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Contributors
Bruce S. Thornton - Contributor
Bruce Thornton
is a professor of Classics at Cal State Fresno and co-author
of Bonfire
of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished
Age and author of Greek
Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (Encounter
Books). His most recent book is Searching
for Joaquin: Myth, Murieta, and History in California (Encounter
Books). [go to Thornton index]
 Free
Speech for Me, Not for Thee
The limits of liberal love for freewheeling debate...
[Bruce S. Thornton] 2/25/05
The recent
flap over University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill,
who in an essay after 9/11 called the terrorist victims "little
Eichmanns," generated a drama as stylized as a Japanese
Noh play. Indignant conservatives railed against leftist professors
and demanded that Churchill be fired; equally indignant liberals
countered with rousing defenses of the academic freedom and
free speech they accused conservatives of undermining. We had
seen this same drama before, in the days after 9/11 when numerous
academics made equally stupid remarks with precisely the same
results. The outrage had little effect then, and this time
around has merely resulted in turning an academic mediocrity
into a poster-boy for academic freedom, not to mention giving
him a media megaphone his tediously predictable ideas could
never deliver.
In the Churchill case, moreover, the liberals have it right:
his dismissal on the grounds of his opinions would violate what
should be the university's commitment to free-wheeling speech
no matter whose ox is gored and no matter how creepy the person
spouting off. After all, commitment to principle sometimes requires
that we hold our noses and apply it in cases we'd rather not.
And given the liberal dominance of the academy, you can rest
assured that once you go down that road of firing professors
because of what they say, the chances of finding a conservative
in higher education would be about the same as Abraham's chances
of finding ten righteous men in Sodom
The better point for conservatives to make is to hammer liberals
for the rank hypocrisy most of them display in their noisy defenses
of free speech and open debate and challenges to orthodoxy. For
of course, such a love of unfettered discussion applies only
as long as the tenets of faith in the liberal church are left
alone. Even scientists aren't immune to intellectual gate-keeping
to protect their political or ideological prejudices: the virulent,
sometimes hysterical attacks on critics of Darwin or on proponents
of intelligent design surely violate science's obligation to
test all theories and to entertain all criticisms of them in
order to get as close to the truth as possible.
Or consider the trouble Harvard president Lawrence Summers recently
got into when he speculated that innate sex differences in certain
cognitive abilities might be one factor in explaining why there
are fewer women in some scientific disciplines. Such a hypothesis
is unexceptional among scientists studying cognitive abilities,
who have documented numerous statistical differences between
men and women in performing certain mental tasks, with men being
better at some and women being better at others. It is not beyond
the pale to consider that maybe the mental abilities necessary
for some scientific disciplines are not as widely distributed
among women as they are among men.
The reaction to Summers' comments, however, on the part of some
faculty and media pundits was characterized not by the rational
thought and intellectual curiosity we expect from our public
thinkers, but by hysteria and anger that someone in Summers'
position dared to say something that ran counter to politically
correct prejudice. The fact is, one of the biggest orthodoxies
on the academic block is the superstition that all observable
differences between the sexes are due to socialization, particularly
discrimination. On this article of faith are founded most of
the professional activity of so-called feminist academics, not
to mention the demands for institutional power and privilege
(grants, research funds, faculty positions, etc.) needed to undo
the baleful effects of this demonic socialization on the part
of parents and schools. But once you start entertaining the notion
that there are fewer women in some sciences because the pool
of women with the necessary abilities is smaller than the pool
of men, then the rationale for much of that power and privilege
begins to look shaky.
Unfortunately, this
type of ideological policing of intellectual speech is all
too typical of our colleges and universities, those
privileged spaces where the search for truth and the airing of
ideas are supposed to be as uninhibited as possible. But consider
what happened at Rhode Island College to a student who questioned
his professor about what the student thought was a liberal bias
in the Social Work program. The professor responded, "I
revel in my biases," and added, "I think anyone who
consistently holds antithetical views to those that are espoused
by the profession might ask themselves whether social work is
the profession for them." The ideologically slanted assignments
required for a grade confirmed the professor's delight in his
biases, and he punished work, no matter the quality, that ran
counter to his own prejudices. Sadly, the only thing remarkable
about this episode is the professor's willingness to admit that
success in his course depends on passing a political litmus test
(go to www.thefire.org for more on this story).
