehement, but as noted by The New Republic’s Eve Fairbanks, the silence on campuses concerning such a provocative paper has been stunning. Both opponents and proponents of the paper’s point of view have been mum, too afraid of the consequences of speech, too afraid of being blackballed. Fairbanks relates the following anecdote to illustrate the amazing lack of dialogue concerning the paper:

“At a faculty meeting, the paper came up, and the department head remarked that she was sure everyone had the same reaction when they read it—approval. One professor piped up: ‘No, this article is rubbish!’ The room became very quiet. Finally, someone changed the subject. Through moments like these, a de facto consensus developed not to discuss the paper at all.”

Aside from the sheer cowardice, the worst thing about the above anecdote—if in fact it’s true—is the presumption of unanimity from the department head. The clubby, cliquish, craven response when confronted with dissent would almost be hard to believe if I had not witnessed much the same thing in my own (blessedly short) academic career. But this is exactly what happens when academic life is premised upon politics rather than the rigorous pursuit of truth and a healthy respect for the scholarship of others.

On Friday, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) came face to face with the consequences of the academy’s rigid orthodoxy. Invited to the New School in Manhattan to give a commencement address, he was subjected to catcalls, hisses, and heckles by the graduates, who resented Mr. McCain's invitation, which was extended by New School President Bob Kerrey. The New School is pretty liberal; Mr. McCain’s not, so you might see how the students would have rather had someone else to help them celebrate their graduation. I don’t fault the students much. By any measure, their behavior was classless and thuggish, but I would have probably done the same thing when I was 21 (that is, if I had attended my college commencement). More disturbing, however, was the behavior of the faculty, who reportedly joined their students in the display of incivility.

At the end of the program, Bob Kerrey, a former Senator himself, took the floor and upbraided his graduates for their antics: “There will come a time when you will have to answer the question—will you stand—not heckling from an audience where no bravery is required—but will you stand and say what you believe when you know that heckling and laughter and boos will arise?” Judging from the example set by the professorate, looks like the answer is no.