Separation of Academy and State

Nonliberals have recently been discussing diversity on campus, which means that the discussion, refreshingly enough, goes beyond the usual liberal fascination with non-Western cultures and tallies of skin color categories. This time, the discussion is about diversity of ideas on campus, in reaction to the monopoly that the left has in academia. This monopoly has been discussed and documented for years, most recently in an oft-cited survey that shows, as a lower bound estimate, that faculty in the social sciences and humanities vote Democratic by a 7:1 ratio! This ratio is hardly surprising (and may seem a little low) to anyone who has attended college in the United States.

This discussion about achieving a diversity of ideas is the good news. Typical of the conservative backlash against the left's stranglehold on our universities is David Horowitz's "Academic Bill of Rights," which looks on its surface to be a reasonable list of demands. The problem arises when one asks the question, "How will a diversity of ideas be enforced?" By the government? Isn't the problem we face in academia that our largely government-run system has been seized by a political orthodoxy? While we don't prohibit private competition, the costs of "free" public education are so astronomical (e.g., $12,000 per student per year last year in Connecticut's public schools) that many don't have the money left over after taxes to try private schools. Furthermore, since almost all colleges that are not state-run are governed by federal laws, one wonders whether any such schools would really have the freedom to adopt such a list. While our schools are government-funded, alternatives will be less easy to afford. And the government-funded schools will necessarily not be free to set their own policies, enabling poor policy to be set from above. There is no way to enforce a diversity of ideas: it can only be allowed to exist.

The bad news is that some social conservatives seem to sense this and may want to use the problems related to government control of our universities to entrench and perpetuate their own orthodoxy. For example, David Limbaugh starts off praising Horowitz's Bill of Rights and then cites a few examples from his own personal horror file. Two of these in particular bother me. I quote these in turn and follow with comments.

(1) "San Francisco State University decided that Professor Dean Kenyon, a leading national authority in chemical evolutionary theory, was no longer suited to teach introductory biology. Why? Allegedly because he exposed students to points of dispute among scientists on macro-evolutionary theory and to the fact that a number of biologists admit to the existence of evidence for intelligent design in the universe." There is no scientific "evidence" for "intelligent design" of the universe. Intelligent design theory is the latest pseudo-scientific dressing for the idea that the universe has a divine creator. That notion was disproved centuries ago, and its proper place is in an introductory philosophy course when logical fallacies are being discussed. How Kenyon presented the points Limbaugh mentions is crucial. While Kenyon may have simply mentioned this school of thought, it sounds quite conceivable that SFSU needed to exercise its academic freedom to keep a quack out of the clasroom. (And I thought conservatives favored high standards in education....)

(2) "Mississippi University for Women asked Professor Nancy Bryson to resign as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics because she taught students the scientific flaws in Darwinian thought. " Again, what's the context? Did she merely point out gaps in the fossil record? Did she discuss the inductive nature of evolutionary theory? Did she whip out a Bible and start teaching from the Book of Genesis? Many theories (evolution, for one) have "flaws" that do not necessarily invalidate them.

Perhaps Limbaugh is not proposing that we treat religious cosmology on a par with scientific theory. But the theory of evolution has been under attack by religious conservatives for years. I fear that some on the religious right may be preparing to force our federally-regulated universities to protect the "academic freedom" of creationists at the expense of academic standards. For starters, if our universities can have speech codes, banning "hate speech" why shouldn't a stand for the theory of evolution fall under the same umbrella? Isn't that persecution of Christians? Would Christians acquiesce to an elimination of these chilling speech codes if they realized that they, too, could use them?

This may surprise you, but I fully support the right of a college professor to teach "intelligent design" theory, or "feminist" economics, or even that the Earth is flat -- if he can find and keep employment at a university. But I also support the institutional right of a university to hire and fire whom it pleases. How do we achieve the balance between the rights of the academic and of the academy? What is the best way to limit the spread of flawed notions like creationism or practices like speech codes? (Or, if you're David Limbaugh, might you think Creationism would ultimately win in a free arena of ideas?) By setting the colleges free from government control. I suspect that David Limbaugh and many other conservatives would agree -- rightly -- that their tax dollars should not be confiscated to spread ideas to which they are opposed. Why should David Limbaugh be made to pay for the teaching of evolution? Why should I be made to foot the bill for a professor of intelligent design theory? How can we remove the cost barrier that prevents competition between the two theories? Only when the government gets out of the business of funding our universities will these problems disappear. The right to express an idea belongs to the academic. The forum in which to express that idea belongs to the university. The only way to ensure that the academic's freedom of speech and the academy's property rights are respected is to free each from government funding, and hence, control.

When a vigorous debate of ideas must occur, freedom is essential. The demise of the chokehold of the Old Media on political discourse occurred when ordinary citizens from all walks of life could discuss politics and news over deregulated radio and the unregulated internet. When this freedom is stifled by government regulation that progress comes to a standstill.

Ayn Rand once made an important distinction when confronted with the false choice between an "open" mind and a "closed" mind. She pointed out that a "wide open" mind can be just as bad as a closed one. Rather, one should strive for an "active" mind -- one that can grasp and evaluate new ideas. So it is with the academy. Our universities today are, for a wide variety of reasons, many related to stifling government control, "close-minded" to ideas outside the leftist orthodoxy. While an infusion of new ideas would be a big improvement, an attack on academic standards would not, and would result in a "wide-open-minded" university. As the right begins debating the idea of opening up the academy to new ideas, there is the intermediate hazard of the academy being host to a polyglot of different and mutually-contradictory orthodoxies and the long-term danger that it will become dominated by one of these. Only a return to standards, ultimately made possible by the freeing of our universities from government control, will give us an academy which will entertain these many orthodoxies and teach its students how to evaluate them.

As the conservatives strive to fix higher education, they may improve content in the short term, but method will suffer unless reform occurs on the fundamental level of separation of state and economy. Only this will permit separation of academy and state.

-- CAV

P.S. See also my next post.