The public anger directed at those who challenge cherished orthodoxies--along
with the attendant demands for dismissal, for groveling apologies
on the part of the offender, or for increases in funding for
the institutional caretakers of politically correct received
wisdom-- increases the chance that some ideas will rarely get
a public hearing. Recently it was reported that a new strain
of drug-resistant AIDS had appeared in a New York man who admitted
to hundreds of unprotected sexual encounters fueled by crystal
methamphetamine, a pattern of behavior typical of many gay men.
The subsequent commentary focused on everything from the need
for more outreach programs to teach the value of safe sex, to
demands for gay marriage to lessen the esteem-lowering discrimination
that supposedly causes such risky behavior. But no one in the
mainstream media dared to speculate that gay predatory promiscuity
and drug use-- the same constellation of behaviors that 25 years
ago fueled the AIDS crisis in the first place--perhaps bespeak
a type of neurosis inherent in male homosexuality.
No one in the information
elite wants even to mention the unpleasant possibility that
a significant number of gay men engage in lethal
compulsive sex not because of discrimination or lack of safe-sex
billboards, but because homosexuality per se is a form of dysfunction,
even though this is what most of the human race has thought for
ages. Those presumably same-sex-loving Greeks certainly thought
so, repeatedly characterizing passive homosexual activity as
a type of compulsive behavior, even Plato calling it an "itch." Maybe
this hypothesis is wrong, but shouldn't the idea be considered
and the evidence for it be explored, given the importance of
this issue? Just you try, and see how quickly the liberal love
of challenging orthodoxy and engaging in freewheeling debate
suddenly disappears.
It's not hard to see why. To consider homosexuality a type of
dysfunction runs counter the prejudices of the liberal elite
and the cheery propaganda of movies and television shows like
Will and Grace, in which homosexuality is presented as a variety
of normal human behavior no more exceptional than hair or eye
color. And questioning this assumption opens one up to charges
of insensitivity and bigotry. So the discussion is carried on,
if at all, in the shadowy recesses of professional journals and
publications, while the media and popular culture continue to
peddle their ideologically driven view of gay identity.
As these examples
show, for many right-thinking liberals (and alas for some conservatives
too), free speech is a good thing--
as long as certain topics are avoided and the feelings of certain
constituencies are protected. And political ideology and prejudice
will determine what those topics and who those constituencies
are. Remember that art show in New York a few years back that
displayed a picture showing the Virgin Mary festooned with elephant
dung? Those who protested the show were branded oafish philistines
who didn't understand the "subversive" nature of art,
the way it should "challenge" our most cherished orthodoxies.
Yet imagine if instead of the Virgin Mary it had been Martin
Luther King defaced in that way. Suddenly the value of "subversion" and "challenges" would've
disappeared and the curator and artist both compelled to engage
in self-flagellating apologetics for their racial insensitivity.
The whole point of free speech is to get at the truth, a process
that often requires airing all kinds of troubling, unpopular,
or even offensive ideas. Limiting this process by putting some
topics out of bounds means that the truth will be harder to find.
Nor should the possibility of hurt feelings prohibit the expression
of ideas or subvert the search for truth. We all learn as children
that the truth hurts; that's why we all tell so many lies and
entertain so many gratifying delusions. But in a democracy, where
the citizens are called upon to make decisions on a great variety
of issues, an open discussion of ideas directed towards finding
the truth is essential. Once you limit that search by letting
some people's feelings or sensibilities or ideologies trump the
truth, you've made it much more difficult for truth to emerge,
and much more likely for dangerous lies, myths, and half-truths
to dominate the public discourse.
It is precisely this importance of truth for democracy that
makes it necessary that we demand an accounting from all those
who talk the talk of free speech but, when it comes to their
own ideological prejudices, refuse to walk the walk. Pointing
out this hypocrisy is a much more effective use of our time than
railing against a hustler like Ward Churchill. tOR
copyright
2005 Bruce S. Thornton
Searching for Joaquin
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Greek Ways
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Bonfire of the Humanities
by Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, Bruce S. Thornton |
Plagues of the Mind
by Bruce S. Thornton |
Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek
Sexuality
by Bruce S. Thornton |
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