IN THE face of tragedy, it is important that the University take a leading role in promoting understanding and educated action for its citizens. The University responded quickly to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by organizing a prayer vigil, a University Hall service for meditation and remembrence, and most recently a four part teach-in series on the Middle East. In the teach-in forum for learning, faculty and students should approach this opportunity as a non-partisan effort to inform the community on these issues, leaving the listener the opportunity to infer the best way for the United States to react to its unique situation.
In churches, classrooms and workplaces, conversation is buzzing with the latest news item and President Bush's latest policy announcement in his war against terrorism. The teach-in provides an opportunity for experts in Middle Eastern culture to clarify the truths of foreign societies and eradicate the prejudices of our ignorance. Their value is in their objective criticism of the information that they have made their field of expertise. Any subjective espousal of belief makes them automatically suspect to political motivation for their participation in the teach-in.
The first two of the four teach-ins for this purpose have failed in objectivity, and have had an underlying liberal motivation or tendency in their final message. The first teach-in was held just two days after the terrorist attacks, and it was laden with pleas for the student body to reflect on the incident and to look for peaceful resolution to the conflict. Some speakers went on to insinuate that any retaliation for the atrocities would be unjust and wrong. The second of four teach-ins, held Tuesday, Sept. 25, was a more formal panel of issues relating to Middle Eastern culture. Religious fundamentalism, globalism and oppression were posed as factors in global terrorism.
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The inclusion of these factors as causes for terrorism are telling of the political ideology of this teach-in. As religious studies Prof. Peter Ochs emphasized, religious fundamentalism is a category including fundamental Christianity, Judaism and Islam. His vision of a spectrum of fundamentalism denounced those that were extreme in their faith and praised those in the median of the spectrum. Globalism was portrayed as a horribly destructive force that created disparities of wealth.
Tolerance has come to be one of the most publicly praised virtues since the terrorist attacks. From the ideology at these teach-ins, their leaders would have us believe that tolerance entails mild religious activity, a reluctance to pursue world markets, and refraining from seeking justice for the thousands of lives that were lost in the terrorist attacks.
Ochs defined fundamentalists with the following characteristics: They believe the truth is revealed, unified and clear. They know the truth and will defend it in a world rebellion. The stakes are high because a cosmic order is at stake. It encourages a warm community and they expect some degree of isolation for their action.
President Bush has been quite fundamental in his recent vocabulary toward America's new war. He also represents a characteristically American attitude in which we pursue what is right and we do so boldly. To question the foundations of American society - our moral foundation, our economic foundation and our dedication to freedom and justice - in response to a terrorist attack is to do just what the terrorists wished to accomplish. They will know that they have succeeded when we have questioned our most prized ideals and traditions.
While all of the faculty who spoke on Tuesday had expertise on the subject at hand, the message they conveyed was one of liberal disengagement from our religious beliefs, our capitalist financial system, and our pursuit of justice. The liberal nature of the teach-in's presenters discouraged a non-partisan or conservative audience member from engaging his or herself with and understanding a foreign culture. If an audience member with a conservative ideology was to attend the teach-in, he would be less likely to endure a professor's ideas on tolerance if it were connected with a proposal to refrain from retaliation. Professors have the extra responsibility to teach with facts when appropriate, and to delineate those facts from personal political views. This is because academics should have a greater commitment to the truth than to ideology.
The job of a reporter is to be completely objective so that the facts of a story can be conveyed to the reader. His own voice is to go undetected so that a personal view of any situation will not taint the reader's understanding of the story. These professors have the same job to relate facts and information to those who don't understand the foreign concepts we are dealing with. As their personal voices, or a direction of any leader's ideology, is infused, the intention of the program is sold short. The teach-ins organized in the future should be organized in a way to balance the ideological spectrum and offer possibilities for more people to understand these very difficult issues.
(Matt West's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mwest@cavalierdaily.com.)
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